ML23065A173
| ML23065A173 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 10/29/1998 |
| From: | NRC/OCM |
| To: | |
| Huda Akhavannik, NMSS/MSST | |
| Shared Package | |
| mL23065A171 | List: |
| References | |
| Download: ML23065A173 (1) | |
Text
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 ***
4 1998 ALL AGREEMENT STATES MEETING 5
6 7
8 The Wayfarer Inn 9 121 South River Road 10 Bedford, NH 03110 11 12 Thursday, October 29, 1998 13 14 15 The above-entitled meeting commenced, pursuant to notice, at 8:00 a.m.
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
2 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 [8:00 a.m.]
3 MR. FLETCHER: I am extremely pleased and gratified to call 4 this 1998 Meeting of the Agreement States to order. As I look around 5 and see all of your wonderful, smiling, eager, energetic faces, I know 6 that we're going to have a wonderful meeting, and I look forward to all 7 of the exchanges, all of the questions, all of the answers and all of 8 the discussions that each one of those causes.
9 I want to first of all ensure that all agreement states are 10 represented at the table. So if you are -- you're the representative 11 from your state and you're not at the -- you, please come forward.
12 There are also spaces available for those states that have 13 applied to become agreement states. You may have to look in between 14 some of these smiling faces we have here. But, please, if you represent 15 Ohio, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, please -- and Wisconsin, please 16 come forward now.
17 To begin with, I want to make just a few adjustments to my 18 just past, almost final, almost final, final, final agenda which most of 19 you received last week, and I got changes to right after I sent it out.
20 First of all, Allen Grewe from Tennessee will not be able to attend. He 21 was scheduled to participate at 1:15. Also, the presentation of 22 "Clean Up Of A Mad Scientist's C-14" by Don Bunn is moved from the 23 afternoon to the morning -- Friday morning at 10:30 a.m. And the 24 presentation, "Privatization of DOE Contractors" on Friday is moved to 25 the afternoon.
3 1 Upfront, I want to thank the representatives of the Nuclear 2 Regulatory Commission for providing us with the tents so that each of us 3 will know who the other is. Please, if you have not yet filled out the 4 tents with your name, please do so. Use the darkest pen you can 5 because, as I look at them from here, they still all seem blank.
6 I'd like to get right into the agenda, and I want to state 7 upfront for all to hear that the gratitude for the way this meeting has 8 been set up, the facility, all of the amenities that you see goes to the 9 person I'm about to introduce or present because all of you know her. I 10 don't know how we would have come together in a meeting such as this 11 without her.
12 She and her staff have put forth tremendous effort 13 tremendous work to bring this together. And I do wholeheartedly thank 14 you for all that you've done. Diane Tefft, the program manager for New 15 Hampshire will now come forward and bring welcome. Diane?
16 MS. TEFFT: Thank you, Roland. Well, good morning and 17 welcome. On behalf of the New Hampshire Bureau of Radiological Health, 18 I want to welcome all of you to the 1998 All Agreement States Meeting.
19 In case you wrote up this morning or wondered where you all, 20 you are in New Hampshire, the Granite State, and specifically you're in 21 Bedford, New Hampshire and nearby Manchester. Now I do want to say that 22 Manchester is not just any City USA. The 1998 Money Magazine eighth 23 ranking of liveable cities -- livability in the United States ranked 24 Manchester as the number one small city in the East. And in the 1997 25 ranking, Manchester was ranked number six in the whole country. And
4 1 nearby Nashua was named number one. So you are in a very important 2 place.
3 You are also, in case you were wondering where you are, 4 about 170 miles from Canada, about 50 miles from Boston, about 450 miles 5 from Washington which is okay.
6 [Laughter.]
7 MS. TEFFT: About 18 miles from Concord, which is our 8 capital, and that's where our offices are located; about 50 miles from 9 the Atlantic Ocean and 70 miles from Vermont. I'd like each of you, of 10 course, to get to see our state, but I know that's not possible during 11 this brief stay. I certainly invite you back to tour at your 12 convenience or summer vacation. But I thought today I would tell you 13 some of the spots in New Hampshire that you might want to see when you 14 are touring.
15 New Hampshire is home to about 1.1 million people. We have 16 about 80,000 deer in the state, about 6,000 moose, and you don't want to 17 watch out for the moose if you're touring around New Hampshire. They do 18 not collide well with your car. About 3,500 bear in our state.
19 In case you haven't ever heard, we also host the first in 20 the nation's presidential primary here in New Hampshire, and we have 21 about 780,000 acres of national forest.
22 About 83 percent of New Hampshire is covered by trees, and a 23 lot of the rest of it is under water. So when we say we cannot see the 24 forest for the trees, we really mean it here. Also, in case you haven't 25 heard, we are proud to say that we have a new NRC commissioner who is from Antrim, New Hampshire. And yesterday, I did get a chance to talk
5 1 to Jeff Merryfield, Commissioner Merryfield who said that he regrets 2 that he could not be here for this meeting. He is in Washington. But 3 he certainly hopes the Agreement States will consider inviting him to 4 next year's meeting. So we need to think about that.
5 New Hampshire, of course, is known for its brilliant 6 foliage. And even though this is not peak foliage season, I think you 7 can probably see some of the trees that had changed. We have a lot of 8 maple trees in New Hampshire, and, of course, that allows us to have 9 lots of New Hampshire maple syrup. And if you haven't tried that, it is 10 something I would highly recommend.
11 This time of year, of course, we have the cool brisk 12 mountain air, fall days, and I think you will agree that today is 13 probably representative of our October climate. So do get out and enjoy 14 the nice weather. It's invigorating, and we hope you enjoy that.
15 We have tax-free shopping here. So what -- the price you 16 see on the merchandise is what you're going to pay, no taxes -- sales 17 taxes, that is. We also have reduced prices at our state-run liquor 18 stores. So those of you that might be interested and want to do that, 19 that helps pay our salaries, by the way.
20 [Laughter.]
21 MS. TEFFT: Our motto here is live free or die, and you will 22 find that on all New Hampshire license plates. If you travel north from 23 where you are, you will come to the Lakes Region. And this is my home, 24 Lake Winnipesaukee, Winnesquam, Ossipee, Little Squam, Squam Lake where 25 "On Golden Pond" was filmed. So if you saw that movie, you might want to venture on that direction.
6 1 If you continue north, you will get to the White Mountains.
2 And we have, of course, Mt. Washington which is the highest summit in 3 the northeast. Mt. Washington also boasts the highest wind velocity --
4 recorded wind velocity in the world of 231 miles per hour.
5 And you can travel to the Summit of Mt. Washington via the 6 Cog Railroad which is indeed an experience. You will see also the Old 7 Man And The Mountain which is a natural granite profile about 1200 feet 8 on a sheer cliff, and you can see this from the roadway, and it is 9 spectacular.
10 New Hampshire also is the home of poet Robert Frost. He was 11 in Derry, New Hampshire from 1901 to 1909. Franklin Pierce, our 14th 12 president, was from New Hampshire. And Daniel Webster, distinguished 13 statesman and orator, was born in New Hampshire. He lived in a two-room 14 framed house in Franklin which is about 25 miles or so from here.
15 Also, New Hampshire has the home and gardens and studios of 16 Augusta Saint Gaudens who is America's greatest sculptor. This is in 17 Cornish, New Hampshire near the Vermont border, a beautiful place. I 18 highly recommend it if you're touring. And he was here from 1848 to 19 1907.
20 And New Hampshire was the home of Christa McAuliffe, a 21 school teacher who was aboard the fatal flight of the Challenger. She 22 was from Concord. And many other people in the Concord area Christa.
23 She was a wonderful person.
24 The New Hampshire Bureau of Radiological Health is in 25 Concord, not far from the State House in the Department of Health and Human Services. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank and
7 1 introduce my staff who have really put in a lot of time and work in this 2 meeting. We have a so-called visual aids crew, and if you have slides 3 or transparencies or are going to use Power Point or whatever, these are 4 the people you need to talk to, and I'll ask them to stand. There's 5 Mario Annacone, health physicist, not here. Wayne Johnston, health 6 physicist, stand up if you're here. They're probably outside working.
7 Twyla Kenna. Here comes Mario, and these are one of the people that you 8 need to see. He's a health physicist with our program.
9 Liz Brown is out on the registration desk. So if you 10 haven't yet registered, you've been counted. So would you please 11 register at break or at lunch, and she'll be out there to help you with 12 that.
13 Also, Deb Russell was helping with the registrations. Deb 14 is a health physicist with our bureau. They're in the back back there 15 hiding. They think they're hiding. And Twyla's back there as well.
16 Kathleen McAllister, Kathy. Kathleen is going to be commuting back and 17 forth to Concord. So if you have some incidental copies that you need 18 or something, you need to see Kathleen, and she'll copy them for you 19 either before or after one of the meetings.
20 And Dennis O'Dowd who's over in the back there, and Dennis 21 heads up our raw material program, and many of you, I know, already know 22 them. But these people have worked hard in trying to make everything 23 run smooth here. We are also very fortunate to have sponsors for this 24 meeting. And I'll tell you, without them, we probably wouldn't have the 25 kind of meeting we're going to have.
8 1 We have a sponsor, the New England Radiological Health 2 Committee, who is sponsoring this morning's coffee break. The coffee 3 and danish. If you don't know who this group is, there's a handout 4 there telling you a little bit about who's on the committee. But also 5 you need to attend Robert Hallisey's presentation right after coffee 6 break. And he's going to tell you all about the New England Rad Health 7 Committee, and we think it's a unique group, and we hope that maybe it 8 will give you some ideas for forming such a group elsewhere in the 9 country.
10 Canberra is one of our sponsors, and they are sponsoring 11 tomorrow morning's coffee break. And Carol McGeehan is out in the 12 lobby. She will have a table set up with some of the wares from 13 Canberra. I do encourage you to stop by and say hi to Carol.
14 Atlantic Nuclear, it will be here as well. And John 15 Anderson, Jr. will be representing them. And, again, they will have 16 some instrumentation for you to see. So I do encourage you. And 17 Radiation Safety and Patrol Services and Chris Perry is setting up the 18 table there. Many of you may know Chris. He used to work for us in the 19 Bureau of Rad Health, and he has moved on, I guess, to the private 20 sector. Also Jay Tarzia who is a member of our State Radiation Advisory 21 Committee possibly will be out there at that table. Eric Deros and Fred 22 Stracia may be stopping in at times. So do get your coffee and visit 23 these people. These people have been very helpful to us.
24 The hotel -- the hotel is really trying to do things our 25 way. And I hope that we will support them in this. They set up a Grandma's Kitchen in the lobby so that you can get a quick coffee and
9 1 danish on your own way over here. Also, they're going to provide a soup 2 and deli buffet at a reasonable price for lunch because we only have an 3 hour3.472222e-5 days <br />8.333333e-4 hours <br />4.960317e-6 weeks <br />1.1415e-6 months <br /> and 15 minutes. You can go in and whip through the line and get a 4 soup, sandwich, salad.
5 There's going to be a breakfast buffet to assist you in 6 getting here on time. And they're going to have a 5:00-6:30 early bird 7 special, $10.99, several things on the menu, a good menu. The lounge is 8 also going to try to accommodate us with some reasonable prices, and 9 they intend to have some hors d'oeuvres there. So I encourage you to 10 eat here and, of course, go to the lounge.
11 We're going to have a message board outside here. Yeah, I 12 don't have to encourage you to go to the lounge, I know.
13 [Laughter.]
14 MS. TEFFT: A message board outside here. So if you're 15 expecting a message or anything, do look. The hotel's going to be 16 putting them there. We also have a list of nearby restaurants in case 17 you decide to venture out, and they're on the registration table. We 18 have a lot of tourist information. Please take what you want. We don't 19 have to carry it back if you don't. And, again, if you haven't 20 registered, please stop by and see Liz and the group out there to give 21 us your registration fee.
22 Other than that, enjoy, welcome. We're glad to have you.
23 [Applause.]
24 MR. FLETCHER: Thank you very much, Diane. I do, before I 25 begin my presentation, do have one additional announcement, and it's on a sad note. Hampton Newsome lost his grandmother, and he is on our
10 1 program. We will make a schedule change so that he can leave us early.
2 His presentation with Aubrey will be moved to this morning. But on 3 behalf of the Conference, I offer my condolences to Hampton and his 4 family.
5 Well, as you can see from those of you -- I have some 6 additional copies. From my perspective, this has been a very good year, 7 and I do that for two reasons. This year we lost one of our greatest 8 entertainers and one of his most favorite pieces was "It Was A Very Good 9 Year." Now I could croon that for you so that you can see that it's 10 okay for me to use it.
11 But I want to go through the highlights of this year using a 12 perspective that might be somewhat familiar to you, but I want to do it 13 as a view from Old Brown Eyes. What did we do this year.
14 Well, first of all, in the Organization of Agreement States, 15 your installation is the first of the year. Well, the first of the 16 year, I wasn't at work. You probably weren't at work. There were no 17 lights, whistles, no big dinner or anything. I just came to work on the 18 2nd or 3rd, and I was chair. So there may have been something I missed, 19 but there it was.
20 Then one of the first challenges that I received was the 21 membership question. Because of situations that perhaps we can deal 22 with at the business meeting, there was a question as to how do I get 23 out of this outfit anyway, and we spent some time dealing with that.
24 But that was one of my first challenges.
25 But the things that I recall the most initially at least is preparation for commission briefings which I participated in one dealing
11 1 with the GL Device Registration question and the acceptance of the 2 working group recommendations which was, I believe, very, very, first of 3 all, very important to all of us, and it brought up some perspective 4 both from an agreement state and non-agreement state perspective that 5 the Commission took and did, you know, required some relooking at some 6 of the recommendations of the staff.
7 So I think that really worked out in accordance with the way 8 the agreement states would want it to, and, it's still, of course, being 9 worked out. Additionally, we participated in our conference call. And 10 this is kind of -- it's kind of fun sometimes when you hear the little 11 beep that goes on in the conference calling, and you don't know who's 12 there. And usually, it's about 50 NRC staffers and ten agreement 13 states. But we seem to beat you guys to the punch. We're always in 15, 14 10-15 minutes early from the agreement states, and we usually have a 15 pre-meeting before everyone else gets on. So it works out in our favor.
16 But it would be nice if we could ever do it that we could have, you 17 know, those laptops where you can see the picture of the person you're 18 talking to and really have a two-way conversation.
19 But I think they worked out well, and we've gotten a lot of 20 information discussed in those fora.
21 Then we had the second presentation which dealt with many 22 topics, all of which we're going to touch upon today, one dealing with 23 information sharing and communications, DOE contractors, the license --
24 the transfer of responsibility for license, sites and things of that 25 nature. We're going to talk about all those today.
12 1 But we made those presentations, and we received a good 2 reception from the Commission in those presentations. We also developed 3 an OAS position paper on the limit -- the contamination limit for 4 disposal and provided that to the chairman at that conference.
5 We had a mini-meeting at the CRCPD, and I really think that, 6 as we look at future meetings of this nature, the earlier we get started 7 planning our own meeting, the better the meeting is, I think if you look 8 around, because (1) the work of Diane and her staff and (2) getting the 9 word out early helped us to put this meeting together the way you wanted 10 it to be put together.
11 I had an interesting presentation for the Office of General 12 Counsel at the NRC because we had contact with Chip Cameron and Hampton 13 and a few other of the attorneys at the NRC. But the majority, I 14 believe, don't really understand what we are. And hopefully, maybe that 15 number is reduced somewhat. But I did get the feeling that we're kind 16 of an odd organization that there's not a lot of information about, and 17 the more we do things like that, perhaps the better off we are when it 18 comes to communicating throughout the staff.
19 Now we have the agenda that you have. That was the most fun 20 I've had all year because we started off with the topics that you told 21 me at the CRCPD this is what we want. But conspicuous by its absence 22 from the side of the topic were presenters. You all had good ideas 23 about topics, but presenters were few and far between.
24 And, you know, I begged, pleaded. I sent e-mails which some 25 of you had difficulty converting, I realize, but faxes trying to get people to come forward. Well, then I took what I consider a chairman
13 1 prerogative, and I started putting names down myself. Oh, did I get 2 some reactions to that.
3 [Laughter.]
4 MR. FLETCHER: I noticed that my name is on the agenda. I 5 never volunteered for that. Well, I know, but I had to put someone 6 down. I thank all of you who saw your name, acknowledged it, and put 7 something together to present here. Only in a few instances did I get 8 some discouraging words and non-participation. But that's to be 9 expected. The vast majority of people just helped out, and I certainly, 10 certainly appreciate it.
11 And this is what the result was. I put in some surprise 12 presenters, and I got surprised presenters, but I got presenters.
13 My next meeting with the NRC happened back in September, and 14 I met with Public Affairs and with OI, and it was a good meeting. I'm 15 not going to go into a lot of detail here because we will be having a 16 presentation on that a little later.
17 What I do want to do, however, is to point out that there 18 are some other things coming up. Steve Collins is going to talk about 19 the SS&D, the IMPEP SS&D that's coming up, and we have registered here 20 today somewhere around 105 people, and that is a very, very good number, 21 a very positive number. It means that our efforts really did come 22 together, and I certainly appreciate that.
23 I would like to end by congratulating our newly named 24 commissioners, Commissioner Greta Dicus who has been reinstated or given 25 a second term as a commissioner. And, as Diane mentioned a commissioner
14 1 -- and I got the first name wrong. It's Jeffrey, not Jerry -- Jeffrey 2 Merryfield who is from the state of New Hampshire.
3 Once again, I thank you very much, and I am certainly 4 pleased and gratified and humbled by having the opportunity to serve 5 this year as your chair. And I look forward to working with next year's 6 chair. I must apologize for Stan Marshall. Somehow or other, this date 7 had a major conflict with a family matter, and he was not able to be 8 here.
9 And it turned out the same for Bob Quillen who is our past 10 chair. This weekend happens to be his 40th wedding anniversary, and it 11 was either come here and stay single -- or be single or take his wife to 12 Italy, and he chose Italy. So they're both not present. But I have 13 conversed with both of them, and I got their input.
14 So I thank you very much for this year.
15 [Applause.]
16 MR. FLETCHER: At this time, I have the distinct privilege 17 and pleasure to present to most of you -- introduce to some, present to 18 others our keynote speaker. Dr. Nils J. Diaz is a commissioner with the 19 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and he was nominated for a five-year term 20 by President Clinton in July, 1996, and confirmed by the Senate in 21 August of that year.
22 Prior to his appointment, Dr. Diaz was professor of Nuclear 23 Engineering and Sciences at the University of Florida, and director of 24 the Innovative Nuclear Space Power Institute, a national consortium of 25 industries, universities and national laboratories.
15 1 He's also president and principal engineer of the Florida 2 Nuclear Associates. Dr. Diaz's career includes 11 years as director of 3 INSPI for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Department of 4 Defense; two years in California as associate dean for research in the 5 California State University at Long Beach; one year in Spain as 6 principal adviser to Spain's Nuclear Regulatory Commission; six years at 7 Nuclear Utilities and Vendors. From 1971 to 1996, Dr. Diaz consulted on 8 nuclear engineering and energetics for private industry, the U.S.
9 government, and several foreign governments.
10 Dr. Diaz holds a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from 11 the University of Villanova-Havana, an M.S. degree in nuclear 12 engineering and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering science from the 13 University of Florida. He has received formal training and practice in 14 nuclear medicine and health physics, and was licensed as a senior 15 reactor operator for 12 years by the NRC.
16 He has published more than 70 reference papers on reactor 17 kinetics and safety, instrumentation and control, imaging and 18 non-destructive examination, advanced reactor concepts, propulsion and 19 nuclear fuels.
20 He is a member of many professional societies and has 21 testified for both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate 22 on issues of space, power, nuclear proliferation, on the international 23 non-military nuclear reactor safety, and nuclear regulation.
24 Dr. Diaz is also a fellow of the American Nuclear Society.
25 He is married to Zena G. Gonzales. They have three children, Nils,
16 1 Anadeen and Alene. So without further adieu, I'd like to introduce to 2 you Commissioner Nils Diaz.
3 [Applause.]
4 DR. DIAZ: Good morning. I'm just very interested in the 5 different ways my name gets pronounced. He only missed it once. So 6 you're doing well, Roland.
7 It is a real pleasure to be here in more than one way.
8 Actually, I have the pleasure of being regulator in the state for many 9 years. I actually was -- I can't put all those things in my resume.
10 Then people think I'm faking it. But I was for almost 14 years the 11 director of Nuclear Facilities at the University of Florida, and I 12 actually controlled most of the real big radioactive sources, the 13 accelerators, the reactors, the heavy water, some 181 kilograms of 14 enriched uranium that we had in some back woods place. And it's very 15 interesting because the sign says "Entomology Research." People knowing 16 about going in there thought we were trying to make roaches grow 17 somehow.
18 But I want to thank Mr. Fletcher for the opportunity to be 19 here. And, of course, I want to thank our host, Diane Tefft, for 20 putting this thing together and allow me the opportunity to chat with 21 you for a little bit.
22 First, I want you to know that about a month ago, we were 23 going through an exercise of putting where things belong in order of 24 importance. And when I look at the national organizations that we have 25 to interact with, I put the Agreement States as the number one organization that we have to interact with.
17 1 And it is very simple. You guys are where radiation meets 2 people, okay. I mean, if you look at nuclear power plants, these are 3 fortresses that are isolated from the people. But you work where 4 radiation meets people, and that's a very important thing. And you have 5 taken a lot of our burden from us, and you have to discharge it.
6 And I see it as our obligation to work with you, make sure 7 that you have what you need to get that job done that we have to do if 8 you were not there. And so I value tremendously what you do. I always 9 have. And I can assure you that as long as I'm on the Commission, 10 Agreement States will be somebody special. There's no doubt about it.
11 I was going to work on how to talk to you and go around 12 issues. But usually, I have a problem. I write these notes down, and 13 then I don't pay any attention to them.
14 [Laughter.]
15 DR. DIAZ: But fortunately, I was told that, you know, that 16 my time is limited. So you will not be worrying about how long I go. I 17 understood that I have four hours, plus or minus two. And according to 18 that, you can relax, okay, because that's about the way we're going to 19 go about it.
20 [Laughter.]
21 DR. DIAZ: We are approaching the 40th anniversary of the 22 agreement states; 274(b) created really a kink in the federal armor, and 23 it's a right kink. It says the power has to go to the states. And you 24 have heard me talking before. I am very much for having Washington 25 deliver the power to the states because, again, that's where the people are, and that's where you can be effective in what you do.
18 1 It is necessary and, of course, we do have sometimes, you 2 know, a high hand in trying to determine which way you do things. But 3 the bottom line is that now in this time and era, we are becoming more 4 and more a partnership in which your opinions, the way you want to do 5 things because you're the ones who do it, becomes more and more 6 important.
7 We're also developing new systems and methods. The idea is 8 not to complicate life, but to make life simple. The idea is to have 9 accountability in what is done because we are, all of us -- you and us 10 -- accountable to the people of this country.
11 So it is important as we realize that, you know, 30 states 12 already are agreement states. Three are in the process of becoming 13 agreement states. And then there are three more that are just about 14 down the pipeline. In other words, we are now working trying to get 15 Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania which will had 1700 more licensees to 16 the agreement states. And we have Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut 17 -- the letter from the governor of Wisconsin has already arrived.
18 I would be surprised if in the next five years this number 19 doesn't get closer and closer to 40 states, and that will mean that a 20 great majority of our radioactive licensees and materials will be in the 21 hands of states right where the people are.
22 As a backdrop to this, if we look at this, we need to 23 realize that what we do together is very important. It's very important 24 in more senses sometimes than what we realize because we are the 25 interface between a technology or many technologies and the people that receive the products of that technology.
19 1 Now this is something that sometimes we don't realize. It 2 is that regulators are an interface, and that interface is not to 3 prevent good things from happening. It's just to maintain some adequate 4 standard which sometimes needs to be defined, okay. And we are that 5 interface that eventually allows the delivery of the product to the 6 people, and that interface has tremendous importance.
7 Because if you do it wrong, you're either doing one of two 8 things. You are really not providing the protection, or you are 9 preventing the benefits to reach the people.
10 So regulation is more than just an art. It's more than just 11 a passing thought. It's more than just an organization. It is really 12 part of the delivery mechanism of society. It is right in between, 13 okay, or should be between a product and the users of the product -- the 14 people of this country.
15 And I will tell you that we're going to see a period of ten 16 years in which regulation will change significantly, and will occupy its 17 right place in this society. And that is not going to be just an ad hoc 18 movement. I assure you that there's going to be a science and 19 technology to it because we now have the mechanisms, we have the 20 know-how on how to do that.
21 That interface needs to be better defined so that people can 22 actually enjoy the benefits that are going to be coming from any and all 23 of these technologies. You're going to talk about a lot of things 24 today. And I know that they're going to be in a lot more depth than I'm 25 going to go in here.
20 1 But I'm just going to just try to make sure that we're all 2 about the same base. There's a couple of things, of course, that have 3 increased what we call our outreach and participation from the states.
4 I think IMPEP has been a good start both in eliminating the 5 proscriptiveness of what we do, what you do, and I think it's going to 6 get better.
7 I also believe that when we put in 1997 the principal 8 statements of principles and policies, we actually took a step forward 9 in defining how we were going to do things. These groups that you have 10 formed to work with us are very important. The Part 35 Medical Working 11 Group which has, as you know, had a very lively meeting last week and 12 I'm sure is going to keep getting very, very lively. The Part 35 13 Guidance Document Group -- and by the way, you all realize the idea of 14 doing Part 35 is not to do another rule, but to do it simpler, to do it 15 better, to do it more risk informed, to do it in a manner that it 16 actually weighed what are we getting for our buck.
17 It is a very important issue because if we can include in 18 the actual treatment of patients an element of risk information and that 19 element starts to be getting known, it will make life easier when this 20 government and this NRC starts to saying we are risk informed, we are 21 risk based, we are providing more and more, you know, guidance in how 22 the users do things rather than how we want them to do them, and then 23 hold them hostage to it.
24 Nuclear byproduct material, risk reviews, another one of the 25 groups that we are now interacting, the incident response group, the
21 1 general license device working group, and the clearance rulemaking 2 working group which I'll dwell on a little bit more.
3 It is obvious that with this new phase we are going into a 4 new -- what I call enhanced participatory, you know, agreement with the 5 states -- something that we need badly to do. We need you to not only 6 participate. We need you to pound the table and tell us -- which you do 7 once in a while, right -- tell us you're not doing this thing right, 8 NRC.
9 I think people sometime used to think that this was some 10 kind of a problem. To me, it is wonderful that people stand up and say 11 this is not right because this is a democracy, and that is the way it 12 should be.
13 Now we sometimes do not appreciate that fact. I do 14 appreciate the fact because I do have, you know, a little bit of 15 background in dealing with non-democratic governments. And in fact, I 16 lost my country at a very early age because we couldn't agree on a 17 simple thing, whether the country should be communist or not. And, of 18 course, I said, no, it shouldn't be, and Castro didn't like that at all.
19 So I spent seven months in an embassy running for my life. And, you 20 know, I still remember. Of course, I was too young and too foolish to 21 know what was happening. But still that is engrained in me.
22 The ability to contest, the ability to argue, the ability to 23 protest is such a major part of this country that, you know, sometimes 24 we take it for granted, but it's indispensable.
25 And I assure that the NRC now is very well aware that you guys are going to complain and protest, and the important thing is I
22 1 want you to know that we are going to listen, okay. We are going to 2 listen. It is, you know, so holler as much as you want. We are going 3 to listen, and we are going to do something about it.
4 Some of the things that keep going that I think are 5 important, although we're now arguing internally where we put some of 6 these things. The nuclear materials event database is something that 7 we're not going to change. We're going to enhance.
8 And, as you know, we have been asked to add not only NRC 9 materials but non-NRC materials to the datbase. I think this advanced 10 database will serve -- and you will see it when I finish the preliminary 11 introduction to my talk and I really start talking why this will be 12 important. This database should give us a baseline of where we are and 13 should give us an indication where problems could be.
14 And so I think this is a thing that we need to work together 15 to do it very, very well. Improving the control over and licensee 16 accountability for general and specific license device -- you know that 17 when the Commission was faced with this briefing on the staff, we 18 actually said no, this is not sufficient, and the Commission turned 19 around and decided that it was time to do something better. And I think 20 it is time, and I think it is obvious that we are going to do it.
21 And I think it is obvious that you need to be not 22 participant or active participant, but partners in this process of 23 getting ahold of these devices that we have sometimes lost track of 24 where they are because, you know, well, let me stop.
25 When I was in Brazil a year ago, somebody told me that we know the big events and the big accidents. But what nobody knows is of
23 1 all of those times that people have really gotten irradiated and nobody 2 knows about it. And I asked them in Brazil how many non-reportable 3 cases of radiation exposures do you think happen a year that you don't 4 know about that are in the range of five grams just to get something.
5 He said 50 to 100. I said where do you get that number. He said I just 6 know it. I mean, it just happens all the time.
7 Two years ago, before I came to the Commission, I was in 8 Costa Rica. Two weeks after I left Costa Rica, there was an incident, 9 okay, of the high exposure for cancer patients in Costa Rica. This we 10 know of. It's the ones we don't know of that might be a larger health 11 risk than we realize. And we need to step in there and do something 12 about it.
13 I think this is a very good thing. I think the Commission 14 is fully behind it. I think we're going to get it done, and we need 15 your support in doing that. I could probably spend an entire day 16 talking about the decommissioning. I've given three talks on the 17 decommissioning, and I'm prime for it. So if you want to consider all 18 of your things and give me a loud microphone, a glass of wine -- no, I 19 didn't say that. Glass of water would be fine, I could probably talk 20 about decommissioning.
21 Decommissioning has now been brought to the forefront. We 22 are going to be doing more and more with it. We're going to be doing 23 more and more defining of it. We are going to work with you in every 24 aspect that we can to make sure that you're aware of where we're going.
25
24 1 I'll talk a little bit about this nice composed debate we're 2 having with EPA regarding some of these things. No cuss words allowed in 3 here, right? Huh? I was warned about that.
4 But with the rule promulgated in 1997, we actually are 5 engaged in how this fits into a national arena. And that's what I want 6 to draw attention to you. You might see some things that are isolated.
7 The decommissioning rule, the clearance of materials, the Yucca Mountain 8 standards, our stands on DOE oversight, our stands on the tritium 9 production, the missile stiles, these are not isolated issues. They all 10 belong to one big picture that says this country is now facing the fact 11 that we need to control the uses of radiation for the benefits of the 12 people of this country with uncompromised safety. But we no longer can 13 hide behind and say we're not going to deal with this, or we're not 14 going to talk about it.
15 The time is gone, and the time is gone because there are 16 natural processes, okay. Aging is one of them. We're all getting a 17 little older, okay. I won't admit to that, but you know other people can 18 say that (a) we've been working on this for so long, what is the result.
19 We are bound on achieving results rather than keeping up with the 20 rhetoric.
21 And to do that is going to take eventually a series of 22 Congressional actions that might go as far as having to amend the Atomic 23 Energy Act itself, having to come up with laws that actually allow us 24 and you to do the job that we are trying to do in the proper context.
25 There is each of the Clearance Rule and something that is dear to my heart. As you know, we are starting in the process of
25 1 clearance rules. And why do we have a clearance rule -- a clearance of 2 materials rule? Well, it's because there is nothing that is not of 3 regulatory concern.
4 [Laughter.]
5 DR. DIAZ: Huh? And it is time that we stop discriminating 6 on this interface of what nature called solid materials. I mean, we 7 allow gaseous materials and liquid materials to be discharged to the 8 environments in quantities that have been determined to be safe. And 9 then this most stable form, solid form in which nature manifests itself, 10 we have totally banned it.
11 And then we have put these standards of detectability on it.
12 Now detectability, of course, is a changing capacity and technology and, 13 therefore, it is not right not to look at it in the right context. So 14 we are engaged now in this enhanced participatory rulemaking that will 15 allow us to come up hopefully in a couple of years with a rule that will 16 alleviate many, many of the problems that are now faced by people all 17 over this country.
18 It is sometimes, you know, amazing how these things will 19 pile up on top of each other. It is something that you need to 20 participate. The states have a major voice on this issue, and you have 21 guys who are very actively involved in it.
22 The low level radioactive waste disposal which I'm sure is, 23 you know, an issue that all of you continuously watch and you watch and 24 you watch, and nothing happens. Okay? Well, things haven't changed, 25 okay. We're still in the same place except, as you know, Senator Murkowski got kind of a little tired about this, as he has asked GAO to
26 1 study what is happening with the low level waste disposal, why it isn't 2 working, why we don't have any new ones, you know, why are we still 3 stuck with the things.
4 And I believe that this is going to have some movement 5 because we either say, well, what is obvious is this law did not work.
6 We need something else. We need to allow private people to do it.
7 Something needs to be done because we cannot keep going year after year 8 and having this problem not really resolved.
9 Not can we increase the price, okay, of putting materials, 10 you know, away, disposing of them beyond the capability of the people of 11 this country to pay for it because, you know, whatever the cost is --
12 and I'm sure you know this better than I do, somebody out there is 13 paying for it. It's not the Company A or Company B, but the people of 14 this country pay for it.
15 We are no longer looking at Texas as something that's going 16 to be resolved in a short period of time now that we know about 17 California. But I think that next year the Congressional agenda is 18 calling for a series of things, all of them nuclear, not the least of 19 which is going to be Yucca Mountain which is the very one on the agenda.
20 And I can tell you that I had a meeting with the Senate 21 leadership not very long ago in which Senator Lott and his staff 22 expressed the fact that they are committed to have a very good package 23 to be delivered to the president by February of this coming year. And 24 that is, you know, probably subject to interpretation what a good 25 package means. I think a good package means something that the president can sign.
27 1 And so, of course, until after these elections, we probably 2 won't hear too much about it.
3 Sterner regulation of DOE is stalled, a depressing time. We 4 had a change in the secretary. Secretary Richardson is just taking his 5 time to look at it. And, again, I do think nothing will happen until 6 after the elections or maybe some time after that.
7 I still favor that DOE have external regulation. And I 8 think that whenever appropriate, according to the type of facility, that 9 the state should participate strongly in this regulation. I have been 10 for many, many years working with national labs, and I think it is time 11 that those parts of the national labs that can be easily regulated come 12 to a very straightforward and, you know, set of national standards.
13 The other components, actually most of them, can be 14 regulated, and I think they need to be. But my position on this issue 15 is that we need to push for oversight over DOE not because we want more 16 work, but because the NRC and the agreement states have the expertise to 17 actually get involved and protective of public health and safety without 18 creating a nightmare of regulations, and I think that's important.
19 That completes the introduction to my talk.
20 [Laughter.]
21 DR. DIAZ: Now I'm going to have some fun. Let's see. I 22 know where I have these things, but the bottom line is if you really 23 want to know what's happening in White Flint City, right? Well, we're 24 pleased to have two more commissioners. I think it's very important for 25 the process of the NRC to have Commissioner Dicus and Commissioner Merryfield to now be sworn in and be able to enter this plethora of
28 1 multiple issues that the Commission deals with. I think it's 2 fundamental that this fine body have diversified opinions, have 3 different sometime interests, but converge what the issues are and what 4 the solutions of them are.
5 What is happening in White Flint City? The main thing that 6 is happening is an awareness that there has to be a shift of the 7 regulatory burden from the bodies that regulate to the users because 8 that's where safety is. Safety is not in what rules or regulations we 9 do, but in how they are used.
10 And we are embarking on an adventure in making the burden 11 heavier on those who use it -- the regulatory burden itself. Having 12 them more actively involved in how they regulate their things within a 13 framework, what I call the safety envelope that is being defined so that 14 licensees and users know where they are and know what flexibility they 15 have and know when there is no flexibility so they can actually use 16 radiation or nuclear energy in the very best way possible.
17 Now this shift of regulatory burden has one major condition 18 to it which denotes also a change in the way we're thinking, and it's 19 very simple. Shift the regulatory burden, and no unnecessary costs.
20 Necessary costs, yes. Unnecessary costs, no.
21 Because costs are not paid by companies. Costs are paid by 22 people. And as you know, in this world right now, everybody is in cost 23 cutting, including the people. I mean, everybody thinks that government 24 is in cost cutting and companies are in cost cutting. But the people 25 that really need to benefit from all of those things are the people of this country.
29 1 And to do that, it requires a change in thinking. It 2 requires the fact that we know that we cannot do the operations for the 3 reactor operator or for the technician in a nuclear medical lab or 4 industrial lab. We can set the safety network, and we should. And we 5 should have it clearly identified, and we should have all of the things 6 that we consider indispensable in these processes which is transparency, 7 consistency, accountability, and, last but not least, due process of law 8 because this is a democracy. This is not a dictatorship, and people 9 have to have a chance to even argue when they are being "questioned 10 about their performance" or they're threatened to be fined. Okay.
11 There has to be due process of law.
12 This is not going to weaken regulation. It's going to 13 strengthen regulation because it's going to make it clear, it's going to 14 make it visible, it's going to make it accountable, and the benefits are 15 going to be at the end user where it will benefit the people directly.
16 And you're such an important part of this process. Now this 17 process is more advanced in the nuclear power plants which were more in 18 need of having, you know, the entire framework changed. But it is 19 coming at you like a train in a good march, not too accelerated, not too 20 slow. But it's coming at you because the benefits of being risk 21 informed, the benefits of putting the word in what it is, the benefits 22 of eliminating unnecessary burden, those are all parts of the parameters 23 and the equations that you deal with all the time.
24 And it is important to realize that this is not -- this is 25 not a phenomena that just happened out of the blue. It did not really, you know, originate because the Congress asked the NRC to see how
30 1 they're going to sustain their budget, and we're going to cut you 20 2 percent. I call that part of the natural process.
3 The bottom line of what has happened is that we have learned 4 a lot more the last few years about how we do things, and how we can do 5 them better. And this is a national process.
6 For many years, we even dare not to question what was 7 happening. Now it is not only a standard to question, but we are even 8 now going to the extreme of trying to answer the questions and taking 9 some actions about it because now it can be done. Now we know much 10 better. Not that we have all of the answers, not that we're going to 11 provide the perfect solution. But we are poised to come up with major 12 changes that will allow the regulation of nuclear materials and nuclear 13 energy in a much better way.
14 It happened by the way that this is possible because the 15 practicality of being no events to work with. So if you think as 16 something that enables processes to go forward, you might think that in 17 this country on the health and safety issue no event is actually 18 something that enables you to do things better.
19 Now it should be the other way around. You have an event, 20 and you think that you will learn from it. And, of course, there's an 21 event, we have this lessons learned approaches. We have what, 17,000 22 lessons learned from TMI of which 16,000 were wrong.
23 [Laughter.]
24 DR. DIAZ: Every time, you know, there is something, we've 25 got these lessons learned. The first thing that you have to learn is that lessons learned are not perfect, okay. They're good. But the best
31 1 thing to do is to learn through the processes that are not acute because 2 it allows you to pause, to reflect, to do things timely, to do things 3 economically.
4 An enabler of a change in the regulatory paradigm is no 5 events. If there were events in nuclear power plants, we wouldn't even 6 dare to be talking. We would be in Congress, you know, trying to say 7 there's a few of them that can work at half power, okay. Or, you know, 8 there's no doubt about it -- in the same way in your area, events 9 minimalization is an enabler. It will allow us to bring the best of the 10 technology to bear down and make the regulation of radioactive materials 11 better, simpler, more straightforward. It will give you more 12 accountability.
13 But if there are events, all bets are off. So a focus --
14 let's try to be for a few years as event free as possible. That is 15 indispensable.
16 The second thing that has happened that makes this natural 17 process possible is that we all learned and probably learned the hard 18 way what to do and what not to do. And that process that has been going 19 for many years has now allowed licensees and you to come and say, hey, I 20 know better. This that you're proposing, NRC, of this way, this is not 21 right. You are standing up behind know-how and be able to come and 22 manifest it and insist that things have to be done a different way.
23 The same thing with the nuclear power industry. They 24 realize now that they have a know-how base in which to go force and say 25 there's a better way of doing things. And, of course, there is that American incentive of competition, cost deregulation which is going to
32 1 come not only to nuclear power plants. Do you think you're seeing 2 changes in the way that medicine uses its tools and resources and the 3 way that the entire country is going with different structures of HMOs 4 or whatever it is? It is fundamental to the way this country works to 5 get regulations that are simpler, better, that cost the people less. And 6 that is at the bottom line.
7 We are not going to save money for companies. We are going 8 to have uncompromising safety use of our materials or other power 9 plants, but we're going to try to do it so that people pay less, and 10 that is the good American way. There is nothing wrong with cutting 11 costs and being competitive and having the market place dictate the way 12 things are.
13 However, we pose a net over that. The safety envelope that 14 we are getting better and better at defining. And it is in the 15 definition of the safety envelope where there is this continual dialogue 16 or continual interchanges in which you are a fundamental part of it.
17 You need to be involved with us as these processes get changed.
18 I think the willingness to stand up and be counted is an 19 indispensable part of this process. Please feel that you are not only 20 welcome, that you have the responsibility to stand up and be counted.
21 If you don't like what we're doing, scream. Okay, scream.
22 I'm sure the staff will pay attention. But this Commission 23 over and over is saying go to the right channels. But if you don't get 24 what you want, you come to the Commission. This Commission is engaged 25 in resolving issues. I'm very proud to be part of this Commission because I know that every single one of them is engaged in resolving
33 1 things. We might not agree all the time. You might read it in the 2 papers, okay. And people say what a terrible thing. I say what a 3 wonderful thing that we can disagree. What a wonderful thing that in 4 this country it is possible to disagree at that level and still be able 5 to work together.
6 I think you need to realize that risk information is here to 7 stay. However, I find there is a problem with the use of the term 8 because we talk about risk informed regulation, and that is just maybe 9 one fifth or one third of the real plan.
10 Because what has to happen is that we have to have risk 11 informed operations. It is not that the regulation is there, but that 12 the users are capable, understand, function within this envelope of 13 safety that is now risk informed. And this is why everybody needs to 14 learn a little bit about what risk information is and where we stand for 15 it.
16 Because the beauty might be in the eyes of the beholder, but 17 safety is in the hands of the user. So we need to progress from risk 18 informed regulation to risk informed operation. We need to make sure 19 that you know and we know well where the safety envelope lies. And the 20 fact that this envelope could change shape, but that the bottom line 21 which I will call the area under the curve which is this uncompromising 22 safety that we have to have, okay, will be maintained. It might not be 23 in the same manner, but I can assure you it will be better.
24 I am digressing now, but people keep coming and saying but 25 the uncertainties about PRA or, you know, so who says that the deterministic models have better accuracy? Whoever dreamed about that?
34 1 I mean, I worked with some deterministic models for many years that were 2 so wrong, okay, that were amazing. We keep making experiments, and then 3 we keep trying to fit the experiments to the theory. And the 4 experiments were right, and the theory was wrong.
5 There is no difference. There is just different 6 uncertainties. And the uncertainties in some are almost larger than in 7 the models that we now try to use through PRA. They're different 8 uncertainties. But in many ways, we're now getting the high end 9 approach to get a handle of what is important, what is the risk. And 10 that will permeate to your area very, very simple.
11 The issue of PRA is not an issue of nuclear power plants 12 only. It's an issue for everybody, and it's going to come 13 systematically at you, and I think it's going to be a very, very 14 beneficial thing.
15 I got to comment in here -- I think I'm running out of time.
16 MR. FLETCHER: Just about.
17 DR. DIAZ: Just about? Okay. Let me just say something.
18 There are issues that are larger than you are, then the NRC is, that are 19 going to go to the Congress of the United States. The decomissioning 20 rule, the site termination and the controversy with EPA is not going to 21 die away. Neither is the now controversy on the standards for Yucca 22 Mountain where we are ready to come and do the responsible thing and put 23 out what we believe it should be, and EPA might have something 24 different.
25 We might be challenged, and we're challenging EPA on the federal guidelines. They might come and challenge us on clearance of
35 1 materials. These are things that are very important to the states of 2 this country. And you need to decide what are your priorities as you 3 work this coming year because the Congress of the United States need to 4 hear from you whichever side you're on. I think you need to participate 5 because this needs to be resolved.
6 This issue of dual regulation is too old, is 25 years old.
7 It had a wrong start because EPA preceded NRC by four years. In 1970, 8 they got established. There was no independent agency to oversee what 9 the AEC was doing. They were given this national responsibility. When 10 NRC was born in 1974, nobody knew what to do about it. The only thing 11 that ties these two agencies together is a 1974 OMB Memo. It's two 12 paragraphs, and that's it. And that is absolutely crazy.
13 We have the responsibility to let the Congress know that 14 this issue needs to be resolved, that we have in the NRC expertise and 15 the states have expertise that can come to bear in these issues and 16 avoid unnecessary cost to the people of this country.
17 We also tried this past year and we are now trying harder to 18 get funds appropriated from the Congress of the United States apart from 19 the fees. And a significant part of that is to the agreement states to 20 make sure you guys have the resources to discharge your 21 responsibilities, and I am very much in favor of that.
22 In fact, I assure you that half of my visits to Congress in 23 the next six months, every time we will touch on that issue. We need to 24 have this funding. We need to be able to separate it from the fee base.
25 The states need to have adequate resources to do their work, and that's
36 1 it. And you guys need to fight for it. When everything else fails, 2 talk to your Congressman. Did I say that?
3 [Laughter.]
4 DR. DIAZ: Okay. Revelation -- it's being considered by 5 many people in this country as a occupation of least importance. I 6 disagree. I think regulation is a vital component of this country that 7 was created with the specific purpose of either protecting health and 8 safety or protecting the way things are doing in any way, but ensuring 9 that the quality of the life of the people of this country is the 10 standard. It is -- the orchestra director is the quality of life of the 11 people of this country, not anybody else.
12 Therefore, regulation is going to be turned into something 13 different. Three weeks ago, I went to the National Academy of Sciences 14 and suggested a proposal, and the National Academy Sciences is now 15 acting on it that regulation become a science and technology? Why not?
16 We have science in phytokinetics, whatever that means and in everything 17 else you can think of. And yet, this very critical component of our 18 society which becomes the interface, like I said before, between the 19 producer and the people is being treated in like an art, like something 20 that we do and then we do something better. It doesn't have to be. It 21 can be better. But to do that requires that everybody gets involved.
22 Everybody puts up their intellect to raise the level of what we call 23 regulation to the point that it's more beneficial.
24 I don't think you have a choice. There is an old cliche 25 that says lead, follow or get out of the way. You don't have that luxury. You have to lead. Thank you so much.
37 1 [Laughter.]
2 MR. FLETCHER: Thank you very much for that very informative 3 and inspiring talk. And I have just one question. You mentioned on 4 many occasions that we're awaiting Congressional action, and we need to 5 make sure our Congress is informed.
6 But I know that some actions have been directed by Congress, 7 and one of them that the agreement states are really concerned about is 8 the directive that the NRC and the EPA work together to resolve some of 9 the radiation issues. Now this has been directed by Congress. Are 10 there active negotiations ongoing that will help alleviate some of these 11 problems while we wait for other decisions?
12 DR. DIAZ: There are always active negotiations ongoing.
13 [Laughter.]
14 DR. DIAZ: Now we think they are one-sided. I do not 15 believe there is in the short term a resolution between EPA and NRC on 16 the issues of site remediation. I do not believe that we are converging 17 on the issues of Yucca Mountain. I might be wrong on that, but I don't 18 see it happening.
19 So negotiations, yes, we will continue to interact, discuss, 20 negotiate. We are too far apart. And I believe that here is where the 21 concept of regulating with science and technology comes to play. We 22 believe we have made a very good effort to put our regulations with the 23 best science and technology possible, and we don't believe that EPA has.
24 And in many times in the past, what happened was that the 25 NRC caved in and the DOE caved in because -- anybody from EPA in here?
[Laughter.]
38 1 DR. DIAZ: Good, good. EPA's a big bully.
2 [Laughter.]
3 DR. DIAZ: Good. I wouldn't have said it if there were not 4 somebody here, by the way. I would have misinterpreted it. You can 5 quote me. He said it's a big bully. And this protection of the 6 environment and the people, it plays very well. We are protective of 7 the people and protective of the environment, and we think that our 8 regulations do that.
9 I don't see any way but Congressional decision on this 10 issue.
11 MR. FLETCHER: Thank you very much.
12 DR. DIAZ: Sure. I'd be happy to -- I know you were late.
13 MR. FLETCHER: One or two questions if anyone has some very 14 pressing questions. I think you dazzled them. There's one.
15 SPEAKER: One of the issues that --
16 MR. FLETCHER: State your name, please. He can't see you.
17 SPEAKER: That's the reason I have it facing this way.
18 [Laughter.]
19 SPEAKER: I'm Ed Bailey from the State of California. One 20 thing that I mentioned to him is whether or not NRC will attempt to 21 create a fund to clean up old sites similar to what EPA has for 22 Superfund.
23 And since we have over 100 terminated AEC/NRC licenses that 24 may need the sites looked at, what are the plans for handling these, and 25 will there be some sort of Superfund-type arrangements set up.
39 1 DR. DIAZ: Yeah, I don't think we are attempting to create a 2 fund to clean up licenses. However, we are looking at the issue even in 3 a case-by-case basis and trying to relieve the burden from the states.
4 I do believe that if there were a case where there were 5 significant costs, then you would have us on your side to say to 6 Congress this needs to be cleaned up and further funds need to be used, 7 okay.
8 By the way, I'm going to be around quite a bit of the time.
9 I do have to run out, but I'll be back later this morning at lunchtime.
10 I'll be at the reception this evening. I'll be here tomorrow morning.
11 And one of the reasons I come to this meeting is not to 12 listen to myself or talk. Actually, I come here to interact with you.
13 And I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss whatever you want to.
14 And so come over to where I am, and let's go at it. Thank you again.
15 [Applause.]
16 MR. FLETCHER: It's now time for our break. As Diane has 17 said, we should be very pleased with our break area. So please be back 18 in your seats by 10:15.
19 [Recess.]
20 MR. FLETCHER: I would like to ask all of those at the --
21 all agreement states at the table, when you want to ask a question just 22 in case I might miss you, how about turning your tents on the edge so 23 that I can see you. And once the question has been recognized, please 24 put them back down.
25 The second thing I would like to do at this point is to ask you at least for these early sessions to state your name because there
40 1 are 35 positions, and from this corner, it's difficult for the 2 transcriber to know exactly who's asking the question.
3 You know, there's an old saying that I know you've heard.
4 We used to use it in the military a lot that if it's not broke, don't 5 fix it. And when I reviewed last year's meeting, I noticed that there 6 were many things in it that just weren't broke. So why fix it.
7 One of the things -- individuals who participated in that 8 meeting did a fantastic job, and I felt as though he deserved an encore.
9 And though I'd prepared a long introduction of Mr. Frances X. Cameron, I 10 think it would be a whole lot easier for me to just tell here's Chip.
11 [Laughter.]
12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Roland, and it's really a 13 pleasure for me to be with this group again to facilitate the meeting 14 because this is a great group of people. And I'm pleased to be here.
15 And my role generally is to just help you have a more effective, more 16 productive meeting, and specifically that means keeping the meeting on 17 schedule. That's one of the areas where I did not do such a great job 18 in Los Angeles. I think we're still -- the meeting in Los Angeles is 19 still going on probably.
20 [Laughter.]
21 MR. CAMERON: Is Carol Marcus here? But to also keep the 22 discussion focused and relevant, to clear up any ambiguities that might 23 be in any of the presentations or any of the discussions so that 24 everybody understands what we're talking about, and to also try to help 25 you develop recommendations in particular areas or action items for the future and who's responsible for carrying out those action items.
41 1 The ground rules are pretty simple for the next couple of 2 days and ones that you're familiar with. You have these great name 3 tents in front of you. And if you want to talk, just stand your name 4 tent on end like this, and this will help us to not only get a real 5 clean transcript, it will help John over there who's transcribing this.
6 But it will also relieve the pressure on you to keep raising your hand 7 constantly or keeping it up or whatever.
8 And as Roland said, I think that for the first few times, 9 maybe state your name. But one of the ideas behind having you with the 10 name tents in your seats is so that John knows where you are. He knows 11 who is at that seat. So that I think that after this morning, maybe you 12 can just -- if you keep the same seats, and I know that someone is going 13 to slip this in on us here. Just put your name tent up, and I'll 14 recognize you and we'll get you on the transcript.
15 We do -- there may be times when we want to follow a 16 particular thread of discussion. So I won't just go and take the name 17 tents as they were put up in sequence. If we have topics that come up 18 that we want to address later on in the program -- in other words, they 19 don't fit in the area we're in, we'll put those in the paddock and save 20 them until later on.
21 We do have a tight schedule, and I know that we want to hear 22 everybody talk. So in particular areas, if we have to move on, we'll 23 also note that in the paddock over there, and we'll come back at the end 24 of the day or beginning of the next day and try to address those issues.
25 And in terms of requests, I would just say participate.
There's a lot of good ideas that people have that we hear in the
42 1 discussions at dinner and on the breaks. And don't be bashful. Let's 2 put some of those ideas on the table and, to sort of take a line from 3 Commissioner Diaz's presentation, stand out and point out where the NRC 4 has to make some adjustments. Be open and be candid.
5 And I don't know if any of you noticed, but the Thomas 6 Institute of Hypnosis is also meeting here.
7 [Laughter.]
8 MR. CAMERON: So if we need to recalibrate any of the NRC 9 staff, we can take them over there.
10 [Laughter.]
11 MR. CAMERON: And I guess with that, the only reason I'm out 12 here now trying to not fall over a wire is we don't have perhaps as many 13 mikes as we should. But the audio people have gotten us some additional 14 mikes which will make it easier. But we really do need to speak in the 15 mike for purposes of the transcript.
16 So what I'm going to do is I've got a long cord on this, and 17 I'd like each of you at least let's go around and introduce ourselves 18 and where we're from, and I'll just pass this down. And I'm going to 19 start with Cheryl, all right.
20 MS. ROGERS: Cheryl Rogers, Nebraska, and I'm currently over 21 the rad materials and low level waste program.
22 MS. RODGERS: Alice Rodgers, Texas Natural Resource 23 Conservation Commission with jurisdiction over low level radioactive 24 waste disposal.
25 MR. WHATLEY: I'm Kirk Whatley, State of Alabama.
MR. WANGLER: Ken Wangler from North Dakota.
43 1 MR. SINCLAIR: Bill Sinclair with the Utah Department of 2 Environmental Quality.
3 MR. RATLIFFE: Richard Ratliffe, Texas Department of Health.
4 MS. TEFFT: Diane Tefft, New Hampshire Department of Health 5 and Human Services.
6 MR. HALLISEY: Bob Hallisey, the Massachusetts Radiation and 7 CRCPD Program, the newest agreement state.
8 [Applause.]
9 MR. BOSCHULT: Larry Boschult from the Nevada Health 10 Division.
11 MR. SNELLING: I'm David Snelling from the State of 12 Arkansas.
13 MR. O'KELLY: Pierce O'Kelly, Radiological Health in South 14 Carolina.
15 MR. COOPER: Vic Cooper from Kansas.
16 MR. GOFF: Bob Goff, State of Mississippi.
17 MR. NANNEY: I'm Eddie Nanney, the Tennessee Division of 18 Radiological Health.
19 MR. JACOBI: Jake Jacobi from Colorado.
20 MR. WASCOM: Ronnie Wascom from Louisiana.
21 MR. STEPHENS: Mike Stephens from Florida.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Mike, let's go over to Jay and 23 then down this way.
24 MR. HYLAND: Jay Hyland, State of Maine, new program manager 25 for the Radiation CRCPD Program and what used to be the newest agreement state until we were upstaged by Mr. Hallisey.
44 1 MR. BRODERICK: Mike Broderick from the Oklahoma Department 2 of Environmental Quality, hopefully the next agreement state, although 3 Roger may have something to say about that.
4 MR. KLINGER: My name is Joe Klinger with the State of 5 Illinois. Some people say Illinois, but it's really Illinois.
6 MR. SUPPES: Roger Suppes, Ohio, the next agreement state.
7 MR. FLETCHER: Roland Fletcher, State of Maryland, and they 8 do remind me that I'm with the State of Maryland, not just the OAS.
9 MR. GAVITT: Steve Gavitt, New York State Department of 10 Health.
11 MR. LISHAN: Gene Lishan, New York City Department of 12 Health.
13 MS. STOECKEL: Marie Stoeckel, Rhode Island.
14 MR. HILL: Tom Hill, Georgia.
15 MR. GODWIN: Aubrey Godwin, Arizona Radiation Regulatory 16 Agency.
17 MR. JEFFS: Vicky Jeffs, Kentucky, the oldest agreement 18 state -- the most mature agreement state.
19 MR. AUBREY: I'm Virgil Aubrey with the Bureau of Land and 20 Waste Management of South Carolina, Radioactive Waste Management 21 Division.
22 MR. LEVIN: Stuart Levin, Pennsylvania Department of 23 Environmental Protection.
24 MR. BAILEY: Ed Bailey from the disagreement State of 25 California.
MR. RAZEE: Terry Razee, State of Washington.
45 1 MR. PARIS: Ray Paris of Oregon.
2 MR. PADGETT: Aaron Padgett, North Carolina.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay, great, and thank you all.
4 Unfortunately, we can't introduce everybody out there. But I think we 5 have people from also other state representatives, NRC representatives.
6 Some poor person from the EPA is out there. And we will on Saturday 7 morning session on Part 35 be joined by a number of people from the 8 medical community, and we will definitely go out to the audience for 9 comments.
10 And to the extent that we can do that, we will do that today 11 at the end of the session. And before we get started with our first 12 presentation, I see that Roland has a comment. So go ahead.
13 MR. FLETCHER: I just want to ask any representatives from 14 states that have applied for agreement state status that are in the 15 audience, would you please introduce yourselves.
16 MR. CAMERON: Judith, why not -- Judith, go to the mike if 17 you can. That will be helpful.
18 MS. BALL: I'm Judith Ball. I'm from the Radiation Program 19 in Minnesota, and I hope in a couple of years we will be sitting at the 20 table with you.
21 MR. CAMERON: Terrific. We'll look forward to that.
22 Anybody else out here?
23 [No response.]
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Just one program note for this morning.
25 At 11:40 today on your agenda, we were supposed to hear industrial radiography certification from Ruth McBurney of Texas. We're going to
46 1 have Hampton Newsome and Virgil Autry -- Aubrey. Sorry, Aubrey.
2 Virgil, do you want to do this? I guess -- okay, Virgil is going to do 3 this. All right. I'm sorry about that.
4 Aubrey and Hampton are going to do the 9:50 presentation on 5 Friday at that slot. The status of SDMP Unilateral Transfer, et cetera, 6 et cetera.
7 Okay, I think our first presentation is going to be a real 8 interesting one and a real positive one for everybody for the future.
9 And Keith Dinger who's president of the Health Physics Society is going 10 to talk about Health Physics Society agreement state issues.
11 And Keith, you can use the podium or come up, whatever 12 you're more comfortable.
13 MR. DINGER: Thank you, Chip. How does this sound, 14 everybody? I want to start out by answering the question you had as to 15 why am I here. And I'll tell you that the reason I'm here is because I 16 asked if I could come, and I want to thank Roland for responding to my 17 invitation and my good friend and insider, Diane, making it possible for 18 me to come and address you this morning.
19 Now why did I ask to come and talk to the Organization of 20 Agreement States? The Health Physics Society actually about six years 21 ago decided that the state of our profession was changing, and the needs 22 of our members was changing to where the Society had to become mucy more 23 extroverted in its efforts and its involvement in our science. That is, 24 the science of radiation safety.
25 And so we did start about six years ago throwing money at the issue, went through a number of consultants to help us become
47 1 experts in public affairs. We learned our lessons. Our lessons learned 2 were that you don't need to throw money at it. You just have to have a 3 little more thoughtful approach.
4 And so over the last two years really we have reorganized 5 the Society's public affairs program and our involvement in our 6 profession of radiation safety out in the public.
7 Well, what that has led us to do is to become more involved 8 at the legislative and regulatory agencies. Now, last year Otto Robbey 9 was really our media past president was the one that really got us on 10 track with our new program, and our program really is focused in two 11 areas. One is that we have hired a public affairs firm -- not a lobby 12 firm, but a public affairs firm to introduce us to Congress.
13 And last year, that public affairs firm was very effective 14 in getting Otto Robbey into Congress and to be involved in a number of 15 the radiation safety issues that Congress was dealing with last year and 16 which are certainly carrying over into next year.
17 You heard Commissioner Diaz this morning say that Congress 18 has a number of issues on its docket that directly relate to our job of 19 protecting the public and the environment from radiation. And we intend 20 to be involved in those issues.
21 The second part of our reformed public affairs approach, 22 though, is to also have a dialogue and involvement with the regulatory 23 agencies. And to do that, we have established a new position in the 24 Society of a regulatory agency liaison, and that's Dr. Bill Mills. Many 25 of you probably know Billie. He served in just about every regulatory agency that Washington, D.C. has at some point or another, and for that
48 1 reason he's well known, okay, and that was the main reason that we asked 2 Billie to be our liaison.
3 A little bit of the liaison with the regulatory agencies 4 occurred last year. I just really kind of focused on Congress. But in 5 my president elect year, as I started looking ahead to this year when 6 I'm president, I looked at the programs that I was interested in doing.
7 It struck me that I really have a much more personal interest in the 8 regulatory agency end of the business.
9 And it might be because I spent 26 years in a rather 10 forceful closed regulatory environment in the Navy Nuclear Propulsion 11 Program. And I came to the conclusion that for the majority of our 12 members, the day-to-day aggravations or their joy comes from not what 13 the legislators do. It's not what the laws say. But it's rather how 14 the regulatory bodies take those laws and implement them.
15 And so I think that there is a much more benefit for the 16 Society to be involved in the regulatory issues and regulatory agencies 17 than it is with the legislators, if you will. However, the legislators 18 are important. We are certainly continuing and trying to expand our 19 involvement there.
20 But my agenda for this year was to expand the Society's 21 communications involvement with the regulatory bodies. And when I got 22 looking at what we had done last year, Otto had visited with at that 23 time the three commissioners -- had visited with them once, and visited 24 with the EPA, Larry Weinstock, a couple times. But that was pretty much 25 the extent of our regulatory agency involvement.
49 1 In looking at the agencies we had gone to, it struck me that 2 there was really a very large body that was missing on those lists of 3 agencies that we wanted to go visit, and that was the Agreement States.
4 It's clear that the states represent probably the largest 5 regulatory agency for the largest number of regulated materials that 6 we're interested in working on, okay. And so, therefore, it's that 7 reason that I asked if I could come and speak with you this morning.
8 I also approached the Conference Radiation Control program 9 directors, and Steve Collins and his board was kind enough to allow me 10 to come meet with him two weeks ago in Washington. And so, for Steve 11 and Bob and those that were at -- Paul and some of those that were at 12 the CRCPD Board, I apologize for any redundancy. But the message is 13 much the same.
14 But it is the agreement states that I really want to share 15 with you some comments and some thoughts on the Health Physics Society's 16 involvement in your business because you're involved in our business.
17 What I'd like to cover, then, and I'd like to do it very 18 quickly, I asked if I could have 15 minutes to lay out some issues on 19 the table, and I hope there would be about 15 minutes to get the 20 feedback because I truly came here to have your questions and to have 21 your feedback on a couple of the issues that I'm going to bring before 22 you.
23 What I want to do is to very quickly give you where I see 24 the state of our profession, and that profession is the profession of 25 radiation safety. Where I see that at these days, where our members are, and where the profession is heading over the next decade or so.
50 1 Then I'd like to share with you a few of the initiatives 2 that the Society is taking to address some of the issues that that state 3 of the profession message brings up.
4 First of all, the state of the profession, then. What we 5 are finding in our Society, in our membership and in our business is 6 that the profession of radiation safety is becoming much more 7 operationally oriented. Marv Wolman used to say we've answered our 8 questions, you know, that were there in 1954 when it was an exciting new 9 science to have all kinds of opportunity for research and some brand new 10 research to take on and issues to answer.
11 A lot of those questions are answered, and we are now in the 12 process and in the business of applying what we've learned since 1954 13 when we started the Health Physics Societ if you take that as the start 14 of the institutionalization of radiation safety, then what we're finding 15 is that we have to now apply all that knowledge that we gained.
16 And it's in the implementation that we are finding our 17 members spending their livelihoods. We also are seeing that with the 18 reorganization of America that we are moving in radiation safety towards 19 a generalization away from a specialization that we really have enjoyed 20 over the last 40 years, a specialization in our professionals and our 21 members being specialized in the areas devoted to radiation safety.
22 However, with reorganization, you can't just be a specialist 23 any more. You have to be a generalist. We're seeing much of our 24 business, much of your regulated business being done by general safety 25 personnel. You're finding the industrial hygienist getting radiation safety as the collateral duty these days. You're finding much of the
51 1 radiation safety business being done by safety engineers and 2 environmental engineers.
3 The reality is that we're not going to stop that or go away 4 from it. And so it's the challenge of the Society who is concerned with 5 that specialization in radiation safety to learn how to respond to where 6 the profession is going, and that's what we're trying to look at and do.
7 The Society has a concern that with the more generalization 8 in safety, we are worried about the quality of the professional 9 oversight of radiation safety as it gets mired into all these safety 10 programs. And so it is the maintenance of this professional excellence 11 that we are very interested in addressing and trying to be a part of 12 making sure that the groundwork that we've laid over these last 40 years 13 doesn't go away because of some reorganization of jobs and professions.
14 Those of you that are not in the Society or didn't have an 15 opportunity to attend chapter meetings last year when I went around and 16 visited our chapters, my message or at least the nature of my message 17 was to bring to the membership a number of issues that I wanted to know 18 how our members felt so that I could then this year hope to work on 19 initiatives that they thought were in the right place.
20 And in order to do that, what I did was I took a survey.
21 And so I'd throw out assertions and ask them to vote on the assertions.
22 And I also threw out some proposed plans and asked them to vote on the 23 proposed plans.
24 One of the survey questions that I had was this. My 25 assertion was that the Health Physics Society has an obligation to
52 1 provide support to radiation and radioactive material users to assist 2 them in maintaining safety and control of their sources.
3 Now 95 percent of the attendees at the meetings agreed that 4 that is a Society obligation to be involved in helping those people that 5 have their hands on the sources to do it correctly and do it 6 professionally. That 95 percent rating, by the way, was the highest 7 rating of any assertion that I'd made. So I took that as a uninamous 8 vote.
9 How is it that the Society, then, might be able to help meet 10 this obligation? That is, to help people do their job professionally in 11 the protection of the people and the environment from radiation. I 12 offer that there's three broad categories that the Society currently in 13 its infrastructure has and is important to you as a regulator, and I'm 14 going to get to the question of why is this important to me sitting here 15 this morning.
16 The Society primarily -- I think the major advantage that it 17 has or the major thing that it has to offer to our profession is the 18 ability to network. Our profession is just so complicated. There are 19 so many individual areas that no one can be an expert in all of it.
20 There are those that will say they are, but there's no one that could be 21 an expert in all areas of radiation safety and health physics.
22 And so it becomes very important that we have a networking 23 ability to go find the right answer from the right person when a problem 24 comes up that we aren't the specialist in addressing.
25 The Society, I offer to you, is the premiere vehicle for our profession for radiation safety professionals to network and find out
53 1 what others are doing and get in there and help. That's exactly why 2 you're here this weekend is to network with your peers on issues related 3 to agreement state issues.
4 Well, I offer that this important networking that you're 5 doing needs to be done on a daily basis throughout all those people that 6 have responsibilities for radiation safety. And I offer that the 7 Society right now is the best general networking opportunity that there 8 is for all of these radiation safety people.
9 We as a Society offer, I think, some of the best training 10 opportunities for just training people in radiation safety. And we are, 11 as I already alluded to, becoming much more involved and, therefore, 12 giving our members a voice in the legislative and regulatory issues 13 which affect radiation safety.
14 So for those reasons, I offer to you that the Society has an 15 important function to play in radiation safety over the next decade or 16 so. Well, let me share with you some initiatives that we are taking as 17 a Society to help meet this obligation, helping to see that those that 18 are charged with the protection of people and the environment are able 19 to do it to the best of their ability.
20 And a number of the initiatives revolve around membership.
21 The reason that we are doing a number of membership initiatives -- I 22 want to start out this message with this statement, and I'm going to end 23 with this statement -- does not have anything to do with the need to 24 have more people or more dues collected. We are not interested in 25 building membership for the sake of membership.
54 1 The reason there are, however, a number of initiatives being 2 driven in the membership area is because we see the only way to offer 3 these benefits that the Society has to let them do their job better is 4 to have them at the trough and able to drink out of the water that we 5 can put in the trough for them.
6 And so we are working to become more inclusive in our 7 Society membership for the sole purpose of including all of those that 8 can benefits from the products that we have to offer. And so in an 9 attempt to become more inclusive, we have started a number of 10 initiatives.
11 We first of all have changed our membership qualifications 12 in a number of areas. We have recognized, for example, NRRPT, National 13 Registry of Radiological Protection Technologists. Registration with 14 the NRRPT is being a de facto qualification as a planary member in the 15 Health Physics Society.
16 We have started a new classification of member. It's called 17 a section member. A section member classification was developed and 18 created solely for the purpose of trying to make it more attractive to 19 include those that have radiation safety responsibilities but don't 20 think they're a health physicist. They don't do big old research, and 21 so that they don't have to belong to the Health Physics Society.
22 And so we're setting up this classification that is geared 23 to having members be able to join one of our technical sections. It is 24 a member classification of the Society, but it is a member of a 25 technical section. And in that regard, then they would only really be really networking with and involved in those that have the same
55 1 technical focus in the areas that they're working in. And this is all 2 with the intent that section membership is cheaper, and that it's less 3 -- dues are smaller than are the full dues of planary or associate 4 member.
5 Right now, the one section that has adopted the section 6 member is our newly formed Radiation Safety Operations Technical 7 Section, RSO Section. We have started a recruiting effort for RSOs --
8 radiation safety officers. We have two weeks ago sent out 17,000 9 brochures to RSOs that appear on state and NRC license material --
10 licensees.
11 Now unfortunately we weren't able to pull out the current 12 members off that list. And so out of the 17,000, you know, about 3,000 13 or 4,000 are members already of the Society. But to the rest of them, 14 the message is that we have a product that we think will help them do 15 their job better, and we are waiting to see how that recruiting effort 16 comes out.
17 One of the other big initiatives that we're doing is 18 expanding our liaison effort. We recognize that with this 19 generalization we are finding, for example, industrial hygienists, 20 safety engineers, environmental engineers doing radiation safety.
21 They're doing our profession.
22 And so what we need to do is to get them involved in the 23 professional society that supports that function. And so we have 24 expanded our liaison functions. I have appointed a special liaison to 25 industrial hygiene committee community. Jessie Conoyer from Battelle is spending almost his full time at his wife's dismay in getting the Health
56 1 Physics Society's industrial hygiene community talking better, and we're 2 doing some liaison. Jessie's already gone to the ACGIH-TLV Physical 3 Agent Committee and helped with the rewrite of their TLVPA document on 4 ionize and radiation.
5 So these liaison efforts are expanding. Now I want to end 6 up by saying what I started with, and that is we're not interested in 7 recruiting for recruiting's sake. In fact, I'll share with you that the 8 section member classification, it turns out that what we're charging for 9 dues is all the dues are directly accountable to products that are given 10 to the members, and none of it -- five bucks out of the dues from the 11 section members goes towards the support of the organization and its 12 overhead function.
13 So the planary and associate members, if you will, are 14 underwriting section membership to help bring them in. And so I'm not 15 here as a telemarketer to try to get you to sign up to something 16 different and new. But I am here to share with you that the Society 17 sees the need to get -- be inclusive of those that are doing the 18 business.
19 So what's that mean to you as the regulators at agreement 20 states? Why have I bored you with all of this? As a regulator, I know 21 that you want to have your licensees or those that you regulate do their 22 job the best they can. Now I'm going to make a contention and not 23 expand upon it, but I'm going to make a contention that membership in 24 the Health Physics Society or in a professional organization -- but I 25 offer the Health Physics Society as the organization related to this issue, radiation society -- that membership in a professional
57 1 organization like the Health Physics Society is a demonstration of 2 professionalism above those who do not belong to professional societies.
3 And I offer that those that belong to a professional society like the 4 Health Physics Society is able to tap and benefit from that membership 5 so that they can do their job better. And you as a regulator want 6 people to do their jobs better.
7 And I'm offering to you that it is therefore in your 8 interest to look for your licensees who in fact are professionally 9 involved in this issue of radiation safety and not just treatment as a 10 collateral duty that it's a ping on their resume.
11 So what do you mean? What can you do about it? Well, as a 12 regulator, you have responsibility of going in and judging the 13 competence of your licensee on a regular inspection basis. Now I'm not 14 dumb enough to think that you're going to go write a regulation that 15 says to be an industrial radiographer, you have to belong to the Health 16 Physics Society. I do offer this, though.
17 When you go evaluate licensees and you look at programs, you 18 have your criteria and checklist. But as we are more and more moving to 19 the performance-based way of regulating, you have to develop a gut feel 20 as to whether that licensee is good. You walk in with, yeah, this 21 basically is sound. Now let's get down to the nitty gritty. I offer to 22 you that some of those things that help build that gut feeling, one of 23 those things could be are these people professionally involved and 24 interested in the business of safety.
25 And so I would offer that you look and see whether radiation safety officers and your licensees are in fact involved in professional
58 1 stuff like the Health Physics Society. There's another part of this 2 membership issue, and that's your own involvement in the Health Physics 3 Society.
4 We did a balance of the CRCPD membership rules against the 5 Health Physics membership, and we found that 35 percent of CRCPD members 6 were members of the Society, leaving, of course, 65 percent that were 7 not members. That's not as good as the sitting commissioners. Forty 8 percent of the sitting commissioners are members of the Health Physics 9 Society. I'm sorry that Mr. Diaz wasn't here to hear that. He's our 10 newest member.
11 In fact, as an aside, Commissioner Diaz -- I first met him 12 when I was at the Virginia chapter last year. I went to visit the 13 Virginia chapter of the Health Physics Society for their meeting. It 14 was a weekend meeting, and it was joined with the American Nuclear 15 Society Section. Well, Commissioner Diaz is very active in the American 16 Nuclear Society. And so he was down there because as a section member 17 he was down to the meeting. And so he was there to hear my talk about 18 regulatory burden and other things.
19 And one of the things in my talk I ended up doing is having 20 people who were not members of the Society raise their hand. And when 21 their hand is raised, my accomplice which is my wife ran around with 22 applications and stuck an application in their hand. Well, after the 23 meeting, Commissioner Diaz came up and introduced himself, and he said 24 -- he had an application in his hand. He said, "I'll make you a deal, 25 Keith." He said, "I'll join your Society if you promise to come see me twice in the next year." And so as of last month, Mr. Diaz was a member
59 1 of the Society, and so I now have Bill Mills is calling his office as we 2 speak today to get and see him next month.
3 But your membership -- you being a member of a professional 4 society, I offer, is also important. One of the most common comments 5 that I got out of my visits to the chapters was mostly the chapter 6 membership was made up of users -- more users than regulators. One of 7 the comments they made was the regulators and inspectors don't know 8 anything about health physics. They don't understand our business.
9 Well, I offer that to help counter that is if you belong to 10 the professional society that is furthering this business, that that 11 kind of complaint ought to start going away. And in fact, it was in two 12 agreement states where there were members from the Bureau of 13 Radiological Health in these agreement states at the meeting and had 14 been actively involved in these two different chapters where I got no 15 response to regulatory burden being an issue. Nobody thought it was.
16 And I offer that that's indicative of the regulator/users communication 17 that helped resolve that kind of feeling.
18 Among the Organization of Agreement States, you're better 19 than CRCPD as a whole in that I count among the 35 agreement states and 20 those that have letters of intent, I could that 54 percent of those 21 states have a director who is a member of the Society, and I think 22 that's very good.
23 I would offer to the other 46 percent the opportunity to 24 review whether in fact it wouldn't benefit from helping in Society 25 business.
60 1 I want to take a minute to talk about regulatory burden, and 2 then I really want to just turn it over and have you ask questions about 3 the Society or anything that I've said.
4 But the reason I want to talk about regulatory burden was 5 that last year Otto Robbey, after taking his visit to the chapters, came 6 to the board of directors in the Society and said, well, one thing that 7 I carried out in my meetings with these chapters is that our members 8 consider that radiation and radioactive material is not being allowed to 9 be used for the benefit of the public because of regulatory burden.
10 We're being driven out of business by regulatory burden.
11 Well, it struck me if that's true -- if that is true -- and 12 I offer that I didn't take it on face fact that it was, but if it was 13 true, certainly the Health Physics Society had a very important interest 14 in being involved in that issue of regulatory burden.
15 And so I have addressed this with the membership in my 16 surveys. And in general, about 85 percent of the members feel that 17 regulatory burden is an issue, and that the burden is in fact perhaps 18 preventing the beneficiary use of radiation radioactive material to the 19 public benefit of our country. So we need to be involved in that.
20 My one assertion was that in a regulatory environment --
21 first of all, my assertion was we have to have regulators, and about 75 22 percent agreed with that.
23 [Laughter.]
24 MR. DINGER: And I still -- the other 25 percent I count as 25 not knowing. Actually, they may have been the regulators in the group.
I don't know. But anyway, we have to have regulation. And so my
61 1 assertion was that in the regulatory and need for a regulatory 2 environment, the best way to operate is to have both sides of the issue, 3 the regulators and the operators understand the pressures and 4 responsibilities of the other side because they don't have the same job 5 function.
6 To understand the other side, and then to communicate and 7 professionally resolve such that we have reasonable regulations that 8 meets the needs of both parties. So the need to communicate was one of 9 the major assertions that got a large agreement, and that is another 10 major reason why I wanted to come this morning was to open the lines for 11 communication for you as a representative regulatory body to the larger 12 part of our membership which represent primarily users and operators.
13 The Health Physics Society offers some unique opportunities 14 for this communication to take place. We do have regulators in the 15 Society, and obviously we have users and licensees. And we have a 16 number of vehicles such as the monthly newsletter where we offer a good 17 forum for this interchange to take place.
18 There's been some excellent interchanges on contentious 19 regulatory issues, okay. The EPA decommissioning rule has had some good 20 point/counterpoint articles in the newsletter. Charlie Willis 21 introduced the KI issue which I think is going to be on you all's 22 plates, if not today, at least over the next year.
23 The Society offers a good forum for this kind of 24 interchange. And so I'd offer that's another reason for all parties to 25 be involved is to help with this cross-communications.
62 1 One thing I have done in response to polling the members is 2 I've formed an ad hoc committee this year to see how this works. It's 3 an ad hoc committee on regulatory burden oversight. It's a committee 4 that is composed of some of what I would consider to be our higher level 5 members. They're all fellows of the Society. Two of them are past 6 presidents of the Society.
7 And the purpose of this committee is to take input from 8 members who think that there is a regulatory requirement -- and I want 9 to say that regulatory in this case is defined very broadly and it 10 includes scientific committee recommendations, regulatory codified 11 requirements, regulatory enforcement actions, that is, interpretations 12 of the codified requirements. It allows members to present to this 13 committee any of those categories of issues that they think is a burden.
14 And a burden is defined as making it either very hard or probable that 15 you cannot provide a beneficial use of radiation or radioactive material 16 because of this regulatory requirement.
17 The idea is that the Society as an independent scientific 18 professional organization have a committee to serve as a arbitrator, if 19 you will, on issues that our members say are burdensome. And I see this 20 as being able to work two ways.
21 One is to go back to those members that say this really is 22 wrong and say, you know, we've have looked at it, and it really is not 23 wrong. It's a good reason for it, and you're missing the point. So it 24 goes to our members to help your burden when our members and the opinion 25 of this committee are off track.
63 1 We also, however, have the job of looking at if in fact 2 there appears to be a burdensome regulation in that category, it's the 3 intent of this committee to take action to address this burden to the 4 appropriate regulatory body. If it turns out that it's something that 5 we think is burden some in, for example, the state regulations, then we 6 would be addressing it if it's a broad issue, looking to address it to 7 you, this body, OAS, and also to the CRCPD.
8 If it's something that's unique to a state, then we would 9 look to come to you, the director of that state, and offer our opinion 10 that there's a burden and, with that, offer advice on how we think that 11 burden can be removed or lessened.
12 I only advertised the existence of the committee last month, 13 and so far have had three inquiries as to whether certain issues would 14 fall into the category of this committee's review. One of them has been 15 submitted. I just got it three days ago. So my committee doesn't know 16 that we have it, but it doesn't relate to any state issues. It does 17 relate to a federal regulatory agency of which there is one 18 representative in the audience.
19 [Laughter.]
20 MR. DINGER: But Jim's a big bully, and so he's going to 21 make it hard for us to talk to him. But I just want to let you know of 22 that initiative so that first of all you can use it. Feel free to write 23 what you think is a burden if you'd like the Society to serve as kind of 24 an independent review panel. But if issues come up and we come and 25 approach you, you'll understand where we're coming from.
I'd like to stop here.
64 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
2 MR. DINGER: And for any time that's allowed, I'd like to 3 take input. I do have to say that I really appreciate you coming to my 4 state to make it easy to come and meet with you. Thank you for thinking 5 of that.
6 I do have to apologize. Although the venue is extremely 7 convenient, my schedule turned out not to be all that convenient. And 8 so I won't be able to stick around very much.
9 However, I have a direct representative, Ruth McBurney, who 10 is on our Executive Committee who will be here for the whole meeting.
11 And so please bend her ear on anything that I've set her up for in this 12 meeting.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you very much, Keith. Let's take 14 about ten minutes for questions and comments to Keith, particularly 15 since this may be an issue -- this liaison issue may be one that the 16 agreement states want to discuss in their business meeting today. But 17 let's focus our comments and questions on this issue of liaison with the 18 Health Physics Society.
19 And Steve Collins, if you want to say anything from the 20 CRCPD point of view, feel free to do that. Let's go to Ed.
21 MR. BAILEY: Yeah, Ed Bailey from California. Keith, one of 22 the things that HPS has done at the local level is participate with 23 state regulatory agencies in putting on conferences. It's very 24 successful. The South Texas chapter in the Texas program. This April 25 we will have in the Northern California/Sierra, Nevada chapters working with our program to put on a D&D seminar. And I think if the local
65 1 chapters could be encouraged to approach the regulatory agencies and 2 help to co-sponsor something, I think it would be beneficial to both 3 groups.
4 I routinely go to the HPS meetings, and, like you have 5 indicated, I am always surprised at how few of us there are there. And 6 in the bars, we've even talked about doing a paper which you've already 7 done. All you've got to do is write it. How many of us actually even 8 belong to the Society?
9 I fortunately work for a state that requires that the 10 director of the program be a CHP. So we're trying now to encourage our 11 people to not only be a member of the Society, but become certified by 12 trying to get a bonus in their salary if they are certified.
13 MR. DINGER: Good. Actually, I have a suggestion, Ed. The 14 Health Physics Society depends very heavily on our chapters to do our 15 work. I have written a letter to all chapter presidents asking them to 16 join up with their local AIHA chapter. That's part of that liaison.
17 Your suggestion about contact the state regulators and hook 18 up with them is excellent, and I will send a letter on that regard.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go to Aubrey.
20 MR. GODWIN: Aubrey Godwin, Arizona. Initially, you alluded 21 to that you might want to get some action going in the potassium iodide 22 issue. There's a lot of work being published now in European journals 23 about the sensitivity of the young to the radiation exposure from the 24 iodides from the Chernobyl event, and they're indicating in some places 25 that exposures on the order of one Rem to the thyroid could double the
66 1 risk of a cancer formation in the thyroid, and up to ten Rem maybe as 2 much as 100 times greater.
3 Those are pretty significant numbers, and I know that's not 4 exactly in accord with some of the policies you all have adopted in the 5 past. But it would be good to get the Society to do some sort of peer 6 review the states are eventually going to have to look at this issue 7 again in regard to their reactors and how they develop a protective 8 action plans around them.
9 So that kind of service would be a great help to the states 10 not only the regulator type, but also the emergency response types.
11 MR. DINGER: Okay, thank you. We actually have started to 12 look at that issue. Let me say for those that aren't familiar with our 13 structure, our bylaws require certain requirements for somebody to speak 14 as a spokesman of the Society as a whole. And the way we have that set 15 up in our rules and bylaws is we have a committee. It's called the 16 Scientific and Public Issues Committee. It's made up of the 17 president-elect, president and then the three most immediate past 18 presidents make up that committee.
19 That committee is given authorization to speak on behalf of 20 the Society by making position statements. Other than that, all of us 21 come out and carry perhaps a hat as an officer in the Society but don't 22 have the authority to speak on behalf of all of our members.
23 With the issuance of NUREG 1633 which I think all of you are 24 probably familiar with, the draft NRC technical document on the 25 implications of the general distribution of KI in the case of a severe reactor accident.
67 1 I actually drafted a proposed position statement from the 2 Society on KI. It did not pass the vote of the SMPIC because there was 3 two members that wanted further debate and discussion on the issue. And 4 so we are looking at that issue. I suspect we won't come up with a 5 position statement if we can agree on a position -- won't come up with 6 one until our midyear meeting in Albuquerque in January.
7 I did write as a sort of help who happens to be president of 8 the Society a letter to Dr. Congill making comment on NUREG 1633. And 9 if the proposed rule comes out before we get a position paper written, I 10 expect to write a comment as the president but not on behalf of the 11 Society on the issue. So thank you. That is the kind of issue we're 12 interested in being a part of the discussion.
13 I will say right now the discussion is that we can't agree 14 within the committee that has to agree 15 [Laughter.]
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Keith, you've heard a couple of 17 suggestions about how you could work more closely with the agreement 18 states. Did you have any specific recommendations in mind for the 19 agreement state consideration on how there should be a closer liaison?
20 MR. DINGER: Yeah, thank you, Chip. The only suggestion I 21 have is -- and I have thought that -- I'll tell you what my intent is, 22 is to write a letter to the Board of the OAS and ask them to assign and 23 identify a liaison from OAS to the Health Physics Society.
24 We have a Liaison Committee. We have a list of those 25 organizations we liaison with. We have a formal liaison, for example, with the CRCPD, okay. Steve Collins is their current liaison to the
68 1 Society. I think OAS ought to be an organization on that list. And so 2 I was going to ask if they would identify somebody.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you.
4 MR. DINGER: But outside of that, I'd just ask for you to 5 consider, you know, the role that this Society can play to be a part of 6 your job which is getting harder every day.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Keith. And Roland, you don't 8 have the letter yet, obviously. But if you want to talk about it at the 9 business meeting, that might be a good issue.
10 Steve Collins, do you want to say anything from the CRCPD 11 perspective?
12 MR. COLLINS: As chair of the CRCPD, I did go to the Health 13 Physics Society meeting or at least a portion of it this summer and did 14 serve that function. But Pierce O'Kelly has been designated as the 15 official liaison now between CRCPD and the Health Physics Society even 16 though both of us may share some of these functions depending on the 17 meeting at the time.
18 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much.
19 MR. DINGER: I would offer Roland in discussing the request 20 for a liaison, we have a liaison luncheon at our annual meeting every 21 year, and the menu is usually always fillet. So fillet mignon.
22 [Laughter.]
23 MR. DINGER: So that might help in the selection.
24 MR. CAMERON: I won't ask where that meeting is. But 25 someone else? Oh, Pierce, all right.
69 1 MR. O'KELLY: I just wanted to let everybody know that I 2 have been serving as a liaison, and I've been working real close with 3 Jim Tripides and have been also placed on the Rules and Regulations 4 Committee of the Society to help keep things going between the CRCPD and 5 HPS especially in the areas of regulation and legislation.
6 MR. DINGER: Bob, we do have a Legislation and Regulation 7 Committee which Bob is helping. They've become under Jim Tripides who's 8 at the University of California at Irvine, very active in tracking and 9 being involved in the regulations. It's under his committee that we've 10 been involved in the tenancy of R. 35 rulemaking process. In fact, Ed 11 Bailey represented us in San Francisco.
12 But the other requests for formal liaison are under our 13 Liaison Committee. So you get invited to lunch.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you very much, Keith.
15 MR. DINGER: Thank you for your time.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We're going to move on now --
17 [Applause.]
18 MR. CAMERON: We're going to go to Bob Hallisey who's making 19 his way up to the podium now to hear about the New England Radiological 20 Health Committee. Bob?
21 MR. HALLISEY: Good morning, everyone. And I just want to 22 echo Keith's comments. I've been an active member of the Health Physics 23 Society probably longer than I want to remember, back in the early 24 1960's. And our program and many of our program members are on the 25 local chapter's board, and it's one good way to get your message out to
70 1 the membership by getting active with the local chapter, staying active 2 and participating in the meetings.
3 This morning for a few minutes, because we are running a 4 little bit late as I can see, as the oldest most mature, Vickie, member 5 of the New England Compact in the New England Radiological Health 6 Committee, I asked Roland if I could take a few minutes to tell all of 7 you about something about which we are very extremely proud, namely, the 8 New England Radiological Health Committee, commonly known as NERC.
9 Now this committee is made up of radiation control program 10 directors from each of the six New England states and the regional 11 representative from FDA and from that other agency of which there is one 12 person present, and that is the reason he is here, Jim Cherniak, EPA.
13 The committee was statutorily created through legislation in 14 each of the six New England states by means of what is known as the New 15 England Radiological Health Compact. Now in the mid 1960's when all six 16 of the New England states -- and they are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 17 Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, in case some of you don't 18 know -- had established radiation control programs, the program 19 directors at that time started an informal policy of meeting at least on 20 a semi-annual basis to discuss issues of mutual concern.
21 These informal meetings at that time very often took place 22 at the core of New England, the City of Boston, Massachusetts which 23 Diane did not mention this morning. At that time, the Radiation 24 programs in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island had one or 25 two or three people in them, whereas Massachusetts and Connecticut had about eight or nine people.
71 1 The program directors came up with a clever way of working 2 together to ensure that all of the New England programs would be 3 strengthened, properly educated and have sufficient resources to carry 4 out and accomplish their missions.
5 For some of you old timers here, these founding fathers were 6 Jim Fuller from Maine; Forest Bumford from New Hampshire; Harry Ash in 7 Vermont; Art Huebner from Connecticut; Dr. Jim Derry from Rhode Island, 8 and Jack Collins from Massachusetts.
9 Yes, although you may find it hard to believe there was a 10 radiation control program director in Massachusetts before Jerry Parker.
11 I at that time was actually a Fed. I was the regional rep for the FDA 12 in the Boston area and was very much involved in the beginning on the 13 formation of this committee. That's how I get the opportunity to 14 present the materials to you this morning.
15 But these founding fathers came up with the idea of 16 developing a model act that would promote mutual aid among the six New 17 England states and allow for sharing of both resources, personnel and 18 information. This model act also called for the creation of the NERF, 19 the New England Rad Health Committee, and for the development of a New 20 England Compact as approved by the legislators and governors of the 21 several party states.
22 The Act was first passed in the wonderful state of Maine.
23 Jay Hyland was barely thought of at that time, I think. It was actually 24 in March of 1967, and Rhode Island followed in April of 1967. And then 25 New Hampshire in July of the same year, and Massachusetts in December of that year. And Connecticut and Vermont in 1969.
72 1 The Compact became official with the passage of the second 2 cooperative state. The compact was signed into law, and each of the 3 states follows essentially the same format as developed by the NERC.
4 The compact also allows that any state not mentioned above which is 5 contiguous to any party state in the compact may join by enacting the 6 same legislation.
7 We have spent many years dealing with New York trying to get 8 them to pass the statute there, but they have come to many of our 9 meetings over the years. Now the purpose of the New England compact is 10 to (a) promote the radiological health protection of the public in New 11 England and within the individual party states, (b), most importantly, 12 provide mutual aid and assistance in radiological health matters, 13 including, but not limited to, radiation incidents, and (c) encourage 14 and facilitate the efficient use of personnel and equipment by 15 furthering the orderly acquisition and sharing of resources useful for 16 programs in the radiation protection area.
17 A compact plan has been designed which outlines the manner 18 in which these intrastate mutual aid and assistance and exchange of 19 personnel is accomplished. This plan includes specific information on 20 the channels of communication among the states, the availability of 21 equipment and laboratory capabilities, the procedures for requesting 22 assistance from the party states, and notifying party states of 23 radiological incidents as well as clarification procedures of the loan 24 of personnel and equipment and the obvious financial obligations 25 encountered when you send someone from one state to another.
73 1 Each compact administrator or designee in which -- and the 2 administrator is actually the chief health officer of each state, and 3 the designees are the radiation control program directors, they have 4 provided the home and office telephone numbers of him or herself and of 5 such staff members as he or she may designate as the emergency contacts 6 for the compact.
7 In addition, they have provided a second channel of 8 communications such as through the state police which is operative under 9 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day for seven days a week for any emergency contacts, and 10 arrange within his or her state for emergency communications to reach 11 responsible staff members at all times.
12 Each compact administrator has notified the secretary of 13 this above designation, the secretary presently being the representative 14 of that federal agency that wishes to remain anonymous. And this 15 information is updated at least annually in the plan.
16 Each compact administrator also transmitted to the secretary 17 a listing of all available fields to their equipment including its 18 range, other emergency equipment and a listing of available laboratory 19 capabilities by type of analysis. Such listing is updated annually in 20 the plan and shared among the members.
21 Upon a determination by an administrator or a delegate that 22 a radiation incident has taken place within his or her state of a 23 magnitude sufficient to require some additional resources or personnel, 24 the compact administrator in that state contacts the secretary and the 25 EPA organization to request such aid as deemed necessary.
74 1 The secretary then has the authority to contact whatever 2 appropriate party states may be needed to assist. Now any state 3 responding to requests for aid under this plan shall operate while in 4 the party's state in accordance with the radiation incident plan of that 5 particular state.
6 Professional training of technical personnel having special 7 skills or training related to radiation protection may be made available 8 to a party state upon request. The state receiving aid or assistance 9 shall reimburse the state rendering the aid of assistance for any loss 10 or damage incurred.
11 I have to tell you that we have utilized the compact in a 12 number of instances. But in all instances, the state sending the 13 assistance has absorbed the cost. So we haven't had to invoke the 14 financial aspects of it.
15 This compact has been used a lot in emergency planning 16 activities since we have two reactors that sit practically on the border 17 of Massachusetts -- one in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hamphire, and the 18 other one is New Hampshire and Massachusetts. And we also have trash 19 calls and dump calls. John Bunn would know about those. And because of 20 the close proximity of the state, there's a lot of times trash going 21 from one state to another, and we're able to assist each other there.
22 Lost sources, transportation and, most importantly, 23 laboratory breakdowns if one of the small states have some issue with 24 some of their laboratory equipment broken and they can ship the samples 25 to one of the other under the compact, and we analyze them and supply the data back to them.
75 1 But early on, our founding fathers also realized that this 2 NERF essentially cried out for some type of annual meeting. The group 3 began formally meeting on an annual basis in 1969, and it was clearly 4 the intent from the beginning that these meetings would be an 5 opportunity for all program staff from each of the six New England 6 programs to get together and meet and discuss areas of mutual concern.
7 As these meetings evolved, they included training sessions, 8 most often by federal agency personnel, but also right from the very 9 beginning included short presentations by staff members from each of the 10 states on projects or surveys or techniques and procedures that they had 11 developed, something new and unique.
12 It was at one of these earlier meetings that Ken Travers, 13 assigned to the State of Vermont, first proposed what then became the 14 general exposure normalization technique which many of you are familiar 15 with. The two-day meetings eventually involved into three and a half to 16 four-day meetings with topic-specific training sessions include 17 representatives now from FDA, EPA, NRC, FEMA and NIOSH.
18 Over the years, with the demise of the regional meetings 19 throughout the country, the NERF routinely has representatives from New 20 York and New Jersey and Canada as well as many other states from time to 21 time in the program. This year's meeting is in two weeks in Portland, 22 Maine, and next year will be our 30th consecutive meeting year.
23 In closing, I would be the first to admit that the reason 24 why the NERF continues to have successful annual meetings is primarily 25 due to the close proximity of all six New England states, the low travel cost, and, most important, the dedication and intensity of the six
76 1 program directors and their two federal members to ensure that these 2 meetings and training sessions will continue to be available for all 3 radiation control program staff members in New England and all others 4 who desire to attend.
5 Although we accomplish much on a small budget, the committee 6 had wanted to sponsor this morning's coffee break to make you aware of 7 us and of our activities. And I'd like to ask you to please take a 8 minute during this meeting to let any of the eight members of the 9 committee that are here present know of your feelings about the New 10 England Rad Health Committee and any questions that you might have, and 11 also let us know if you want to be on the mailing list for future 12 meetings. We'd love to have you all come. Thank you.
13 [Applause.]
14 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Bob. There may be a 15 question or comment or two. And I think it might be useful to get on 16 the table whether there are any other similar regional organizations 17 operating around the country. Questions for Bob or comments? Cheryl?
18 Do you want to use -- and could everybody use their card, too, to just 19 discipline you.
20 MS. ROGERS: Bob, in the middle of the country, we have an 21 annual get together courtesy of our EPA regional representative. It's 22 Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas. And we have talked about, you know, 23 the fact that we would like to do mutual aid type arrangements, but we 24 don't have anything formal set up. Is there something that you could 25 suggest, or was the impetus to put that statutorily in place?
77 1 MR. HALLISEY: Yes. We had a model legislation, and I can 2 certainly mail you a copy of it, and you can share with your other 3 states.
4 MS. ROGERS: I guess what inspired the formation in the 5 first place, if you remember?
6 MR. HALLISEY: Oh, well, it was simply because you had six 7 radiation control programs, and four of them had one or two or three 8 members, and the others had six to eight members, and they thought, 9 well, this is sort of foolish. The smaller states are having difficulty 10 getting things done, and the larger states -- I won't say they had extra 11 people hanging around, but they wanted to have the opportunity to share 12 the resources. And that's basically what started it with the founding 13 fathers.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Bob?
15 MR. GOFF: Bob Goff, State of Mississippi. The Southern 16 Energy Emergency Board, we also have a similar group. We meet every 17 year in conjunction with the All Agreements States Program, and I 18 believe we've got -- and I hope I don't leave anybody out, but we've got 19 the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South 20 Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi, of 21 course. Thanks. And Virginia.
22 It's very beneficial to us, even though we meet just a 23 period of an hour or two. It's beneficial to sit down and just talk 24 about the incidents that occurred in the state and some of the things 25 that we're doing to improve emergency response. And to me, it's always beneficial.
78 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay, great. Anybody else?
2 [No response.]
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks a lot, Bob, and --
4 [Applause.]
5 MR. CAMERON: As Aaron Padgett is making his way up to the 6 podium, I just want to say that the good natured kidding for the agency 7 that wants to remain anonymous, usually that's reserved at these 8 meetings for our office of general counsel at the NRC. So Hampton and I 9 would both like to thank that agency for being here.
10 Next, Aaron Padgett's going to talk about the Moses Cone 11 Hospital incident. Aaron?
12 MR. PADGETT: Who's controlling the slides? Go ahead and 13 put slide one up.
14 On March 4 of this year, our agency received a call from the 15 Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, North Carolina, and basically the 16 call said, "You know those 19 bracket therapy Cesium 137 sources that we 17 have? Well, we don't have then any more. They're gone."
18 And they were right. All 19 bracket therapy sources had 19 disappeared. Well, we immediately asked ourselves what can we do to 20 help. Well, as most of you know, one of the things you do is report to 21 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and most of the other groups and 22 agencies around the nation what's happened, and we did this. Only, we 23 took a little different approach in making the report because we were 24 not quite ready for this to go out to the world. And for those of you 25 who report to the operational center, you know that as soon as the
79 1 information goes in, it's put on the Internet, and everybody in the 2 world has access to it.
3 So we did let the NRC know that we'd had an incident where 4 19 sources were lost. But we didn't tell them who the licensee was 5 because we knew that information would be put on the Internet, and, 6 again, we were not ready for that. We were dealing with the local 7 agencies at that point in time. We wanted the local agencies to be very 8 much a part of this planning and recovery effort. And the local 9 agencies did not want that information out at this point in time.
10 So we made a deliberate decision to withhold who the 11 licensee was so that would not make it out to everybody in the world at 12 that point in time. Now in our conversations with NRC personnel at the 13 region, we did go ahead and tell them that this was the Moses Cone 14 Hospital up in Greensboro, but we asked them to hold that until the 15 following day before we put that out to the world. Well, we sat back 16 and did our planning. And as a result of that, you know how these calls 17 come in. This is like three or four o'clock in the afternoon. And so 18 it was really the next day before much was done on this, and we didn't 19 want it on the news that night.
20 The next day, we dispatched two teams to Greensboro. One 21 was to work with with the hospital personnel inside the hospital and on 22 the hospital grounds, and the other one was to work out in offsite 23 areas, for instance, the landfill and the waste water treatment plant.
24 Over the next few days, we looked and tried to ask ourselves how many 25 different ways could these sources have gotten out of the hospital.
80 1 And, well, so much -- we don't really need the visuals 2 anyway. We worked with the hospital staff trying to identify all the 3 properties that the hospital owned and who might possibly be involved in 4 this incident.
5 We also asked ourselves what additional assistance might be 6 needed as we do this search for these sources. You know, we're a 7 typical state. We have the routine micro R-meters and other things like 8 this that most of you have, the little portable scouts and so forth.
9 But we don't really have a large number of this type of 10 equipment. We don't have anything any more sophisticated than that.
11 And we were quite aware of the DOE capabilities or at least somewhat 12 aware of the DOE capabilities.
13 So in addition to working with the local emergency 14 organizations, the County Emergency Preparedness, the Greensboro Fire 15 Department, police and so forth, we also opened discussions not only 16 with the NRC but with the DOE on what their capabilities are and what 17 they could do to assist in this search.
18 As a result of those conversations, we had the DOE come down 19 to Greensboro, North Carolina and to meet with all the agencies involved 20 in this. Now, as I said before, all 19 of their bracket therapy sources 21 were gone. Now the size of these range from about 10 millicuries up to 22 a little over 60 millicuries each.
23 This slide will show you about the size of each of the 24 little sources, a little less than an inch long and about an eighth of 25 an inch in diameter. So they're fairly small. Now there's a little over 600 millicuries total activity did not represent a threat to a
81 1 large community. There's just not enough activity there. But it did 2 and does represent a deadly threat to one or a few individuals in a 3 small area.
4 It also represents, of course, a tremendous public relations 5 problem if those sources were placed in the wrong place. So we had all 6 of those issues to think about. During this time, we are spending a 7 number of hours on the phone, let's say, with people from the Nuclear 8 Regulatory Commission in Atlanta. You know, we were looking at it and 9 doing everything that we needed to do, and we were asking anyone else 10 that we could get what have we missed. Is there anything that you can 11 see that we haven't done that we should be doing because we wanted the 12 best thinking that we could possibly have on that subject. And as I 13 said, we had two teams up there working with the hospital, doing surveys 14 of the hospital property, surveys of the offsite areas that we thought 15 might be of some interest.
16 We even identified routes that someone who removed these 17 from the hospital might take out as they left the city of Greensboro and 18 looked at areas where they may have thrown those sources away so that we 19 could survey and hit those areas.
20 As we looked at this more and more, the hospital had what we 21 would call the typical security that most places of this type have.
22 They had -- next slide. They had a safe that the sources were kept in.
23 Take the mike with me? I don't have a pointer here, so I'll just let 24 you look at that.
25 They have a safe that the sources are in. Next slide.
These are drawers at the safe. And the way the sources are kept is they
82 1 drill down into those lead drawers, and there's one source per hole.
2 Now it's interesting that they had 18 holes drilled and 18 sources 3 placed in this lid safe. There was also -- next slide, and the next 4 one.
5 There was also one source that had been ordered and had come 6 in in December, a new source. It was still in its pig. All 18 of the 7 sources that were placed in the drawer were gone and also the one source 8 in this pig. Next slide.
9 This is just kind of a shot of several of the different 10 things. But you can see up in the top left up there, there are a number 11 of other sources that were not touched. And next slide.
12 None of those sources were touched. So whoever removed the 13 bracket therapy sources knew exactly what they were doing. They knew 14 what they were after, and they got the 19 bracket therapy sources.
15 Little tidbits of information kept popping up, and it became 16 the leading theory that there was an employee who was trying to embarass 17 the hospital or an ex-employee, and that fit right into a lot of the 18 things going on in the medical area these days.
19 Moses Cone was buying lots of medical facilities in 20 Greensboro. Some of them were being shut down. Others were --
21 managements were being changed and things like this. So there were a 22 number of people who were fairly perturbed at Moses Cone Hospital 23 Systems and who had reason to dislike the hospital, and also the 24 opportunity for actually doing some mischievous things.
25 As I started to say earlier, Moses Cone had the typical security system. They had the safe, but the key to the safe is kept in
83 1 a drawer on a cart down below the safe. The room that the safe is kept 2 in is locked, and that key is kept in a drawer out in the general lab 3 room.
4 And then there's one key that opens the lab door, and, of 5 course about half the world had access to that key. So once you get 6 access to the first key, you just have to know where to look and go 7 right in the rest of the way. And unfortunately, that's fairly typical 8 for the security of sources of this type in a lot of medical facilities, 9 and, again, in this case resulted in all 19 of the sources taking off 10 somewhere.
11 Well, going back to Greensboro and our meeting with the 12 local people. As a result of that meeting, it was decided that we did 13 want DOE to come in. So the next question was what's the best way to 14 get them here. And one route is to activate the Federal Radiological 15 Emergency Response Plan, and that has some pros and that has some cons.
16 We did not want a full activation of that plan. We wanted a directed 17 response with just those services that we wanted delivered. We did not 18 want the full activation of the plan. So we had several discussions 19 with folks in the agreement state office, and I do appreciate the 20 assistance you gave us in keeping that directed so that we got what we 21 wanted rather than what we did not want there.
22 And that's the route we took. We did activate the plan on a 23 limited basis, and we did request that through the plan that we get this 24 assistance from DOE to search for the sources with their helicopter 25 mounted equipment and also their van-mounted equipment.
84 1 And we had NRC personnel respond, and we also had DOE 2 personnel respond and work with us through the remaining portion of the 3 emergency phase, let's say, of the incident. Now it was still difficult 4 to keep this thing from spinning out of control. Just this one little 5 sideline.
6 When you activate the federal emergency response plan, 7 that's a fairly big deal in the eyes of some folks inside the Beltway.
8 Let's take the FBI. Well, this is a federal offense, and so the FBI had 9 a legitimate interest in this, and they had not opened a case file.
10 They were just sitting back and watching and talking with us. They were 11 letting the Greensboro Police Department handle this up until we did 12 that activation.
13 At the time we did the activation, of course, they 14 immediately opened a case on this, and the local agent had a very, very 15 difficult time keeping the FBI portion of it from spinning out of 16 control. This thing was on Louie Freeh's desk, and people in the FBI 17 were scurrying back and forth, and you know how it is in D.C. -- nobody 18 wants to be left out of anything. They certainly want to be in the 19 know. At worse, you don't want to be ignorant about it.
20 And beyond that, you want to be out on the forefront and be 21 the one who solves the thing, and it's the local hero and so forth. But 22 at any rate, the local agent had a very difficult time keeping the FBI 23 portion under control. There were folks in D.C. who were telling him 24 no, you know, we need to send 100 agents down there and basically go out 25 and start kicking down doors and doing things like that. But he was able to prevail, and they did not respond in that way.
85 1 Probably one of the reasons why it did not spin out of 2 control on us was because of the weather. The very evening that DOE 3 came in and we started their helicopter search and so forth, we had some 4 of the worse weather we've in Greensboro in a very long time. There 5 were tornadoes in the area, two or three deaths, things of this type.
6 And so rather than being all over the front pages, we 7 couldn't buy a line in the local newspaper. And so there was no 8 publicity, and that may have done more to keep this thing under control 9 and directed the way that we had wanted to keep it directed than 10 anything that we did. But to sum it up, the next slide. The DOE did 11 come in. We had done lots of surveying, and these are some of the 12 additional surveying that they did. There are some yellow areas on that 13 map, and I'm going to leave this a moment. This is the landfill area 14 and waste water treatment plant. This is a two-mile area around the 15 hospital. And this is another area that I want to allude to that we 16 wanted to survey.
17 They did that with their helicopter teams. They also 18 surveyed with the vans all the major roads in and around Greensboro, and 19 none of those were successful. We flew these at about 150 feet off the 20 ground on a 250-foot grid. So finally we backed up and looked from a 21 public health point of view, and we flew this about ten-mile grid, this 22 100 square mile area just from a public health point of view.
23 We flew that at 500 feet above ground and on an 800-foot 24 grid. That let us know that these sources had not been left out in a 25 park or some place like that where they would get general exposure.
86 1 Now there were a number of things going on in Greensboro 2 during this time period. The NCA basketball championships were being 3 played. And, for instance, we had surveyed the Greensboro Coliseum, and 4 it just so happened that whenever they did the public health survey with 5 the helicopters, they picked up the Greensboro Coliseum as an area of 6 elevated radiation levels just because of the construction materials 7 being used.
8 But one of the things that was kind of pleasing to me was 9 this. Even though they had much better equipment and we were very, very 10 appreciative of the DOE coming in and doing what they did to assist us, 11 they were unable to find anything that we had not already found with our 12 more limited capabilities. So we took some pleasure and some pride in 13 that.
14 However, the sources are still out there. We were not 15 successful in finding them. And with a half life of Cesium, these 16 sources represent a threat to somebody 100 years from now. So there's 17 no good ending to this story. The reason that it's worthwhile bringing 18 up here is because we did activate the federal radiological emergency 19 response plan on a limited basis. It did work. The groups did work 20 well together. And so we're very, very pleased at that.
21 We were quite concerned that it would spin out of control.
22 It did not. We're not sure whether we can credit that to those of us 23 working together to keep it under control, or whether it was just the 24 good luck of the terrible weather. But for whatever reason, it did 25 work. And so we would suggest that when you get in situations similar to this that you not hesitate to go down the same path.
87 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you very much, Aaron.
2 [Applause.]
3 MR. CAMERON: There may be a question or a comment for you.
4 And I guess I would just ask you if there's a written lesson learned --
5 lessons learned that you did in terms of the response plan or the public 6 information process that you went through.
7 MR. PADGETT: Yes, we did. But I don't have that with me.
8 Both DOE and the NRC sent public relations personnel to Greensboro, and 9 that was very, very valuble in dealing with the local press. Even 10 though we had a difficult time, you know, getting any information out, 11 it was still very valuable having them there.
12 And had the press responded like I would have anticipated, 13 the value would have been even greater. So having the onsite public 14 relations person, to me, was one of the better things that we did.
15 Another thing is both the NRC and DOE had an onsite commander, let's 16 say. Chuck Hosey came down from Atlanta and was the NRC person there.
17 And the guys in those positions made the things go a lot better than 18 they could have otherwise, too. They had mature people who were good, 19 who were very good to work with, and, again, I thought we made a very 20 good team.
21 MR. CAMERON: Great. Any other questions for Aaron or 22 comments? Pierce?
23 MR. O'KELLY: Yeah, Aaron, I was just curious. Has there 24 been any major changes in (1) their hospital security since then and 25 with any of your other hospital licensees in light of this event?
88 1 MR. PADGETT: Yes, there have. But it's limited. Moses 2 Cone, of course, has much better security these days. Some other 3 hospitals have also looked at it, jumped on the band wagon and upgraded 4 their security. There are a number of others, though, that have not.
5 And the security that they were providing, obviously any 6 time, you know, something breaks like this, you can jump on those people 7 and beat them up and say you didn't do your job. But in reality, when 8 you go look at the rules and look at the security that is in the rules, 9 it's sometimes difficult to take that and go make general broad sweeping 10 changes to what you will accept and what you won't accept.
11 But the Moses Cone Hospital now have these little keypad 12 type entries, and they're very, very carefully controlled as to who has 13 access. And there are only two people in the hospital who have the 14 final access to those sources.
15 MR. CAMERON: Steve?
16 MR. GAVITT: Yes, Aaron, were they actively using these 17 sources? One of the problems or potential problem, we have a couple 18 licensees that have bracket therapy sources that haven't used them, and 19 they're relucant to get rid of them because of the disposal class, and I 20 could use this as a good example of why you should get rid of your 21 sources if you're not using them.
22 MR. PADGETT: Yes, they were actively using those. And it 23 depends, I guess, on what you mean when you say actively using them.
24 The last use state was back in December, and like December 15 or 25 something like this. The sources had been used. They last had been logged back in on like December 18. And the last time anyone had seen
89 1 the sources was like the 21st or so of December when one of their 2 consultants leak tested three of the sources.
3 MR. CAMERON: Any other questions? Okay, Ken.
4 MR. WANGLER: Since this was obviously an intentional act 5 and probably a --
6 MR. CAMERON: You might as well hold on one second because 7 we're not getting you here. We'll bring this down to you.
8 MR. WANGLER: Since this was obviously intentional and 9 probably criminal, do you think that -- two things. Number one, is 10 there a criminal investigation going on with some of the potential 11 disgruntled employees? And secondly, going more public might help in 12 solving the problem almost like a crime stoppers type of situation at 13 this point, you know, where somebody may be familiar with the person 14 that did this, and if they were aware of the potential dangers, could 15 help in solving where those sources might be.
16 MR. PADGETT: A criminal investigation has been underway 17 right from almost the beginning. The Greensboro Police Department first 18 opened the case, and then the FBI also opened their case after that. If 19 we ever get the sources back, at least my belief has been from the 20 beginning that we would either recover the sources within the first 48 21 hours2.430556e-4 days <br />0.00583 hours <br />3.472222e-5 weeks <br />7.9905e-6 months <br />, or the only chance we would have of getting them back would be 22 the criminal investigation.
23 I've seen nothing that would change my mind on that today.
24 Without going into any details, number one, they don't share a lot of 25 details on the criminal investigation. I do have a few that I don't really even want to share here. They do have a prime suspect. Whether
90 1 or not they will be able to get enough evidence to ever charge the 2 individual, I do not know.
3 It is a very well educated individual, and I'll just let it 4 go at that. But, again, whether or not enough information will ever be 5 developed to charge the person, who knows. That individual is no longer 6 employed at Moses Cone, he has moved on, and he might not even be the 7 right one.
8 But there were a number of people on their suspect list. We 9 surveyed, just to give you an example, by helicopter, we surveyed a lot 10 of properties from the air that were people that the hospital had listed 11 as potential perpetrators. We also surveyed -- we had these water 12 search units and also some of the sodium iodide units that we set up in 13 a van before we brought the DOE in, and we surveyed, again, a number of 14 properties just from the road. We did not go on to the property in the 15 Greensboro area as well as a number of the streets.
16 So, yes, there is a criminal investigation underway.
17 Whether or not it will be successful, who knows.
18 MR. WANGLER: But if maybe you went public, would that help 19 them?
20 MR. CAMERON: What about making it more public? Would that 21 help? And we have one last question, too, from Ed.
22 MR. PADGETT: Okay. I'm not sure that making it more public 23 would help. The information is out in the Greensboro area. There was 24 not a news panic, you know, but the information is out. There was just 25 for a very brief time a reward offered. So I'm not sure that more along that line would help.
91 1 MR. CAMERON: And Ed Bailey?
2 MR. BAILEY: I was going to suggest that there have been 3 successes, maybe not with someone as highly educated and professionally 4 connected, but where you do offer a reward, and somebody's buddy 5 suddenly finds it and brings it back for the reward or phones you and 6 says, hey, I think I saw this thing.
7 As you were talking about this, it dawned on me that do you 8 think we would get the same response from one of those GL gauges that 9 contains a curie of Cesium that we don't know where it is.
10 MR. PADGETT: Would we get the same response from the 11 regulatory agency?
12 MR. BAILEY: Yes, the same amount of evidence --
13 MR. PADGETT: You're in a good position to answer that, Ed.
14 Would we?
15 MR. BAILEY: I don't know. As you were talking about 600 16 millicuries, and we've got, Lord only knows, how many gauges out there.
17 There's a lot more material in them that we don't know where they are.
18 MR. PADGETT: Yeah, our concern here was that you had 19 19 sources. I mean, whoever he is is either ticked off enough and twisted 20 enough that he's willing to go take the sources. A lot of things I 21 didn't go into here.
22 For instance, some of the badges had not been changed out.
23 They were -- and we asked them to change the badges out of this one 24 group of people to have rushed in and read just in case the perpetrator 25 was a member of this particular group, and he had not left his badge somewhere else, he had worn his badge that there might be an anomaly
92 1 there we could take a look at. So we asked them to change the badges 2 out.
3 Well, they didn't handle the information with quite the 4 secrecy that they should have. All those badges disappeared -- every 5 one of them. There were a lot of little nuances about this one that, 6 when you get into it, it was an interesting time. And you know, the 7 individual -- will he be caught? I don't know. He's a very bright 8 individual. He's sent a couple notes in, either he or someone else in 9 his place -- we think it's him -- has sent a couple notes in.
10 And at first, I didn't think they would ever catch him. But 11 then when he sent the notes, assuming that it's him, then I believe that 12 he does want credit for what he's done, and somewhere along the line 13 he'll get drunk in a bar one night and spill his guts to somebody, you 14 know, bragging about what he's done. And when he does that, if he 15 spills it to the wrong person, they'll get him.
16 MR. CAMERON: And let's just remember that no one has been 17 charged here yet.
18 MR. BAILEY: Yeah, but you know what? That's a new reason 19 to go to a bar.
20 [Laughter.]
21 MR. CAMERON: I guess we could figure that Ed would offer 22 that.
23 MR. PADGETT: I think he's volunteering.
24 MR. CAMERON: Before we break for lunch, just some food for 25 thought for all of you. One of the things that may be useful about this meeting is to be sort of a laboratory to identify needs for future
93 1 in-depth workshops on things. For example, how you use the public 2 information process in these incidents.
3 Ed's point about while there are ways to see if you can get 4 people to come forward, you may want to think about that. That was very 5 interesting, Aaron, thank you. And we're going to break for lunch.
6 They do have a special buffet set up downstairs for us. And let's try 7 to be back by a little after one o'clock. We're not supposed to start 8 until 1:15. But if we could pick up a couple minutes, that would be 9 useful. We'll try that.
10 And we're going to start off with Aubrey and Hampton talking 11 about formerly utilized sites, and I think Virgil is also going to help 12 us with this, right, Aubrey?
13 [Laughter.]
14 [Whereupon, the meeting was recessed, to reconvene at 1:15 15 p.m., this same day.]
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
94 1 A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N 2 [1:15 p.m.]
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Okay, we're going to get started now, 4 and we'll have the rest of our colleagues filter in as we go on here.
5 We are going to discuss the status of SDMP Unilateral Transfer/Proper 6 Role of NRC Agreement State and Terminated License Site Evaluation and 7 Cleanup. That's a hell of a title, and it is a controversial issue.
8 And I think Aubrey Godwin from Arizona and Hampton Newsome from the NRC 9 are going to put a good light on it. And I guess maybe it is good that 10 we get started without the State of California here 11 [Laughter.]
12 MR. CAMERON: All right. Aubrey, why don't you go ahead and 13 go first. And can I save all questions and comments until both of you 14 are finished? Aubrey, well, okay. Thanks, Aubrey.
15 MR. GODWIN: As did many of you, Arizona received notice 16 from our regional office that there were several old AEC licenses that 17 used to be in Arizona that expired before Arizona became an agreement 18 state. They did not have documentation to show that they were properly 19 closed out.
20 And they requested the noble State of Arizona to engage in 21 activity to do the close-out part. It's seldom we get such 22 opportunities, particularly since shortly before that we'd been turned 23 down on our suggestion that we engage in a program of mutual inspection 24 reciprocity. That is, we would inspect for NRC in a couple of cases, 25 and it didn't quite fly. But that's okay.
95 1 We got to this issue, and they were wanting us to go out and 2 check these errors out. One of them was an old air field used in World 3 War II and for a short time thereafter, mostly desert today. I knew if 4 I talked long enough, they would be back.
5 Another was a research lab that learned how to process 6 uranium and thorium ores. And according to the information they gave 7 us, they had several barrels sitting around, and they were not really 8 sure what that was ore, or whether it was processed stuff.
9 We did have a current licensee that had been a licensee 10 then, but there was a period when they didn't have any material. And 11 the last one that I'll call to your attention was a test track.
12 In studying the issue, we noticed several things. Number 13 one, that when we signed the agreement to become an agreement state, 14 there was no indication of a health and safety problem with any NRC 15 licensee or formal licensee. And we thought that, you know, is part of 16 disclosure like you buy stock. You have to give some sort of disclosure 17 when you buy stock, and it seemed like it was a logical thing. If 18 there's a health and safety problem, we would expect the NRC -- then the 19 AEC, actually -- to have said something about a health and safety 20 problem.
21 Since the licensees that were transferred to us did not 22 include any of these, we had no idea they even existed, much less that, 23 as was claimed sort of indirectly, that we had liability now for doing a 24 potential clean up, although admittedly in most cases it would just be 25 simply going out and doing a survey.
96 1 We certainly were not given an opportunity at the time we 2 signed the agreement to elect to accept the liability or not to accept 3 the liability. It wasn't disclosed to us, so we had no choice on it.
4 Then there's a little practical matter. One of the sites is 5 now an area that has a small subdivision of about 10,000 homes on it.
6 We predicted it would cause a little bit of a problem if you wandered 7 around there with a survey meter very long.
8 The other thing we noticed was that most, but not all, of 9 the licenses had short half-life materials. In fact, in a couple of 10 cases, they would have had, say, a hundred curies of material to still 11 have anything today, and since they weren't licensed for that much and 12 we had no reason to believe they got that much, it's sort of hard to 13 believe it was really a problem. So some of this we thought we could --
14 the NRC could really clear it up by simply looking at it and saying, 15 hey, they didn't get this material. They can't have a problem.
16 So we took the opportunity to decline to participate. But 17 we did think, you know, that if it's really a health and safety problem, 18 certainly we ought to know. And we did ask NRC to let us know if there 19 was a health and safety problem in their estimation related to any of 20 these sites.
21 To date, we've not been informed that they believe there's a 22 health and safety issue. So we're sort of semi-comfortable about it.
23 Basically, our position could be summed up as this looks like basically 24 a paperwork problem, and it certainly is an issue that was not disclosed 25 to us at the time we became an agreement state, and it would seem to be
97 1 a significant item that should be disclosed at the time a state goes 2 into a government agreement state.
3 Based on my experience and what I remember about Alabama 4 government agreement state, there's no belief that anything was being 5 transferred that was a health and safety problem at that time.
6 Our other issue is that we'd be happy to go out and do the 7 surveys, but we believe it is a federal liability since it was not 8 disclosed properly to us. And for a small fee, we'd be happy to go out 9 and do the assessment of these sites.
10 However, if they want a survey of this area with 10,000 11 homes, we might need a little more assistance, particularly in the PR 12 department. And that basically is our position on it.
13 It is not concurred by anybody at NRC, I would say, and they 14 have another read on it, and we haven't been to court to find out who's 15 right, and I don't know if we'll ever go to court. But, you know, this 16 is the start up position. And with that, I can pass it to Hampton and 17 let him say the NRC's position.
18 MR. NEWSOME: Thanks, Aubrey. I guess, as is pretty clear, 19 this isn't a really happy issue for anyone involved. The states have 20 concerns about the issue. Okay. The agreement states have concerns 21 about the issue, particularly as Aubrey articulated on the fundamental 22 position.
23 But also, I think, the NRC staff is uncomfortable with the 24 overall issue. The legal jurisdictional position of NRC has been that 25 this is material that is under the agreement states jurisdiction, and it's covered under their agreement.
98 1 Now I understand that Aubrey disagrees with that position, 2 and so does California.
3 MR. FLETCHER: And so does everybody, I think.
4 [Laughter.]
5 MR. NEWSOME: Yes, and probably some other states, too.
6 We've heard from several states on this, and I don't think we're going 7 to solve that here today. Yeah, sorry.
8 SPEAKER: All you have to do is say yes.
9 MR. NEWSOME: I think the lines are drawn pretty clear 10 there. However, the staff and the Commission has recognized that there 11 are fundamental fairness implications with the issue. And so over the 12 last year or so, the staff has been looking into options to address the 13 issue and to help give assistance to the states to deal with these 14 particular sites.
15 And just a little background to back up on what's been 16 happening in the last year. The agreement state aspect of the issue was 17 raised to the Commission in August of 1997. Now the overall project of 18 looking at these formerly licensed sites was first kicked off by a GAO 19 Report in the 1970's, and there was another one, I think, in the late 20 1980's. And NRC has been contracting with Oak Ridge Laboratory to look 21 at these sites and determine whether any of them by looking at the paper 22 involved, looking to see whether any warrant further investigation.
23 Now some of these are identified in agreement states, and 24 the jurisdictional questions and the problems associated with the issue 25 were raised at the Commission in August of last year. And the Commission direction was to have the staff look toward a mutually
99 1 agreeable solution to address the problem and also indicated that the 2 agreement states' approach to these sites would not affect compatibility 3 or adequacy findings unless there's a clear and significant public 4 health threat at the sites. And to my knowledge, that hasn't come up 5 yet or hasn't come up. The Commission also reaffirmed the 6 jurisdictional position.
7 Now there was another paper in January and Commission 8 direction in March basically giving the status on the issue. From that, 9 there were three basic items that came out. The Commission directed the 10 staff to gather more information on what it's costing agreement states 11 to address these sites and the scope of the problem in the various 12 states, and also to develop a recommendation on whether NRC should seek 13 general fund appropriation to provide assistance to the states to 14 address these sites.
15 Finally, the Commission asked the staff to look into the 16 feasibility of a narrowly focused amendment to the Atomic Energy Act 17 that would give agreement states the flexibility to return their 18 jurisdiction over these sites back to the NRC.
19 Currently, the staff's preparing a paper on it and 20 developing the recommendations as directed by the Commission. One thing 21 that the staff hasn't received a whole lot of information on costs from 22 the states. So they've been doing the best they can with the 23 information they have to develop cost estimates.
24 And I guess there's one particular site in California in 25 Burbank that has more extensive contamination than a lot of the others.
100 1 And the current owner is looking to clean it up and to get a sign off 2 from the regulators that the site is clean.
3 The staff is -- the latest correspondence with the owner, as 4 I recall, has told the owner to proceed with the clean up with the 5 understanding -- we're recognizing that there's a jurisdictional dispute 6 with California on that. But that shouldn't bar the actual work from 7 getting done in the time being until we work that out.
8 And that's about it on the status of that issue. I 9 recognize that there -- it's a difficult issue for everyone. And I 10 think what I'd like to see happen is that we work through to get some 11 mutually agreeable solution to get these things closed down.
12 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Hampton. And I guess I just 13 would underscore that in terms of our discussion. Obviously, the 14 Commission wants to know how the agreement states feel about this issue, 15 and there may be philosophical objections, but no practical objections 16 from some states. Other states may have both.
17 But in addition to letting the staff and the Commission know 18 how you feel about this, if we could focus on what's going to be 19 acceptable approaches to solving this problem so that we don't end up 20 with some lasting conflict that has some bitter residue left over from 21 it. And let's go to Ed whose state has been in the forefront on this 22 issue. Ed?
23 MR. BAILEY: Yeah, I think the reason -- well, there are 24 several reasons why we have reacted so negatively to this concept.
25 Number one, we're like 165 former license sites that were identified.
Out of that, there are about 60 that still need surveys.
101 1 But then that brings into question can we trust the surveys 2 on the other 100. So if they weren't done right the first time, how can 3 we buy off on it. We've got some real problems. For instance, the site 4 in Burbank that was mentioned is a bakery. We have volunteered to 5 cooperate with NRC in surveying it. The Burbank side is particularly 6 contentious because there are threatened lawsuits and lawsuits in 7 process about who is actually legally responsible for the contamination.
8 And we don't want to spend all of our time in lawyers chasing it down 9 when the amount of material left at that site is not a licensable 10 quantity of radioactive material, and we have no contamination limits in 11 our regulations.
12 So we really don't have, we feel, a strong reason to go in 13 and make them clean up the site if we could even decide upon the person.
14 One of the other sites is an old uranium mill which we don't understand 15 why it wasn't covered under UNTRACA. California does not have authority 16 over uranium milling and mining. That seems to be a no-brainer for NRC 17 to take back.
18 A third one is on the U.S. Marine Corps Camp Pendleton where 19 there is live firing of DU ammunition. Now we don't think we should 20 take that one. Another one turns out to be a fuel fab place that was 21 licensed for, I don't know, a jillion billion cures of S&M. And we 22 would never have had authority over that site under any circumstance.
23 And if we presume that the material is still there, we don't have 24 authority over it now because it's more than formula quantity.
25 And then there's one site in Texas that we don't think Texas will let us come and clean up.
102 1 [Laughter.]
2 MR. BAILEY: So there's some practical problems, too. There 3 are a lot of California companies -- and there are some other places. I 4 just happen to be from Texas and notice that one of the sites on this 5 particular one is actually in Texas and not in California. The 6 company's headquarters is in California, but they had sites in like five 7 or six different states.
8 So we really need to look at this list, and we're willing to 9 do it cooperatively with NRC. But we really think that NRC should spend 10 the bucks on the legal issues that are necessary to tracing down who the 11 responsible party is, was or will be and not leave that to us. NRC has 12 more lawyers on staff than we do. And it would be, we feel, an 13 appropriate use of NRC lawyers, either that or facilitating meetings.
14 [Laughter.]
15 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Ed. I don't want to get into the 16 middle of this controversy. But I guess I just had one clarification 17 for the group. When you say that the Burbank site does not have 18 licenseable quantities on there, could you just give us an idea of how 19 that is defined.
20 MR. BAILEY: Well, you know, we exempt certain 21 concentrations of material from requiring a license. I think all of us 22 do. If you have radioactive material higher than this concentration, 23 you must have a license.
24 We also have certain quantities that are so called exempt 25 quantities. Now we estimate that neither of those categories are exceeded. Now I understand somebody will jump up real quick and say it
103 1 has to be distributed as an exempt source, and so there. But that's a 2 legal thing and not a real practical answer to the problem.
3 And particularly, since we do not have contamination limits 4 within our regulations, it's going to be real hard to force essentially 5 a non-licensee who's already hired lawyers and spent more money than it 6 would have taken them to clean up on lawyers very long to hit on that, 7 and they've written NRC. They've written us. When they think we've had 8 a change in staff, they come back with a new set of letters. So it's on 9 and on and on.
10 And honestly, we believe that it could be done in a very 11 short time. We even offered, after they went to the legislature, we 12 offered to go down and sit and hold their hands, give them limits that 13 they could clean up to. And the last I've heard -- and Don, correct me, 14 we haven't heard them moving forward at all on that point.
15 MR. CAMERON: No, we haven't was the answer to that.
16 Hampton, did you want to --
17 MR. NEWSOME: Well, I just wanted to respond to Ed on those 18 particular sites. I think, particularly with the California sites that 19 you mentioned, we need to have greater communication and maybe get a 20 meeting together so we can pick through these various sites.
21 If there are sites that were former federal licensees, say, 22 or there were activities that were never covered under your agreement, 23 we need to talk about those because --
24 MR. BAILEY: I think those have been pointed out in 25 correspondence to the Commission.
MR. NEWSOME: Okay.
104 1 MR. BAILEY: But I'll be happy to do it. Yeah, I mean, --
2 MR. NEWSOME: Yeah, because I'm familiar with the Burbank 3 site, but I was not familiar with the other ones that you're talking 4 about. But then maybe --
5 MR. CAMERON: And we'll note those for further investigation 6 -- those particular sites.
7 MR. BAILEY: At this meeting, I gave Dick Bangart the letter 8 where we've got another site that's a major facility, General Atomics.
9 Some of you all may remember did the high temperature gas cooler reactor 10 thing and the trigger reactors and so forth. And they're pretty much 11 closing up shop, and we've got 90 buildings that have got to be surveyed 12 out over the next three years.
13 And a lot of those activities were done under AEC/NRC 14 license. So we're asking for a joint meeting at the site to get a plan 15 together on how the two agencies will jointly survey out these or agree 16 that one agency will take the lead on one building, and the other agency 17 on another building and so forth.
18 But it's one of those sites that's so mixed up, I don't know 19 how we would ever decide whose real jurisdiction it was.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Ed. Let's go to Roland and then 21 to Steve Collins.
22 MR. FLETCHER: I would hope that this would be -- you 23 mentioned something about philosophical differences. And I would hope 24 that this would be an example from which we could take a lesson learned 25 and do something about these kinds of decisions in the future.
105 1 Because I look around the table, and we've only mentioned 2 two or three states. But I would venture to say that majority of state 3 representatives at this table do not agree that taking over these sites 4 was a part of the original agreement.
5 Now it would appear to me if that is so unanimous, some 6 action and some discussion should have been done so this was thoroughly 7 known before such a decision is made or such an edict is sent down to 8 the states. Because what we have now is California's having to 9 communicate back and forth, and Texas is having to communicate, and all 10 of these states have similar problems. Yet, it did not appear that the 11 opportunity existed for us to let the NRC know ahead of time that this 12 would not go well with the states and we need to come up with something 13 else before we publicly make an edict that we're now having to fight one 14 by one.
15 So I hope someone is using this as a lessons learned on how 16 not to do something.
17 MR. CAMERON: That's a good point, Roland. Steve.
18 MR. COLLINS: From the Midwest, there were two states, 19 Illinois and one who chose not to come to the meeting that decided to 20 take a different approach. And our approach was and for the 54 sites in 21 Illinois that we performed this work because we do clearly understand 22 that we are both responsible and accountable for the protection of the 23 people of our state regardless of where the source of radiation 24 originally come from.
25 And what is disturbing about the reference correspondence that SP-97080, is that NRC seems to believe that this responsibility
106 1 rests solely with the agreement states. Further, the NRC apparently 2 believes that it's not accountable for its past actions once regulatory 3 authority has passed to the state.
4 We cannot agree with either of these suppositions under 5 Langley and NRC's positions relative to formerly licensed sites. The 6 next is a quote. "The NRC's hypocritical assertion that under some 7 circumstances the state action on the referred sites would be considered 8 as a part of its IMPEP review is outrageous."
9 The NRC's identification of mutually acceptable mechanisms 10 such as a general fund appropriation outside the fee base for providing 11 federal assistance to affected agreement states should not overlook the 12 states which have already taken responsible action to review such sites.
13 The NRC should work closely with individual agreement states 14 to coordinate the federal funding with the state's appropriation 15 process. Then we go on to say that in essence we've spent a total of 16 450 hours0.00521 days <br />0.125 hours <br />7.440476e-4 weeks <br />1.71225e-4 months <br />, and that NRC owes us $47,350 as soon as they get some 17 appropriations.
18 MR. CAMERON: Or perhaps Don can write a check today.
19 [Laughter.]
20 MR. CAMERON: All right. One of the -- I think that the 21 paper that Hampton mentioned is going to explore various options so that 22 this will not be a sole agreement state problem including providing 23 assistance to agreement states. Are there any other -- besides the ones 24 that are up here on the flip chart, any other suggestions about how this 25 problem might be handled cooperatively? Yes, Stu.
107 1 MR. LEVIN: Stuart Levin, Pennsylvania. When this first 2 came up at the meeting last year in Los Angeles, I brought it up to our 3 upper management in our department since we knew we would be negotiating 4 for an agreement sooner or later, and it's going to come.
5 I have a list of our sites. I don't remember what they are, 6 and they are -- we're going to look at those real closely. Copies of 7 whatever California wrote to the NRC that was made public was given to 8 our upper management also so they would be forewarned and could 9 appreciate any potential problems when we become an agreement state.
10 Just for your information, I can say that we are looking 11 into it for our own protection to see that we could still get the 12 agreement and not get hurt with these sites. But I don't know how that 13 story's going to end. But we are working on it so we don't get 14 blindsided.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. That's another point to take 16 into account. If there were an option where I think everybody 17 understands that one of the problems here is that the Commission feels 18 that it has a legal problem that's inhibiting it from taking action on 19 some of these sites. And so it's looking for alternatives.
20 If one of those alternatives was the turnback of these sites 21 to the NRC as opposed to assistance to agreement states to clean these 22 sites up, I'd like to get a feeling from the group for the Commission's 23 benefit about whether either of those alternatives are equally 24 preferable, or whether one might be more preferable than the other. Any 25 comments on that on the choice between those two alternatives? Aubrey?
108 1 MR. GODWIN: The fallback position Arizona had would perhaps 2 to send a letter from the government requesting such those specific 3 licenses be returned to the NRC. I believe that is permitted under the 4 -- they can request individual licenses to go back.
5 I don't how you all look at it. But it would be one game 6 plan on the way, too. So we could look at that very favorably, I think.
7 I'm assuming still that since we have not been notified of any health 8 and safety problem that the Commission's assessment does not indicate 9 there's a health and safety problem with anything in Arizona. We are 10 interested in knowing about that.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay, let's go to Ed and then over to Jake and 12 then I think I should in fairness ask if anybody on the NRC staff wants 13 to say anything on this issue. Ed?
14 MR. BAILEY: Yeah, I think what Aubrey said is one of the 15 options that we discussed somewhat was that if in fact it is a health 16 and safety issue, the Commission has authority to take over even a 17 specific licensee which the state is unwilling or uncapable of managing, 18 as I remember the words something to that effect.
19 And we would not be upset if you chose to make that 20 determination in these cases. We would hope that in doing that, though, 21 that the NRC would allow us to do what they do with the regular licensee 22 that's terminating in California, and that is that we generally do a 23 joint survey when the facility's closed out, and we're willing to do 24 that on all of these sites.
25 The real question isn't doing the survey under the new decommissioning rules. We really should be doing a dose assessment at
109 1 each of those sites now before we re-release them. And that's going to 2 take some time and effort, and the legal issue is going to be a major 3 issue on many of these sites because they have changed ownership.
4 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Ed. Jake?
5 MR. JACOBI: There's -- obviously, this is a complicated 6 issue, and there's many things that need to be considered. But you 7 know, one of the first things that you need to do, of course, is to 8 identify what's the problem at the sites.
9 I know in Colorado we have some of the sites still licensed.
10 Some of them need investigation at least to identify those that need 11 investigation to handle the money issue. If the NRC says it's only a 12 legal concern why they can't come in and do the survey and start doing 13 things, they could at least consider an IPA to the states. That would 14 not necessarily handle a clean up if there's contamination found, but it 15 could relieve some resource issues for the state and the identification 16 of the extent of the problem.
17 MR. CAMERON: So that suggestion just to clarify that for 18 others is that the NRC would hire some state personnel or governmental 19 personnel act as NRC employees to go out there and do the 20 characterization work?
21 MR. JACOBI: Well, I was thinking of more of them delegating 22 a federal employee to work for the state. I know EPA does this in a 23 number of states where a federal employee is paid for by the federal 24 agency, but goes to work under the direction of the state program.
25 MR. CAMERON: Okay, great. That's an interesting idea. Ed, do you want to comment on that?
110 1 MR. BAILEY: Yeah. I think it's a great idea because one of 2 the things is that this is going to be a limited program, and it's very 3 difficult -- if he threw money at us, it would still be a difficult 4 thing for me to go in, get the legislature to approve the positions and 5 then go out and hire anybody that's worth much for a year's employment.
6 I mean, it would be a difficult thing because then we'd turn around, we 7 wouldn't have the money a year later or whatever.
8 MR. CAMERON: And should we provide any attorneys to you 9 under this IPA, or --
10 [Laughter.]
11 MR. BAILEY: If we get to choose the ones that we -- the 12 ones in the room are totally acceptable to us.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. And I guess I shouldn't 14 have picked on Don for writing the check because I guess it would be 15 John Greeves that would be doing this. But I wondered if John or Dick 16 Bangard wanted to say anything on this particular issue while we're on 17 it. John?
18 MR. GREEVES: My name is John Greeves. I'm on the program 19 later, director of West Management. And yeah, I'd be happy to write a 20 check, but I don't think it would do any good by the time you tried to 21 cash it. This looks like one of those no-win situations. I've been 22 watching it over the years from a couple of different angles.
23 And it comes down to who pays, who has authority, and it's 24 just not clean, Chip. You know that situation. And on the chemical 25 front, it took something like Superfund authority to be able to make this thing work. So I don't have a magic bullet to address this issue.
111 1 You know I am not capable of writing a check to clean up these 2 facilities. We've got to justify what we're doing now to the people who 3 are charging fees to go back into an agreement state and do something 4 gets a lot of attention by another set of stakeholders. So I don't have 5 a magic answer individually. I thought some form of Superfund authority 6 is what would be needed. But I just don't know how to achieve that. I 7 leave that to the attorneys and pitch it back to you.
8 MR. CAMERON: Can we go back to the EPA here instead of --
9 there's too much focus on the attorneys.
10 [Laughter.]
11 MR. CAMERON: But we did hear one perhaps new idea, and the 12 Commission is, I think, and the staff interested in working this problem 13 out because we do recognize the problems.
14 And I would just underscore Roland's point for future issues 15 like this. The need to open up a dialogue on an issue like this before 16 there are any hard and fast pronouncements on it. Hampton?
17 MR. NEWSOME: Yeah, I think that's -- you know, one of the 18 many problems with this issue is that the jurisdictional question really 19 came up first kind of out of necessity, and that kind of poisoned the 20 well to a certain extent.
21 But I think there are -- well, we've heard several today.
22 There's a basket of different approaches we can take to solve these 23 problems while at the same time kind of working around the 24 jurisdictional issue. I don't think we have to necessarily, you know, 25 ultimately agree on that in order to close these out.
112 1 I mean, it may be something we have to ultimately face, but 2 I think there are a lot of good ideas being thrown out.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And we'll take one final comment from 4 Ed. And I just want to remind -- I don't need to remind you of this 5 because you all know it. There are representatives of the NRC staff 6 here and the Commission staff. So if you want to have a further 7 dialogue on ideas, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Ed?
8 MR. BAILEY: Yeah, we did do one site clean up survey and 9 clean up jointly with NRC that was on the list. And this was a site 10 that had been surveyed and released earlier. We had a company who did 11 not want their name on the list as being a potential bad actor. They 12 went in and spent $800,000 cleaning up the site.
13 And what it was essentially was a buried sewer line that had 14 come out of a facility that had used radioactive materials -- loose 15 radioactive materials. And I think we're going to see this in other 16 facilities when we really start looking at these facilities the way we 17 currently look at a facility when we close it out.
18 I mentioned the live fire of the DU rounds. We have another 19 company that's going out of that business right now, and they've just 20 finished up cleaning up their firing ranges, and they spent $16 million 21 cleaning up.
22 So we don't see these things as necessarily all going to be 23 just walk in and wear a survey meter and pronounce them healthy. So 24 there's a lot of potential out there because a lot of these people were 25 the starters of the nuclear industry in this country, and they did some really weird things when you look at it in today's light, and they had
113 1 real active programs where they actually did things with radioactive 2 materials other than clean up.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Ed. And just to underscore 4 that, I believe that the NRC staff has tried to develop some estimated 5 costs both for characterization and remediation to give the Commission 6 an idea what's going on here. And, indeed, it's not going to be just 7 the case of waving the survey meter.
8 Okay, well, good. Thank you, Aubrey, and thanks, Hampton.
9 And I guess Virgil, you have nothing to say on this, right?
10 MR. AUTRY: Well, the only thing -- Bert Autry of South 11 Carolina. If it was in South Carolina, I think our circle of people 12 would be jumping right on top of this thing, so -- and put it under 13 Superfund routine. So we've been there before. So that was my comment 14 is why aren't these under Superfund if there's no license or permits 15 issued on these areas.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Virgil. Kathy and the panel 17 on impact, how do you guys want to do it? Do you want us to clear some 18 space at the table for all of you?
19 MS. SCHNEIDER: I have 5.0 Power Point. So let me go there, 20 and then --
21 MR. CAMERON: And then Steve and Ray are going to be on this 22 first panel, right? And they're up at the table?
23 MS. SCHNEIDER: They're going --
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay, good.
25 MS. SCHNEIDER: If I could go from here, and then I'll come there.
114 1 MR. CAMERON: Absolutely.
2 MS. SCHNEIDER: Thank you. Well, here we are again talking 3 about IMPEP. When Roland was talking about surprises, I looked as 4 though, oh, here, I think it's about five years now that you guys keep 5 putting me on the program to talk about IMPEP.
6 And I see and I really have to thank you, Chip, for not 7 introducing me like you have in the past because my, you know, 8 co-conspirator is here, and you could have introduced us again as the 9 poster children for IMPEP although he's deserted me.
10 MR. CAMERON: Well, that's the subject of the reception 11 tonight.
12 MS. SCHNEIDER: Oh, thank you.
13 [Laughter.]
14 MS. SCHNEIDER: Okay, next slide, please. Hopefully, I'll 15 make up some time for you. I'll give you a little bit of a status in 16 where we are and what the schedule is.
17 Last year, I gave you the results of how we had gone so far 18 on the IMPEPs. This slide picks up with where I left off last year, 19 what the results we found. And if you go to the next slide -- and I did 20 give handouts to everyone at the table, and there are some over there at 21 the table.
22 We've been trucking along, as you can see. We've been 23 getting out, getting the reports, having our meetings with the MRB and 24 issuing the final reports. The next slide talks about the schedule for 25 Fiscal Year 1999, and like I've explained in the past, I do use a fiscal year for planning basis.
115 1 What's on this schedule is what was sent out to the All 2 Agreement States for a comment for the upcoming year, and I have gotten 3 some feedback actually here at this meeting. As with everything, if 4 there are changes, we tweak it and let you know for those states 5 involved.
6 Kansas and New York City Health are not on the schedule.
7 They'll be follow up meetings. You'll see something interesting the 8 second entry, and I apologize to Don. I don't know if I told you you 9 were going to be on here. It says the NRC SS&D Program, Winter of 1999.
10 And at this point, I'd like to ask Steve to come up, and he's going to 11 say a sentence or two about what that means.
12 MR. GAVITT: Tuesday of this week, me as a worker bee 13 volunteering for the OAS Executive Committee pretty much finalized the 14 plans and most of the organization for the IMPEP review of the NRC's 15 SS&D Program.
16 What that's going to consist of is a team of states people 17 with one NRC member, Lloyd Amiter of Texas, and Gib Vincent of Illinois, 18 both of whom have over 15 years of license review and SS&D review 19 experience, and Ray Manley of Maryland. And all three of these have 20 been through the NRC's SS&D training course. Those three people plus 21 Jim Meyers of the NRC's Office of State Programs will be the IMPEP 22 review team for NRC's SS&D Program.
23 [Laughter.]
24 MR. GAVITT: Just in case something should happen to one of 25 these individuals, we have a first alternate which is Eric Jamison of Georgia and a second alternate with Julia Belwright of Arizona. Based
116 1 on NRC guidance, there's only a four-member team that's needed, but we 2 do have back ups that have received all the training materials and stuff 3 and will be prepared in case that's needed.
4 In addition, Kathy Schneider will be receiving all of the 5 notes and stuff from the review team members after the on-site review 6 and will be preparing the draft and the final reports. So NRC is 7 providing all that administrative assistance.
8 The review will occur as arranged by the team leader with 9 the team members hopefully sometime during the January to the end of 10 March, 1999 time frame. The training for the team members will occur in 11 the second week of January, I think. That's up to her. And then they 12 will meet the schedule. I think it's 74 days to the MRB meeting.
13 Now the actual organization of the MRB hasn't been firmly 14 established yet. I kind of threw out two alternatives. One of them was 15 we'll just take the NMSS head, Carl Paperillo, and he'll be kind of like 16 an NRC regional administrator if the region had been reviewed. So he 17 wouldn't be a team member. But the state representative to MRB would be 18 an MRB member in that case.
19 The other alternative I threw out was that the MRB will be 20 totally reconstituted with all state members except for one NRC team 21 member. And I understand that there's been a little bit of discussion 22 about that in NRC land. I don't know if it's a fight over who gets to 23 be the one member, or if it's not wanting to be organized. I haven't 24 really heard. I just heard there's rumbles. So if you have any 25 questions about that, let me know when Kathy's finished.
117 1 MS. SCHNEIDER: If I can go to the next slide, please. One 2 of the reasons I do give the handout over the years I take the 3 opportunity when I prepare for this talk to do my projection for the 4 next couple years.
5 When we started IMPEP, I think the first presentation I made 6 we talked about schedule from between two and four years with most 7 states being three years. And as we got into doing our reviews and 8 looking at the states' performance, most states now when they get a 9 finding of adequacy or compatibility are at a four-year cycle.
10 We still have -- what that did is I think last year when I 11 made the presentation, in the year 2000 I had three states. And I had 12 said at that point we were still looking at the schedule because we 13 needed to do some load leveling.
14 I will be talking a bit more with some of the states, 15 especially California, Louisiana and Tennessee that if they go back to 16 the fiscal year they had their review and add four, that would put them 17 in Fiscal Year 2001 to try and get them maybe -- we'll try and schedule 18 that in late - Fiscal Year 2000. I see Ed shaking his head no. That's 19 a don't care. So that we can keep the level and the effort that we're 20 doing at about the same about eight or nine a year because of the impact 21 both on our staff and your staff and our state volunteers. It seems to 22 be about the right level.
23 What's not on here right now is Nebraska, Maine and Kansas.
24 Nebraska and Maine are in the process right now. Their draft reports 25 have just got out. The MRVs will be meeting. And until we have the
118 1 meeting and the final report is out and the MRB agrees on what the 2 sequences are, then I'll put those on there.
3 We're going to continue with what we're doing which is 4 sending out an all agreement state letter to you to tell you what our 5 schedule is for the next fiscal year. We look forward to your input. I 6 would again say and I said to several people here when we send that out, 7 please let us know if your legislature is meeting, or you have problems, 8 that's the time because we want your input so we can schedule it. And 9 so that it's worthwhile, and you have your staff there and we have our 10 people there, and we can make the best use of our time. Next slide, 11 please.
12 These are kind of our results, and this is the number of 13 IMPEPs we've done since the beginning of the program with North Carolina 14 as the first state under IMPEP to be reviewed. And New Mexico who got 15 their report out last. I think you can see that we had a rough start in 16 the first year or so with some timeliness issues.
17 Our goal is 104 days, and it was reemphasized to us last 18 year when we met with the chairman and discussed how well we were doing 19 under implementation. Massachusetts, which was the first one of this 20 fiscal year, right here. As you can see, we've met our goal of getting 21 the reports to you in time and hopefully that's assisted both you and us 22 in giving, you know, some of the past criticisms, well, we didn't have 23 the information in timely fashion to make any changes.
24 I'm probably going to drop next year -- the previous two 25 years off this slide because I think we've corrected what our problems are, and we're on track. Next slide.
119 1 Team training -- first of all, I want to thank all the 2 states again who participate, who sent team members, who participated in 3 MRB. I think one of the strengths of IMPEP is the state participation.
4 Presently, I have nine agreement states on for team members. I am 5 making a plea right now. I could use two to three more people to serve 6 who have licensing experience. If you want an opportunity to see the 7 country, have fun, new ideas, whatever the Navy's slogan is, please 8 contact Roland.
9 We are going to be having training in the second week -- the 10 first or second week in January, and it will be for new team members.
11 This will be the fourth training session we've had, and this one we're 12 going to focus just for the new team members. And then every two years, 13 having where we pull all the team members together.
14 It is a challenge because we do have a turnover both with 15 the state and the NRC people. So we're trying to not continually repeat 16 what people have been on for two and three and four years. But it is 17 important that the teams work together for consistency.
18 If you have any questions, I've listed the states who 19 presently participate as team members. I'd suggest you talk to their 20 management or if they're here, and I think people will be following me 21 who may address how worthwhile it is, I think, for your state to 22 participate on the teams. Okay, next slide.
23 One of the things that occurred when we did the interim 24 implementation of IMPEP was the comment that four years was too long to 25 go without NRC, and we instituted last year annual meetings in between IMPEP meetings. We did 18 of these and then we stepped back and looked
120 1 at it. And we felt that that was probably too frequent to come back.
2 There's a lot of resources, impact on you, especially, again, if the 3 program -- there are a lot of ways of communicating. This is just one 4 of them.
5 We did send out and propose, you know, going to periodic 6 meetings, and that's where we are right now. We're between 12 and 16 7 months, depending on when your next IMPEP frequency is scheduled. And 8 that procedure was implemented and sent out to everyone in September of 9 1998.
10 We are looking at the action items that came out of all 11 those annual meetings last year and tracking them and making sure that 12 all the information and all the concerns that you did raise that we get 13 feedback to you one way or the other to bring you closer. Next slide, 14 please.
15 It's kind of a summary of what we think we've accomplished 16 so far. We believe through IMPEP we've increased the assurance of 17 adequate programs in both NRC regions and agreement states. I believe 18 that it's contributed to the national program with the involvement of 19 both the states and NRC working together. I'm looking at everybody's 20 program.
21 We're now timely in our issuance of reports. Next slide, 22 please. One of the issues that came out of last year's meeting when we 23 had the session Steve led, and I'll talk a little bit about that, too, 24 was some enhancements we could do. We did take a look, and we have 25 issued a procedure for the management review board that took into
121 1 account some of the concerns and the inconsistencies we were having in 2 between each MRB meeting, and we got that issued.
3 The next bullet is a management directive that deals with 4 the actual qualification for IMPEP members. And we've got it completed.
5 It's now entered into the NRC system. And I'll address it a little 6 later on. The next bullet, we've looked at our program based on both 7 the information I gathered last year when I was here with you and 8 stepping back and looking at the things we could see that we could 9 enhance the program.
10 We have a tendency to call this the low hanging fruit, or we 11 saw those things we could fix and make the program better, and we did an 12 analysis and a report. And I have an action item and some other things 13 you're going to see coming out. A lot of them are enhancements of the 14 procedures that the team members are using so we get consistency. Next 15 bullet, please.
16 One of our areas where we still need additional future work, 17 and this is part of what Steve told you is we are going to be looking 18 more at our non-common performance indicator and looking at the issue of 19 prescriptive versus performance-based evaluations.
20 Some of you have experienced some of the differences when we 21 have technical expertise from NMSS versus generalists doing the reviews 22 of some of the non-common indicators. Part of this whole relook at the 23 program will be the evaluation of the SS&D Program, the way we look at 24 an area where you have one licensee, a low-level waste licensee. So we 25 will be taking -- that's our next iteration is to take a look at that
122 1 and see what's the best way to do it, and we will inform you of the 2 results and get your input.
3 The implementation of the IMPEP Qualification Management 4 Directive -- as soon as we do get that finalized, then all those team 5 members and the NRC will go through the qualification. And this 6 document was sent out for comment to the states. It will mean that 7 certain people will be qualified to do certain indicators just the way 8 you're licensed -- licensed people are qualified to do license, or 9 inspection people are qualified to do inspections.
10 We will look to the state also -- the states who 11 participated in IMPEP to have people who participate who also have an 12 equivalent-type qualification if they're going to be reviewing 13 inspection and licensing.
14 I do that now in an informal method. I know what people's 15 expertise are. I don't mixed it. We don't try and have a team that has 16 all inspectors so that nobody's really ever done licensing so that we 17 have a balance. But we've gone to a more formalized system.
18 One of the issues that came up -- next bullet -- is 19 re-examining the use of the word "suggestion" versus "recommendations" 20 that we have in your IMPEP reports. Especially as we move more to 21 performance base, a lot of the suggestions really are performance based.
22 They really are such that a more careful look at it, they can be covered 23 in conversations with the state. And for a lot of state people, we get 24 -- they don't seem to treat the recommendations and suggestions any 25 different.
123 1 So we are going to be looking at that, coming back out to 2 you, asking your input as to whether we even should carry those in the 3 reports. All right, next slide.
4 To talk a little bit more, when I come back up on good 5 practices. We do report to the Commission once a year on the status 6 which will we'll be doing in 1999. And this year, you will be seeing a 7 lot of procedures coming at you. I believe right now you have the one 8 on the allegation and incidence indicator for comment. We're going to 9 finalize those procedures this year. These are the procedures for the 10 team members to use when they come out and do the reviews. And a lot of 11 the comments, again, that we got last year are factored into those 12 procedures on enhancing the process.
13 That's really all I have at this point in time.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Could we -- I take it that Steve Gavitt 15 and Ray are going to give us a brief impression of their experiences.
16 And then let's have questions on IMPEP generally before we go into the 17 next panel. So Steve, do you want to go, and then we'll go to Ray.
18 GAVITT: Okay. New York State had its first IMPEP review 19 this year. In addition, I also participated on an IMPEP panel that 20 reviewed an agreement state. As an agreement state with four separate 21 regulatory programs, obviously our IMPEP review was not one that -- a 22 common one.
23 Our IMPEP review period started in January and ended in 24 April. We then had a separate close out meeting with the NRC management 25 in May. We had two MRB meetings, and there are still some issues that
124 1 have to be resolved with seal, source and device items. So it was a 2 considerable effort on both the NRC and our staff's time to go through.
3 But I'll give you my impressions from our agency on how it 4 worked out. We had 14 members come in for a week. They were there 5 first thing Monday morning. Prior to that, one of the team members had 6 accompanied four of our inspectors on field inspections. I thought that 7 they did a good job in terms of following the IMPEP process and what was 8 laid out in the IMPEP manual. Dennis Sollenberger was a team leader, 9 and Duncan White was a team member. Those two team members were on all 10 the New York teams, and I thought they did a good job of looking at it 11 from a performance-based inspection and keeping the team on track and 12 coming back and asking us questions if they found something that they 13 didn't understand. And I thought that was positive.
14 Before -- let me just switch now to as a team member. I was 15 on a team with Jim Myers and Duncan White, and I thought that for me it 16 was a good learning experience to see not only how the IMPEP -- just 17 another lesson in the IMPEP process and how that works, but also to see 18 how another agreement state runs its program.
19 I thought that it was good that Jim Myers who set the tone 20 in saying that we're going to review this program; we're going to look 21 at it from a performance-based perspective and not get tied up in picky 22 items and getting too prescriptive.
23 And as a result, I thought it was a positive experience not 24 only for the team, but also for the state. And I would encourage other 25 agreement state staff to participate in the process.
125 1 My comments on recommendations for improvement -- I thought 2 that overall, especially for New York State, it was a pretty extensive 3 process. I haven't added up how many person days it took in both the 4 NRC and our staff time, but it was considerable.
5 And when you look at what the NRC is required to do in terms 6 of providing assurances on adequacy and compatibility, I wonder how far 7 does this review need to go in terms of level of detail review of the 8 Agreement States Program.
9 Compatibility -- that can be done. They don't even have to 10 come to our offices. Just look at our regulations, look at our license 11 conditions. And that can be done -- that can actually be done 12 separately. In terms of adequacy, it's not quite as clear cut in how 13 far do you need to go to determine whether or not a state is adequate.
14 There were at least 50 files that were documented that were 15 reviewed, and they were going into some detail. And while we do 16 appreciate the suggestions in the review, I used to wonder is that level 17 of detail actually necessary to say the state is adequate.
18 I mean, this is the same type -- this IMPEP process is the 19 same process that is used for NRC regional offices. And we're not an 20 NRC regional office. So there is certainly an impression that it's kind 21 of like a micro management of our programs, and maybe it can be reduced 22 somewhat in terms of, you know, we're looking at this from a 23 performance-based perspective.
24 The other comment I would make is that I think that looking 25 at some of the other IMPEP documents, there is some inconsistencies, I believe, and I'm not sure if that is a result of the IMPEP team
126 1 membership make up or what. I said I wasn't going to mention other New 2 York State agencies. But I will have to point out that there was a 3 major issue with the New York State Department of Labor. Rita Aldrich is 4 not here, couldn't make this meeting. But her seal, source and device 5 program, their program reviewed one device in a review period, a static 6 eliminator, a small activity source. Her staff had gone through the 7 training. They followed the NRC guidance, the checklist.
8 But yet, it was a major focus of the IMPEP process. It took 9 up -- they had a person to come in to spend the better part of a week.
10 It took up most of the time at the meeting. And that issue is still not 11 resolved. And we're at a loss as how it can be done -- why in New York 12 State why is the focus so much on this one device, and yet we're calling 13 this performance based.
14 But yet, when I was -- the team I was on reviewed a state 15 that had pretty much exactly the same thing, and we found them 16 satisfactory because it wasn't really an issue. So I think that there 17 needs to be some focus on how these reviews are conducted and looking at 18 it truly from a performance-based perspective and not get tied up in 19 little issues.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Steve. And while we're going to 21 Ray, everybody should just keep in mind are there other types of 22 recommendations for improvement of the IMPEP Program. And specifically 23 the points that Steve raised about is there a way to make this less 24 resource intensive and still accomplish its purpose, and how do we deal 25 with the consistency in reviews from program to program. Ray?
127 1 PARIS: Okay. We were reviewed in August. But I think to 2 step back a little bit, I believe the IMPEP process is basically one 3 that is -- well, it's outstanding in my estimation. It provides an 4 opportunity to participate in a process, and there's two ways that 5 states can participate early on, and that is by being a member of or a 6 reviewer or party to the management review board.
7 I was that for about a year and had the opportunity to sit 8 on that board and to review how the teams themselves would submit 9 reports. So when it came time for our review, there were no surprises.
10 I was aware of what the MRB was looking at. I was aware of what teams 11 were looking at. So that gave me a great perspective on what to 12 anticipate.
13 The other way of participating for states is to have, as 14 Steve mentioned, have people being on the actual IMPEP teams. So as a 15 team member, a member of my staff was on a review team for Arkansas, I 16 believe. And they brought back perspectives on how really the team 17 functions as a unit. And then that was brought back to me. We 18 discussed that and said, well, so we have no surprises when the team 19 came on what to expect.
20 And so there's -- I guess you were given the answers to the 21 exam basically before they came. So there were no surprises. So I 22 think that is a good and excellent opportunity of the IMPEP process that 23 was not there under the other criteria.
24 Another thing is that when the team did find something with 25 us, well, it was our initial inspections. And so we had about half our initial inspections done within six months, but we had about 95 percent
128 1 of them done within seven months, and all of them were done within 2 eight.
3 But under the IMPEP criteria, they still needed to have us 4 -- give us a finding of satisfactory with recommendations for 5 improvement. Well, they were tied to their directive in that finding.
6 But when I came to the management review board, expressed and gave my 7 justification on the basic -- the reasons why and it was not a big 8 health and safety impact, that finding was changed to satisfactory. So 9 there is that opportunity to present your case. The board listens. And 10 maybe they haven't agreed in all cases, but in this case, they did.
11 But it gives that opportunity to say, hey, we think we can 12 regulate our program in a health and safety fashion, and they listened.
13 So it's basically a good participation process. There shouldn't be any 14 negative feeling. I don't believe I had one negative comment from staff 15 on the process when the team was there. They're thorough. As Steve 16 mentioned, there are four people who come in and look you inside out for 17 a week. It is time consuming. It takes staff time to dig out all this 18 stuff. But it's still a good accountability.
19 I wish there were similar to that for our X-Ray Program or 20 Emergency Preparedness Group, something like that. So it's a good 21 process to go through. I would agree with the recommendation to not 22 have the suggestions in the formal report. I believe -- because what 23 happens is that when I address the findings with my administrator, we 24 went over every one of them. And in the eyes of an administrator, a 25 suggestion and a recommendation is the same thing. So I had to put as
129 1 much justification on what I was or wasn't going to do on a suggestion 2 as I did a recommendation.
3 So I believe a good way to have those suggestions still come 4 out is to have the team present those suggestions on the exit interview 5 with the staff or even a letter from the IMPEP leader to the program 6 director saying these are some suggestions that the team found rather 7 than putting it in the formal process.
8 I don't know how other states do it, but I have to go to my 9 administration and explain everything that the team found. And whenever 10 there's a suggestion, it's the same as a finding of some kind. I say 11 why. They say, well, why don't you do this. So I would agree with 12 that. It's a good process.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Ray. In the interest of time, 14 let's have some discussion here of fundamental problems perhaps with 15 what some of the material Kathy had presented, the recommendations for 16 change. And if there's some clarifying questions, perhaps you can find 17 those out during the breaks or whatever. But who would like to go 18 first? We have Don raising his hand out there. Did you have a point to 19 make, Don?
20 MR. BUNN: Don Bunn from California. And I guess this is 21 the way we address the group is to come up here. So this is what I was 22 trying to get your attention for, Chip. Having served on IMPEP for 23 three years, a veteran of many battles. As you can see, I've been 24 bruised up a couple times. I have just one suggestion from what Kathy 25 said is that she would eliminate the experienced people from coming to
130 1 the training each year, and I think that might not help continuity for 2 the teams.
3 It always helps to have someone who's been through these 4 before there with you at the training, and I think that's important.
5 And I'd suggest that you keep it like it's been.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Don.
7 MS. SCHNEIDER: I may not have been clear. Kathy Schneider.
8 What we're planning, Don, is every two years bringing everybody together 9 and then a session separate for the new people. And then on the off 10 years, a session for just the new people. Better use of our resources.
11 And I've had a lot of people who've been through the training several 12 times saying I know what to do for this indicator. I don't want to hear 13 it again.
14 MR. BUNN: But they help the new ones --
15 MS. SCHNEIDER: I understand. We're going to see, again, 16 you know, we kind of pilot everything at IMPEP. We're going to try it 17 this year and see how it works. One of the things I didn't mention that 18 I want to try and do because I didn't want to get it down in a 19 transcript anywhere, but I'll mention it now since you raised it.
20 We're going to start trying to send some quarterly 21 information to all the team members for this years of things we're 22 discovering or enhancements or things we need the teams to mention, and 23 then probably teleconferencing with my teams. And I talked to my 24 management about it, and the regional state agreements officer seemed to 25 think that's a worthwhile thing to do also.
So we're also going to try that, too, this year.
131 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks very much, Kathy. Concerns 2 about the IMPEP process around the table. Ray, do you want to make a 3 statement here while people are thinking about this?
4 MR. PARIS: It isn't a concern, but it's just another 5 suggestion that maybe if the Office of State Programs could summarize 6 some of the common findings that is found among the states and 7 distribute that, it would be a good heads up. And even on non -- well, 8 you have --
9 MS. SCHNEIDER: As I said, you're leading into the next 10 session. But we did do that last year. I don't know if you -- when we 11 sent the good practice paper out in I believe it was November/October of 12 last year. There was a second two-page report which I called trends, 13 and what we did is every place where there was more than one 14 recommendation in any state, I kind of generalized it, and I'm going to 15 do that again this year.
16 And that hopefully will give you -- maybe one of the 17 questions I'll ask from you is was that useful to you so I continue it, 18 and should I continue to make it the total summary or just over this 19 fiscal year so I carry forth.
20 One of the ones is the initial inspection seems to 21 continually be popping up. The tracking and performance your initial 22 inspections within the six months.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
24 MS. SCHNEIDER: But if you found that useful, please let me 25 know. And I am planning on putting that out again.
132 1 MR. CAMERON: A lot of people are shaking their heads 2 affirmatively on the usefulness thing. Ed?
3 MR. BAILEY: Ed Bailey from California. Just a quick 4 comment. I really hope you don't go to an extended interval for the 5 visits. I think we deserve a visit of at least once a year. I will be 6 happy to trade with anyone that's getting it done in 1999 for 2000. I 7 think the review should not be more than two years apart. I still 8 believe that.
9 And as an agreement state, I think NRC can afford to come 10 see us one day a year.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Ed.
12 MS. SCHNEIDER: Yeah, I would say, Ed, that the annual 13 meetings are not the only interactions that we have. We continue to 14 keep, you know, communications open. Your RSAO will be out there. You 15 have the ASPO you work with. But the agreement state project officer 16 out of the Office of State Programs. So that, you know, there are a lot 17 of mechanisms.
18 But you know, the period of time in between the IMPEPs to go 19 over the IMPEP-type issues, we are going to go to this periodic basis at 20 this point in time. And we'll take a look at it to see how it's 21 working. And we try not to carve everything in stone in IMPEP.
22 MR. CAMERON: Ed?
23 MR. BAILEY: Well, we're just feeling like a step child. I 24 mean, you take our office away, and then you tell us you're not going to 25 come see us.
[Laughter.]
133 1 MS. SCHNEIDER: Just one more response. There were a lot of 2 people who didn't feel that the annual meetings were that useful when we 3 asked for comments. There were a lot of states that didn't feel the 4 annual meetings were as useful, that it was too frequent. So this is 5 one of the few times you were in a minority. I know you're never in 6 that situation.
7 MR. CAMERON: And I think that before we go on to the next 8 panel which I'd like to try to get in before the break. I think there 9 is going to be a 12-step program meeting for the stepchildren of IMPEP 10 tonight. It's after the reception.
11 [Laughter.]
12 MR. CAMERON: Kathy?
13 MS. SCHNEIDER: Did you want me to fill out--
14 MR. CAMERON: I think everybody has got their concerns out.
15 So --
16 MS. SCHNEIDER: Okay, this is going to be real short because 17 the good practices. A little history. When we started with the pilot 18 program and actually what we did was when the team that did the pilot 19 which was myself, George Pangburn, Jack Corner, Scott Moore, we went to 20 the two regions in the three states.
21 One of the things we found when we went out in 1994 was 22 there were some new things being done in the states that, as we went 23 from state to state and as we were piloting it, we told the MRB that, 24 you know, Utah was doing TQM. Illinois had some neat ways of tracking 25 things. The regions had done a few things.
134 1 Hugh Thompson directed us to put together a good practice 2 paper, which we did, based on what we did in the pilot and then the 3 regional reviews in 1994 and 1995. We're making that an annual event.
4 These good practices are things that your review teams come out and 5 during the review they identify as something that would enhance a good 6 feature of your program and that should be shared on a nationwide basis 7 both from the regions, from the agreement states and then we disseminate 8 it to anybody who wants a copy of it. The report we put out last year 9 actually identified ten items -- good practice items. A variety of 10 things. And since we have -- we're running short of time, I'm not going 11 to go through them at this point.
12 This year, I'm getting ready to put it out again. We've got 13 ten items already identified since this -- it will be from April of 1997 14 to probably we'll try and include Maine and Nebraska before we send it 15 out. They're the next two states that I have MRBs planned for, and it 16 will finish out the fiscal year.
17 I think it's one of the good parts of IMPEP that we can 18 share this information with everybody. There is a lot of innovation 19 going on there. And so I don't steal the thunder, we have, I believe, 20 two states who it was identified in their review that they did self 21 audits before the IMPEP.
22 If you haven't gotten a good practice paper, let me know, 23 and I'll send it to you or tell you where it is on the home page because 24 it's on the home page, and you can get it there. And as I said, who was 25 it -- Ray stole my thunder. I was going to talk a little bit about the trends to see if it was something that was useful for the states, and if
135 1 you wanted me to continue with that. But I saw enough heads nodding, 2 and I will do it this year. Any feedback, I'd appreciate it as you 3 prepare for your IMPEPs coming. Okay, that's all I have.
4 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Kathy. Let's go to David and 5 then to Kirk and hear about self-audits, and then open it up for 6 questions and comments. David?
7 MR. SNELLING: In the interest of time, I won't show all the 8 40 slides that I had. We had our IMPEP in February and March of this 9 year, and we came out with all areas being satisfactory. We did have 10 about eight or nine little Rs, and I guess the little Rs are the 11 suggestions. They were called recommendations, and now we call them the 12 big R and the little R. We got a few little Rs, and we had one good 13 practices, as was said, and that was the self-evaluation program that we 14 put together.
15 It was a fairly rigorous effort that we went through prior 16 to the IMPEP evaluation. And coming out of our own self-evaluation, we 17 fixed some problems. We identified some immediate corrective actions.
18 We identified some longer term corrective actions.
19 And we fixed those, or we address them. And so we were asked 20 to discuss this today. And really self-evaluation is nothing more than 21 an ongoing process. You know, it's something that you should be doing 22 all the time. And when you have an evaluation like this, yeah, I think 23 it's very appropriate to go in and take a real hard look at yourself to 24 make sure that you are doing things right. It's really the right thing 25 to do in our world today of what was said earlier, reorganizing America
136 1 and limited resources. Those kinds of things, it's the right thing to 2 do.
3 Being relatively new and being this was our first -- well, 4 my being new in our program and this was our first IMPEP, I really 5 wanted to go in and take a hard look at what we were doing, what our 6 program was all about, find out all the things that are down in the 7 fourth drawer in the file cabinet, you know, way in the back, what's 8 there -- what's really there.
9 And so we did that. And coming out of this, you know, the 10 philosophy that I think that should underlie all of this to improve the 11 program, yeah, we need to pass the inspection, pass the evaluation. But 12 bottom line, what are we doing? We're trying to improve what we do and 13 how we do it.
14 And secondly, I don't like unwelcome surprises. You know, I 15 didn't want any surprises coming up and biting me during the IMPEP 16 evaluation. I felt that we, our staff, needed to know everything about 17 our program, and that we didn't need some visitors coming in telling us 18 what was wrong with our program. We should already know that.
19 And I think we did. I think as a result of our effort, we 20 knew what was wrong with our program. But at the same time, we also 21 found out some good stuff. You know, everything's not always bad.
22 There's some good stuff out there, too. You do good work, and that 23 should be recognized, and too often it's not. You know, you've got all 24 these recommendations and all these deficiencies. Well, talk about the 25 good stuff, too.
137 1 So bottom line, we did our self-evaluation to improve our 2 program as well as get ready for IMPEP, to identify program strengths 3 and weaknesses, to initiate some corrective actions on those weaknesses, 4 and to implement changes.
5 Out of all that, we improved awareness. We improved our 6 program, and I think we improved our people performance. It's a 7 performance-based evaluation. And I think out of this, our people did 8 improve. The process was very structured, done by the most 9 knowledgeable people in the program. And I've got a whole list of 10 things here that we learned out of it. But a couple of important 11 things.
12 Evaluators must be candid, you know. They must not hide 13 that file that's back there in that fourth drawer. They've got to be 14 candid, and they've got to be proactive and aggressive. I found in one 15 particular case that wasn't really the case -- that I had to dig a 16 little bit to find the true status of something.
17 And so I think that we have to establish a culture within 18 our organizations of reporting things, of reporting problems, of telling 19 it like it is, as was said by the Commissioner this morning. Stand up 20 and say, hey, this is wrong. I identified this. And now we're going to 21 go fix it. They need to stand up and do that. And you have to -- in 22 some cases, you may have to foster that culture within your 23 organization.
24 Initiate corrective actions. You know, doing all this, it's 25 not worth a flick if you don't initiate your corrective actions. If you can't fix it right now, then get a plan going where you can fix it.
138 1 Assign somebody to do the work. Assign due dates to it, and follow up 2 on that.
3 We have an internal action item tracking system. Jerry will 4 tell you the real stuff about the internal action -- the action item 5 tracking system because people don't like to get the pink sheets. But 6 yet it makes somebody responsible for it, it makes them accountable for 7 doing it.
8 All of this is to improve the program, and that's the effort 9 in which we undertook our self-evaluation. And I agree with what Ray 10 said. I thought IMPEP was a good process. In my former life, we had 11 INPO evaluations, you know, and it's very, very similar. I think 12 Aaron's very familiar with that.
13 I think it's a good process. I think we ought to do it. I 14 also agree with Ed. I think you ought to come around more than once 15 every three, four years. Come around a little more often. We'd like to 16 see you.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Dave. And would it be useful if 18 we made copies of your signs for people with some of the more detailed 19 ones.
20 MR. SNELLING: If anybody wants it, I have copies of the 21 process that we used. I have copies of the forms that we used, and we 22 documented all this stuff. Please document it. If you don't document 23 it, you didn't do it. You know, it's that simple. Just like a 24 radiation survey. If you don't document it, you didn't do it. So 25 document it, and then follow up on it.
MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Dave. Kirk?
139 1 MR. WHATLEY: I'll do mine from up here since I didn't have 2 a mike and last. The day before yesterday in the comic section of the 3 newspaper, Dennis the Menace comic, if you read that, he was in school, 4 he had done something bad. And the teacher said go to the back of the 5 line. He said, "Well, I can't. Somebody's already back there."
6 [Laughter.]
7 MR. WHATLEY: So that's where I am right here. Everything I 8 had to say has already been said, I think. And I'm in the back of the 9 line, and nowhere to go really. I sort of feel like that little boy who 10 went to school and was asked to stand up before the whole class and tell 11 the class why the teacher likes him the best. You know, you don't 12 really want to do that. And I'm not here to do that, and I'm only here 13 because Roland -- I read on a piece of paper where Roland told me to be 14 here, and I didn't know why.
15 [Laughter.]
16 MR. WHATLEY: You know, many times problems not related to 17 -- we have problems many times that are simply related to the fact that 18 we, being different, and we choose to do them different ways than 19 somebody else chose to do them.
20 I remember in college, I had -- in a genetics class on the 21 final exam, a professor asked why do baby monkeys have long tails. And 22 the only answer he would accept -- I remember writing a half page of 23 paper on that. And the only answer he would accept was because the 24 mommy and daddy had long tails, and that was exactly right.
25 [Laughter.]
140 1 MR. WHATLEY: We sort of lose historical perspective 2 sometimes. We do things in Alabama the way we do them because that's 3 the only way we know how to do them. I mean, you know, we used to --
4 and this is one thing I miss about the old NRC reviews that I do, having 5 been around a while.
6 I think one of the things I miss from the current IMPEP 7 reviews and the ones from perhaps the last few years is that we used to 8 get a lot of information that was shared about good things from other 9 states and what other states would do. And I don't think we get so much 10 of that any more, and I sort of miss that.
11 And I'm certainly reluctant to stand up here in front of you 12 and talk about good practices we do because I could learn a lot from any 13 of you there. And in fact, we do -- most of the things we do have 14 probably been -- came from you all. Shucks, we fly the Texas flag in 15 our office, you know.
16 [Laughter.]
17 MR. WHATLEY: And got signs, "Don't mess with Texas" up all 18 around there, you know. We've borrowed and plagiarized a lot of things 19 that you do that are good. So I'm not up here to brag on what we do by 20 any means.
21 Roland sent me a piece of paper, and I saw my name on it.
22 And he said he wanted me to send him back a summary of what I wanted to 23 talk about. And I called him and asked him what did he want me to talk 24 about. I was the one he was talking about this morning probably on 25 that, and that was in good humor, Roland. We were laughing and kidding about that.
141 1 But you said that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, out of 2 all the IMPEP reviews, had identified two states that had one item of 3 good practice each -- two of all the IMPEP reviews, and we were one of 4 them. And I sort of wasn't sure that I wasn't still dreaming by hearing 5 that. And but I want you all to know here today that we didn't try for 6 a good star or anything like that.
7 [Laughter.]
8 MR. WHATLEY: We just didn't do that. So don't you -- I 9 want to emphasize that now. So don't all of you go away from here for 10 that. But Jim MacLeish from our staff -- I say ours, is it ours --
11 volunteered to serve on NRC's IMPEP review teams. And as a result, he 12 was trained in those reviews. And Jim participated in the Kentucky 13 review and in the New York review.
14 And that was -- you know, Alabama and New York, that's a 15 long ways, folks.
16 [Laughter.]
17 MR. WHATLEY: Jim talked about riding that subway at nine 18 o'clock and things like that. I'm not sure he's going back or going to 19 volunteer again this year.
20 [Laughter.]
21 MR. WHATLEY: But he had a good time and learned a lot from 22 them, and we did, too. He learned how the teams worked and, perhaps 23 more important, about how some of the teams think. And there is a 24 difference, and that's true with all of us on how we interpret things 25 and how we do things.
142 1 You know, in school if a teacher gives us 40 problems to 2 work in a math class and someone tells us that a final exam is going to 3 be taken from 30 of those problems, we're sort of foolish if we don't 4 work those problems before the day of the exam.
5 And if we wait until the night before the exam, we're 6 foolish there also. And that's sort of what we learned from Jim's work 7 on the IMPEP review team. We were there, and as David said, we had a 8 pretty good idea what was going to be asked. And we didn't wait until 9 the last minute. In fact, this was not last year, but it goes way back 10 further than that when we got that. We started looking at ourselves, 11 what we were doing, and how we were doing and so on.
12 We IMPEP'd ourselves. I told somebody yesterday we've been 13 FEMA'd and whipped and IMPEP'd in the last few years. And so -- but it 14 goes with part of doing the job. The questionnaire was simply given to 15 the staff a long time before IMPEP, and each staff person was in charge 16 of a particular program and took that, and they reviewed their own 17 program in light of those questions and everything, and really took a 18 look at themselves.
19 We found things that we needed to improve on, things we 20 needed to correct. We did correct some. NRC did choose to have some 21 comments about some of the things we had corrected, but they were 22 complimentary that we did find those things ourselves, and that we had 23 corrected them before they came. So that was the intent.
24 Let's see, go fast here. One of the good practices not 25 identified -- and I think all of you know that, but I want to mention it
143 1 here today is that management has to surround itself by people a lot 2 smarter than they are, right. We do.
3 And our guys in our office, the stability of a staff is an 4 important factor here, too. I think that's a good practice, too, if you 5 have some way to maintain that. And Aubrey, to your credit, all of our 6 staff and our program today were there when you were there. That was 7 six years ago. So thanks, Aubrey.
8 Our folks has just -- good practice just simply boils down 9 to nothing in the world but knowing your job and getting it done.
10 That's the bottom line. And that's what our people did. Good staff 11 makes good practice. And if any of us don't have a staff that has 12 strong character or good work ethic dedication to the job and pride of 13 workmanship, all of us who are managers are in trouble.
14 And Jim MacLeish and David Walt and the rest of my folks on 15 our staff have those good characteristics. And you know, IMPEP really 16 just showed us that if that was the standard, then we were pleased with 17 it.
18 Our staff did not get upset because NRC found some things 19 wrong. They got upset because we hadn't found them wrong and hadn't 20 done something about it. In a real way, we're all parts of all those 21 who have gone on before us. We've had strong leaders to set examples 22 for us. And Aubrey, this is probably going to embarrass you, but I want 23 to thank you right here before this group for all your work that you did 24 with us, and we're doing things basically the same way that you did when 25 you were there. None of it's different. And if you came back, it'd be the same. So thanks for that.
144 1 Also, it helps to have a regional NRC person who's been 2 around awhile, who's had stability and somebody's always cared in that 3 respect, too, and that's Richard Woodruff as far as we're concerned.
4 The team was -- our team was composed of Dick Blend, Joe 5 Pechico, Richard Woodruff and these guys were very, very nice to us, 6 cooperative, a good experience from it. Bill Silver from Texas came and 7 participated with us. He was the state person on the team. We learned 8 -- Bill helped us a lot.
9 Steve Collins on the management review board. They were all 10 very cooperative and helpful, and we thank you for that. We passed 11 IMPEP. I guess something was good. One suggestion I'd have. The IMPEP 12 review team is trained, and they're given a lot of material on how to 13 interpret things, exactly how to give a good evaluation on a particular 14 area or whatever. And I'm not sure that all that literature and all 15 that training material that's provided to the IMPEP teams should not 16 also be given to the program directors, and particularly those of us who 17 are interested in doing our own IMPEP program before the NRC gets there.
18 Thanks.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Kirk. I think we'd all like to keep 20 you up there to keep us laughing. That was great. And I guess 21 questions for David or Kirk on self-audits, suggestions on how to make 22 the good practices report more useful. In that regard, Kirk, you raised 23 one point about the fact that you don't get all the good information 24 that you used to before. Is there any way that that can be remedied 25 through the IMPEP process.
All right. Anybody else?
145 1 MS. SCHNEIDER: Kathy Schneider. I do want to say, Kirk, 2 that we are, as we're doing the procedures, and like you say, there's 3 all this guidance that we started when we went to the pilot in the 4 interim implementation. It is our intent that those procedures where 5 we're documenting everything will go out to everybody for your comment.
6 We'll finalize them, and then you'll get copies of it so that all the 7 guidance my teams have, the states will have, too, so there'll be no 8 surprises.
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Kathy. We have a comment from 10 Aaron. Oh, sorry.
11 MR. PADGETT: I'd like to pick up on the one comment about 12 the representative from the region in having a good experience there and 13 having that person available and answering questions and so forth.
14 We're in the same region, had the same person, and I would just like to 15 second that.
16 This is in no way trying to put anyone else down. I have no 17 experience with the other regional reps. It is just a bit of a concern 18 to me, though, and I'm not quite sure how to rectify this. I'll just 19 throw this out.
20 That IMPEP is a very good process. We were the first one in 21 it, and we liked the process. We think it has a lot of potential, and 22 we hope that it continues to show that potential and the realization of 23 some of the potential. Pardon me.
24 But I also note that it takes a lot of time from that 25 regional rep, and he's out of the office a lot. And a lot of times now when you call, the regional rep's on the road. He's not available to
146 1 you. And certainly when he comes back in, the phone calls come back.
2 The contacts are still made.
3 But we're losing a little something there in this, and I'm 4 not quite sure even how to address it, much less how to make it right.
5 But it's something that you need to take a look at and see is there 6 something here that we need to maybe fix somehow.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks for that suggestion, Aaron.
8 Let's take a break, come back at 3:05. We have a couple more topics to 9 go here. So we'll see you back here at 3:05.
10 [Recess.]
11 MR. CAMERON: And then Joe is going to also introduce the 12 subject of the NMED Program. I keep saying Joe is going to do this, but 13 -- oh, there he is. Great. I thought maybe you run out on us. And 14 then we're going to have John Greeves to talk about an extremely 15 important rulemaking that the Commission is undertaking on what's known 16 as clearance. I guess not better known any more as recycle, but it 17 sounds better for some reason. And Trish Holahan is with us who's on 18 that project.
19 Okay, Joe, are you ready? Rosette, are you trying to get a 20 message? Oh, and I'm sorry, yeah, Sam Pettijohn, thank you, is going to 21 roll on right after Joe. Joe's going to give him an introduction.
22 Okay, Joe.
23 MR. KLINGER: Well, I kind of feel like Kirk Whatley now 24 because -- or like Dennis the Menace, I'm following Kirk, and it's 25 really about the same thing, you know. So much of my information that I was going to discuss has already been discussed. So I'm going to cut
147 1 short my first presentation because I want to talk about something else 2 a little bit later.
3 So I was one of those surprise presenters. So I have the 4 surprise presentation.
5 [Laughter.]
6 MR. KLINGER: But that will come after this. Okay.
7 Agreement states sealed source and device evaluation issues. We've been 8 talking about the wonderful IMPEP experience, and we in Illinois enjoyed 9 the IMPEP experience. It's a very good process, and we've heard all 10 these great things.
11 One aspect about the process was a little disheartening, and 12 that was the sealed source and device portion of it. But let's quickly 13 think about why we review sealed sources and devices. It's really to 14 protect public health and safety by preventing inadequate sealed sources 15 and devices from being distributed and used by the public.
16 And then we set up this great registry that we have. Now 17 this is real important. I remember in Texas we had this one firm that I 18 think is still in business that wanted to come by and show us their 19 prototype X-ray fluorescence analyzer. And I didn't go to the meeting, 20 but it was like two offices down from me. About 15 minutes into it, 21 they were demonstrating it. And I saw the person running down the hall 22 with this portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer with smoke pouring out of 23 it. He said, "I'll see you in about three weeks."
24 [Laughter.]
25 MR. KLINGER: So he had to make some changes. And those can't happen. You want to catch that before you see your regulator, but
148 1 that doesn't always happen either. So we have to be very diligent, and 2 we have to be able to review these sealed sources and devices because 3 they're being distributed throughout the world.
4 Okay. So -- and what does the registry do? It helps the 5 license reviewers license these things when people want to use them in 6 their state. And plus, whenever you find a source -- and we're finding 7 more and more of these sources out there and devices that are being 8 discarded, and that's something I want to talk about later, you can use 9 this sealed source and device registry to try and identify what this 10 thing is. So they're very helpful.
11 Okay, a bit about the background also. We've seen major 12 improvements in the whole registry. You can remember in the past -- oh, 13 this is the same thing. The old things -- Earl Wright, I think, was the 14 NRC person that did so many of these evaluations. I've seen his name on 15 so many of the old ones. And typically, they were about two pages in 16 length. They were rather non-standardized, and you know, they were very 17 limited on how helpful they were. So over the past decade at least, 18 maybe the past couple of decades, we've really improved the process. We 19 have very informative sheets, very good diagrams. They're very 20 informative. It has all the limitations and considerations for use that 21 help the license reviewers, and all the states know how to license 22 these.
23 So it's a very important function. We appreciate that. By 24 the way, as far as the registry being on the Internet, that's a 25 wonderful improvement, I think, and I think kudos to whoever put that on there. I think Jim Myers. So it's very, very nice to have that.
149 1 Okay, now, some of the issues. I said it was a little 2 disheartening, a little frustrating part of the IMPEP review. Now this 3 was just an observation, a feeling. When did this happen? Professional 4 engineers, good; health physicists, no good. It was just a feeling we 5 got. And no one said you had to be an engineer, but I'll guarantee you 6 every one of you that have been through this with sealed source and 7 device evaluation portion, you definitely came away feeling inadequate 8 because you were not a professional engineer.
9 And I almost felt like I had to apologize for not being a 10 professional engineer, and that's not right. We've been doing these --
11 Ed agrees, yeah. Ed is a professional engineer as well. A little 12 biased.
13 And it certainly would help. But do you have to be a 14 professional engineer to do these? I hope not because non-professional 15 engineers have been doing these evaluations for decades, and I think 16 they've been doing a fine job.
17 So is it a requirement? No one's really said it's a 18 requirement. I'm just saying that's a feeling that we get. And it came 19 across loud and clear. And maybe it's because the people that were 20 conducting that portion of the IMPEP review were engineers, so a little 21 slanted probably there.
22 So it's something -- the training. I heard from a couple of 23 states where they said that because they were non-engineers that they 24 went to the workshops that that would be adequate. That would make your 25 people qualified even though many of those had been doing it for years anyway.
150 1 And so then they went, and they still didn't feel like the 2 people were qualified after they went to the workshops. So I think we 3 need to get a real clear understanding of the training required and 4 what's acceptable because there's some really fine people who've been 5 doing a great job that they're suspect because they're not a 6 professional engineer.
7 And we do have engineers available. In Illinois, the review 8 team was satisfied because whenever we felt like we needed an 9 engineering decision, some review by an engineer, we had a -- and we had 10 it tracked by documents, we would refer it to our engineer group, and 11 they would review it and they would come back to us with their 12 engineering decision and stuff.
13 But it doesn't happen all that often. We're looking at the 14 health and safety associated with these. And oftentimes it's a basic 15 shutter mechanism that's been employed for many, many years. So what's 16 the concern. Things like that that, you know, there's not really all 17 that many engineering issues that come up all the time. And it might 18 seem kind of strange, but it's true.
19 Okay, another issue. We keep talking about the 20 performance-based approach of IMPEP. It didn't feel that way, not on 21 the sealed source and device. The only performance base was if you 22 performed it exactly the way they do it, then you were okay. And that's 23 the way we felt. And I'm not saying they said it has to be exactly 24 that. But, boy, if you departed in any way, you had to explain. So, 25 again, I think they can improve on that. Make it more performance-based. Take a look at the evaluation. Is there something
151 1 in that evaluation that's suspect, that could result in a public health 2 and safety problem. Not that we didn't follow the checklist exactly 3 like your checklist. In fact, we feel like we have a lot of 4 enhancements.
5 I think one state was criticized because they used the NRC 6 checklist and nothing else. And I mean, that's kind of weird. You use 7 their own checklist, and you get -- so that's another issue. It was 8 very frustrating for some of the states.
9 Another issue are the comments section. It used to be when 10 we had our reviews for decades, they would come out and they would look 11 at 15 sheets or so. And then they would have a long list of little 12 comments, little suggestions, very constructive approach, and we found 13 that very helpful.
14 Well, we had that this time, too. But all those ended up in 15 a report. And so then it was -- by making it a formal part of the 16 report, it just -- it formalized the whole process and just made it so 17 tedious because then you had to respond to each one of those 18 suggestions. And then to explain to your supervisors, the bosses and 19 the head of the agency who isn't that familiar with sealed source and 20 device evaluations why this really isn't a big deal. Sure, there's a 21 lot of suggestions, but a little difference in approach, and they have a 22 hard time understanding when they see several pages or Appendix G.
23 And then staff gets very defensive because then it's like, 24 well, I can't believe they pointed that out. So then you go back and 25 forth, and then you respond to NRC's response, and it's seemingly endless. Whereas, in the past, it was very constructive criticism. We
152 1 would take it, and we would incorporate the changes as necessary, and it 2 worked fine.
3 So I would like to see a return to that more. And I think 4 several people have mentioned that already. You know, leave those 5 suggestions out of the formal report. But they're very helpful. The 6 whole thing can be very constructive, and it used to be that way. And I 7 think it was intended to be, but it just didn't come across that way in 8 that area.
9 Concurrent review -- that issue kept coming up as well. It 10 was implied very firmly that you should have two independent reviews.
11 That's not going to happen in Illinois, or I don't know where that 12 happens. Maybe in the NRC, but not in Illinois. I don't think it's 13 necessary. You can't justify our costs or the $110.00 per hour for a 14 reviewer. I just can't go back to somebody and say, oh, I've got some 15 good news. The first review's over. But now somebody else is doing the 16 whole thing.
17 It's just not going to work. And I remember Mr. Bangart 18 explained, and I think he did a good job at one of the meetings, and he 19 put the right spin on it, and you put a footnote in the management 20 directive at 5.6 to try and clarify it.
21 And I could live with that clarification, I think, because 22 it says you're not supposed to review every page independently. You 23 have two people read every page and go to the key elements and arrive at 24 the same conclusion. So I can live with that as long as that's clearly 25 understood by all parties involved that that's what a concurrent review is because if people really think that it's a totally independent review
153 1 from page one all the way, that's -- I don't think that's happening any 2 place. Is it? Is anybody doing that? Is that what you do?
3 SPEAKER: --
4 MR. KLINGER: Okay.
5 MR. PADGETT: We just did our last one. We just did two or 6 three that way.
7 MR. KLINGER: Aaron Padgett from North Carolina said they 8 did a few of those.
9 MR. PADGETT: But we're not making any commitment to 10 continuing that.
11 MR. KLINGER: Right.
12 MR. CAMERON: Kentucky also -- Vickie and North Carolina 13 indicated that they do something like this.
14 MR. KLINGER: Is that what NRC does? Do they do two totally 15 independent reviews? That's what somebody thought, and I don't know.
16 Don, do you know?
17 MR. COOL: Don Cool with NRC. It depends on the device. In 18 a lot of cases, our review is in fact the key issue as opposed to a 19 complete page by page. In some circumstances or in circumstances where 20 we are in the process of training a reviewer, bringing up some new folks 21 -- and we have a number of those at this point, we do in fact do two 22 complete reviews because of that.
23 MR. KLINGER: Okay. Okay, so concurrent review was another 24 major issue. As far as major issues, that's pretty much all I could 25 get. That's all we had, and New York had several other concerns. I talked to Rita, but Steve's already addressed those issues pretty much.
154 1 Another concern she -- she thought that all states should 2 have the capability -- this is -- she being Rita Aldrich -- that all 3 states should have the capability of doing sealed source and device 4 evaluations because you could be doing a custom made valve. And plus 5 you'd have to do some investigations from time to time. So she thought 6 that it shouldn't be a non-common performance indicator. It should be a 7 common performance indicator because of that. And I don't know if 8 anyone else feels that way, but I wanted to share that.
9 MR. BAILEY: Ed Bailey from California. But the reason it's 10 not a common indicator is because NRC regions don't do it.
11 MR. KLINGER: Okay.
12 MR. BAILEY: Isn't that correct.
13 MS. SCHNEIDER: That's correct.
14 MR. KLINGER: Super. Okay. Ruth?
15 MS. MCBURNEY: I concur with the comments that you've made 16 and some that Steve made about the -- because we had a similar situation 17 with our review. And one of the other concerns that we had was that 18 they made the findings based on one review -- not all the ones that they 19 reviewed, but one review of a custom device, not one that was going to 20 go in the registry or anything and not focusing on the fact it was a 21 health and safety review, as you said, rather than an engineering.
22 MR. KLINGER: Good.
23 MS. MCBURNEY: And also I was going to comment that we do on 24 new devices that we've not done similar ones to, we will have someone do 25 a key issues when -- a second review on top of that.
MR. KLINGER: Okay.
155 1 MS. MCBURNEY: But we haven't in the past had two complete 2 reviews, and we just don't have the staff to do two complete reviews.
3 MR. KLINGER: Same here. Great. Okay, anybody else have 4 any comments? Any issues regarding sealed source and device portion of 5 the IMPEP? Great. Okay.
6 Ed said he felt like a stepchild. So I thought we need to 7 talk about orphans, then, because orphans are showing up all over the 8 place, not only in this country, but throughout the world.
9 I've read some articles about in the former Soviet Union 10 that there's all kinds of just thousands and thousands of sources that 11 are unaccounted for, and they'll be showing up. It's just a matter of 12 time. And so we have to be prepared for this.
13 So I thought since I cut that brief and fairly short that I 14 would be able to take advantage of this and have a surprise 15 presentation. But it's related to the NMED which will be coming up, 16 too.
17 And this is on the E-34, the Orphan Source Initiative. I 18 think it's a very important subject where we respond to monitor trips 19 all the time, and we need to do something about this problem. People 20 are out there. They're finding radioactive material. And if we don't 21 help them, they'll be throwing it out. And so we have to come up with a 22 better system.
23 And right now, it's like finder's keepers, and you're stuck 24 -- I mean, you really are. And so that can't continue. And our federal 25 agency with one representative here has really been helpful in this regard. They have. So you can bully us all you want as long as you pay
156 1 us because there's like $200,000 they put into this effort so far. So 2 it's really good. Okay. There's an E-34 Group of the conference.
3 These are the members chaired by Free, Sarah Rogers and Jim Yusko. And 4 then we have representatives from the federal agencies that participate 5 in this as well. It's Deb Broaddus and Neal Norraine from U.S. EPA and 6 Rod Campbell from the DOE because all of these people are key 7 stakeholders in this effort.
8 We also have several advisers. Jack Jacobi and John Freney 9 from New Jersey, and Sam Pettijohn. And you'll see why here shortly --
10 why that's very important to have Sam and Bob. Our goal is to develop 11 and facilitate -- this is our task -- develop and facilitate 12 implementation of a dynamic nationwide system that will effectively 13 manage orphan sources.
14 We're trying to come up with a way of when people find these 15 things, they have an easy outlet to find out what to do with it and to 16 properly disposition it. I didn't say dispose -- I said disposition.
17 Disposition encompassing recycling and providing it to some other 18 licensee that's interested in it; sending it overseas for whatever 19 purpose. That's happening now -- recycling. Some of the Amerasians 20 going over. Bay bigs doing that now.
21 And then if you can't find any other alternative, then 22 dispose. Okay. So that's what we're trying to do, and we're trying to 23 make a whole system of information available. The first thing we had to 24 do was define orphan source. We could spend all day defining orphan 25 source, but that's what we came up with. I won't read it. Just take a look at it. That did take a long time just to come up with what an
157 1 orphan source is because everybody has their own idea. But really if 2 you're not sure that that source is going to be properly maintained in 3 the long run whether it be a licensee or not, you've got to take some 4 action to get it in the right place.
5 Okay. Some of the things we want to do. The conference has 6 a website. We want to have -- in fact, it's already there. We just 7 have to add a lot to it. An orphan source site on the web page that 8 will give all, you know, Terry Devine's information, all the waste 9 brokers and all these people that are interested in the different types 10 of radioactive material. You'd have that information there. So that's 11 in the works.
12 Another thing is right from the first time we met which was 13 in January, we thought one of the tasks was you have to get your arms 14 around this problem. How do you know where these sources are, how many 15 are out there, create a database, and we're going why create a new 16 database, and why create something that -- why not look and see what's 17 out there.
18 And that's when we came up with the idea of the NMED.
19 That's something that's out there already. A lot of people use it. Not 20 everybody uses it. And I'll be the first to admit Illinois is not one 21 of the real cooperative people.
22 But if we can add something to the NMED that will provide --
23 let's say, you find a source in one locale, and you can search NMED and 24 find out who that responsible party is, then that's a real benefit. And 25 you do it throughout the United States and then eventually throughout the world.
158 1 So when you see more of a benefit, then that's why we're 2 more interested in NMED, and that's why we want to see this thing work.
3 So we thought we could save money that's dedicated to our orphan source 4 group which I said is $200,000, and instead use that money that we save 5 by using the NMED system to actually disposition some sources.
6 Okay, so then we most recently met October 14-16. We 7 reviewed the survey. We surveyed everybody. I know it's like, oh, no, 8 not another survey. It was necessary to try and get an understanding of 9 where these orphan sources are right now, how many are out there.
10 And then we had to develop a formula to decide which of 11 those identified need to be dispositioned in the most expedient way.
12 And I learned that you cannot use our funds now for disposal which was a 13 real setback for us because we thought, well, we'll save all this money, 14 and we'll be disposing all these sources. There's a little catch. We 15 have to do a pilot program, and if some of those sources need to be 16 disposed of in the pilot program, that's okay. We can use the money for 17 that. But after the pilot program is over, then we cannot use this 18 money for disposal. So we're going to have to try and get a source of 19 disposal funds either from industry or from other agencies.
20 So what we did then is we decided that B-34, this group that 21 I identified earlier, will act as a review board, and what we'll do is 22 we're going to test -- we're going to have Terry Devine and conference 23 people actually do the investigation themselves.
24 Right now, we get all these survey reports. It's like one 25 state had, I don't know, 50 of them or so, 50 different sources. And if you just go back and say, well, this is -- you might try this. You can
159 1 call so and so. This might be a disposition option. And you've got 2 from 50 different locales people calling around. It's just not going to 3 work. People will get frustrated. They'll say why did they even bother 4 going to them.
5 So what we decided to do is we're going to have Terry Devine 6 and whoever help he needs under contract to actually be a clearinghouse, 7 to actually find a home for this. Right now, he does it part time just 8 as he can, and he provides some information. That's not good enough.
9 We want to go there, find the best home for the source, and then get 10 back to the people that reported it. And in this way, having one 11 contact throughout the nation to do that, they'll be aware of all the 12 different options because I think that's the most effective way of doing 13 it, and it's going to save all of you a lot of effort that way.
14 So we're pretty excited about that. And then, by everybody 15 cooperating with NMED and this whole system that we're setting up, then 16 we'll identify all these sources probably that need disposal. Then we 17 can go out and get funds for disposal eventually.
18 But the survey so far, we had 17 states. There's 50 states, 19 and only 17 responded, and three of those said they didn't have orphans.
20 So we have about 250 sources identified so far. A lot of those are 21 pretty innocuous sources. But there will be some sources that have to 22 be disposed of in a low-level waste site, and we will take care of those 23 under the pilot program 24 So it's not too late. You can still, if you have orphan 25 sources in your state, please feel out the survey forms and submit it.
So, a few other issues about E-34 before I turn it over to Sam to talk
160 1 about NMED is we don't really want to be in the brokerage business.
2 We're just trying to come up with the best service for people and come 3 up with the best disposition option. This committee will have to be 4 longstanding because these orphans are going to continue to show up. In 5 fact, there'll be more and more. They're putting out more detectors.
6 So they're going to find more sources, and then those need homes.
7 And we also support the DOE. The source recovery program --
8 that's the greater than Class C program. We, being the conference, 9 wrote two letters to the Secretary of Energy. The first one was 10 ignored. The second one was not ignored, and they apologized in that 11 letter for ignoring us the first time. And they were not funded.
12 That's why we sent the letters. And now they're funded Fiscal Year 1999 13 for $1.6 million. So those letters, I think, did help a lot. And I 14 think Rob Campbell said that they're going to try and recycle about 41 15 sources this coming year. So that's pretty good.
16 So we also encourage all of you to take more aggressive 17 actions towards your generally licensed devices, and NRC is embarking on 18 that program. They've got proposed rules out. Texas, Illinois and some 19 other states are really tracking these sources.
20 We do it by serial numbers now. And we're trying to account 21 for every generally licensed device that's out there above a certain 22 activity that's consistent with the working group recommendations.
23 But, again, we can't just sit back and wait for everybody 24 else to do stuff. You other people out there, if you can with your 25 resources, try and get a handle on those generally licensed devices.
It's not the panacea, but you've got to do it eventually. And maybe in
161 1 the long run, we can cut down on the numbers of orphans that are showing 2 up.
3 And in conclusion is we just solicit your cooperation, 4 patience and participation in our efforts as we try and do something 5 about this program. And we're real proud of our effort. But I don't 6 think it's going to mean a whole lot to people until you actually see 7 some sources be disposed of through our pilot program and have a system 8 up and running. That's what we're working on, and that's what will be 9 available probably within a few months.
10 Okay, anybody have any questions before I turn it over to 11 Sam?
12 MR. CAMERON: There's one up here.
13 MR. GAVITT: Just a matter of clarification. You mentioned 14 the DOE greater Class C source recovery program. The way I understand 15 is that if we have to approach the NRC, so it's federal agency to a 16 federal agency. We have a greater than Class C radium source that we 17 had to take off the street. So obviously that's something that we have 18 to go through, I guess, the EPA where you try to pursue various options.
19 Do you know if the EPA is going to plan a similar program to be --
20 MR. KLINGER: Actually, this is EPA's program.
21 MR. GAVITT: It is.
22 MR. KLINGER: Yeah, because EPA is funding it. Rather than 23 running it themselves, they said let's fund this and go through the 24 Conference of Radiation and Control Program Directors because that's a 25 more appropriate thing. We're the ones responding to these events.
We're the ones that are really responsible for these sources.
162 1 So EPA's come to the conference to try and solve this 2 problem, which I think is great. It's laudable, you know.
3 MR. GAVITT: So is there a mechanism for greater than Class 4 C sources?
5 MR. KLINGER: For those, yes. As far as finding a home 6 right now, just fill out the survey form, put it into our system, and 7 that's what we'll get back to you on and say this is the only possible 8 option. And if we get enough of those, maybe we can make some special 9 arrangements with the disposal site to take care of it or with the DOE.
10 I mean, DOE's wanting to -- all the federal agencies, NRC's 11 trying to do it, too. EPA, DOE, everybody recognizes the problem. And 12 they want to do something about it. They're just not sure what they can 13 do, and what the best approach is. That's why I'm real thrilled that 14 they went to the conference so we can develop this together and come up 15 with what we need in a system. And then they can go out there and try 16 and find the funding.
17 EPA has already touted this program in international forums, 18 and IAEA is already wanting to adopt this program internationally.
19 That's why it's really put some pressure on us because they said, well, 20 you've already sold it, but we're still developing it. I'm real happy 21 about them being able to sell it and other people being impressed. But 22 we still have a lot of work to do ourselves. But we're excited about 23 it, and I'm sure we will be able to do it here shortly and have some 24 disposition options.
25 And industry -- I mean, it's still industry and everybody is really excited about it. So right now, even though we don't have a
163 1 source of disposal funds, in the long run we think we can get it by 2 showing a need and by these other agencies and maybe even industry -- go 3 to industry. Maybe they'll put a pool of money together to try and 4 help. Yeah, Steve?
5 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins of Illinois but right now 6 representing the CRCPD. At its board meeting in the last two weeks, the 7 CRCPD did acknowledge that NRC's expenditure for NMED was essentially 8 matching the EPA funds for this particular project.
9 And one of the commissioners basically said we should be 10 matching EPA funds in every way. And the DOE representative was there.
11 And as soon as we finished all of this patting everybody on the back, we 12 turned and looked and said when are you getting in the game. This is 13 your invitation.
14 We made two or three requests at that meeting for the DOE 15 representative to go back and carry the message back that you stand to 16 benefit as much as anybody from this process. Where is your $300,000 17 this year or $200,000 and $100,000 for each year for the next two or 18 three to get this going. So in your behalf, the board -- the conference 19 is really pushing to try to get this equally funded from all those 20 parties.
21 And the other thing was Joe made it clear, but I want to 22 make it even clearer to that one representative that's here that none of 23 these funds funneled through the CRCPD will be spent for disposing of 24 sources. They may be spent to test the effectiveness of the pilot 25 project.
164 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay, that's a good distinction. I see --
2 Don, you want to comment?
3 MR. COOL: Don Cool from NRC. A couple of points more to 4 let people know some of the other related issues. We're going to be 5 talking about general license tomorrow morning.
6 One of the other things that the Commission gave to the 7 staff and the staff requirements to kick that off was some specific 8 direction with regards to orphan sources participation in this group, 9 working to formalize what has been a more informal mechanism with DOE.
10 That mechanism, as we've already pointed out, was focused primarily on 11 the greater than Class C. You should note, however, that we have had 12 fairly good success in situations where sources have been in the 13 environment uncontrolled and where there was a need to take control of 14 them of going through a process. And, again, Doug Broaddus of my staff 15 has been the principal contact person of going through, checking with 16 Terry, other folks. The E-34 process is going to be the process we're 17 going to be using to check some of those.
18 When those -- I won't say failed, but don't identify a good 19 relatively rapid disposition mechanism, we have in a number of cases 20 then been able to go to DOE with here's the situation, here's what we've 21 done, and we have a little checklist that we go through. And DOE's 22 gotten pretty comfortable with that such that they have then gone and 23 used some of their funds even in situations which were not greater than 24 Class C to enable the recovery of those devices and disposition either 25 through contracts that they have to a waste broker. In a couple of
165 1 cases, they've gone and gotten a contractor who wanted to reuse it. But 2 otherwise so there are several things going on there.
3 The NRC staff is at the moment on the hook, if you will, to 4 prepare a paper for the Commission by about the end of this year. It 5 talks about the efforts in the orphan source arena to update them on 6 what's going on there and to present them with some options associated 7 with possible funding for the disposition of those.
8 And so the Commission is going to be looking at that. The 9 Commission's going to be faced with some rather interesting dilemmas, of 10 course, because its hands, depending on how you do it, may be a little 11 tied about expenditure of funds to make sure that they're related to AEA 12 sources as opposed to NARM sources, and the number of the discreet 13 sources, as Joe will tell you, that are running around are NARM and 14 other sources.
15 But the Commission will be considering that late this year, 16 early next year.
17 MR. KLINGER: Great. Thanks, Don. One last thing before I 18 turn over to Sam. This is real important. With the NMED, we said from 19 the start it has to cover all radioactive material, not just byproduct 20 material because most of your monitor trips and stuff, all the things 21 that we're finding, most of those are NARM.
22 And they listened, and they are modifying the system for all 23 radioactive material and will be providing it to non-agreement states, 24 as I understand, too. Okay. I mean, that's really a big step. Now 25 that's wonderful.
166 1 So I've got to convince some of my own staff that NMED is 2 great, too, because it's real important as part of this overall effort.
3 So without any further adieu, Sam.
4 MR. PETTIJOHN: I guess this is about maybe the fourth time 5 that I've given a presentation with the Organization of Agreement States 6 on NMED, and I guess I've found it's improving each time.
7 Usually, I'm at the last day of the last meeting, the last 8 session of the last meeting. So I'm on the last session almost of the 9 first day. So that's an improvement.
10 [Laughter.]
11 MR. PETTIJOHN: Secondly, as you can see, you'll see by the 12 presentation that there has been continuing improvement as far as -- or 13 receptiveness and cooperation as we proceed, and that's what my 14 presentation is about today. I wanted to give you some information that 15 perhaps you did not have, and it's very brief. It's in three parts.
16 Notice on my first slide, LEAM is not learned. But the idea 17 behind a national database really is to learn from experience and from 18 minor problems. Now I don't expect any time soon that databases will be 19 looked forward to -- presentations about databases in joyous terms.
20 Usually, when I mention NMED, I still feel a little like Rodney 21 Dangerfield comes to mind, some of his jokes about respect and the like.
22 But I've continued to move ahead. And, as Joe indicated, because of 23 some recent developments and in particular he used the NMED for the 24 CRCPD Project, then I think we're moving in the right direction. So I'm 25 looking forward to a lot of progress.
167 1 If you notice -- and if those who don't have the handouts, I 2 have two sets of handouts. One is a newsletter, and one is, of course, 3 the slides that I'll walk through very briefly.
4 We started a newsletter, again, to try to promote the NMED.
5 I think the next time if I'm invited back again, you know, we plan to 6 have NMED buttons and a movie that runs continuously promoting NMED.
7 Anyway, let me just go through these. The presentation is 8 really in three parts, very brief. But I wanted to just give you a heads 9 up -- or not so much a heads up, just give you information on where we 10 are in terms of how states are reporting currently to NRC through the 11 NMED, and then what I know the data are being used for, which is the 12 first two slides.
13 And then there are about three slides in which -- since I 14 had an opportunity to speak to the managers of the agreement state 15 programs, I wanted to just walk through the process that's recommended 16 for reporting and using NMED.
17 I've reviewed these procedures a number of times with your 18 staff or members of your staff. But I wanted to review it with the 19 managers since that's really the only way it's really going to happen.
20 And then the last two slides, I'll just give you some things we did last 21 year and some things we are looking forward to doing in 1999.
22 Actually, about two-thirds of the states have indicated 23 they're a contractor either through us or directly that they do have 24 NMED installed. And if you notice, all 30 of the states submit some 25 information to NRC, and about two-thirds of those, that is 18, do submit information in either a diskette or e-mail.
168 1 We're looking forward to the top number turning to 30 plus, 2 and the number seven there turning into 30 plus. And that is, we would 3 like to see the states submit monthly reports in NMED format in order 4 for the system to work. As far as -- I got a couple more things.
5 Also, I just wanted to mention and if you have a copy of the 6 newsletter, it's addressed in the newsletter also that we do have a 7 query version of NMED on the Internet. To date, about a third of the 8 states have asked INEEL for a password or signed up for NMED. It's on 9 the Internet. But in order to access it, you have to contact the 10 contractor, and the contact is in the newsletter. You can send an 11 e-mail to Gary Roberts. It's indicated in the e-mail, or to myself, and 12 my e-mail address is in there.
13 You have to do that because it's not publicly available, but 14 they'll hook you up as soon as you make a request. Just as far as a 15 point of information, a little half -- not quite half the states did ask 16 INEEL for some assistance during the last year either to hook up NMED or 17 ask them to do queries.
18 Now the question always is what are we collecting the 19 information for, and these are some of the ways that I know the 20 information in fact has been used. We have a couple examples in our 21 newsletter. I field some of these questions. We've provided industry 22 like AMASHAM or SPEC has called and asked about failures of radiography 23 cameras. We know that people have used this to identify similar events.
24 And we provided copies of NMED to contractors for NMSS and for research 25 who are doing various studies.
169 1 And routinely, using NMED, I get a lot of Freedom of 2 Information Act requests. Unfortunately, they come through because of 3 being involved in NMED. Basically, a lot of cases, NMED may not be the 4 sole source of information, but it helps focus the search for the 5 information.
6 I think the things that are missing off this list here are 7 that I believe that NMED could be used more effectively in the licensing 8 and inspection process. Certainly, if persons are doing inspections and 9 this is NRC inspections in particular, even for states in particular 10 areas, it could be helpful to find out all the events for particular 11 groups of licensees in the area where you may be going to contemplate 12 doing inspections.
13 The next three slides, I just want to walk through the 14 recommendations again. I've given some training a number times to 15 various agreement state staff, and I can kind of go through this. But I 16 wanted to just briefly go through this with the managers.
17 What we do recommend is if you use NMED for your local 18 database, that is just your database for yourself which means you put 19 all of your events in there, then the database has a facility to make it 20 very easy to send information into NRC.
21 There's a handbook that was sent out that gives guidance on 22 which events the NRC's interested in receiving. We're available if 23 someone would like to set up some additional training. As far as the 24 actual reporting, typically if -- well, not typically. But the handbook 25 says that if events are required to be reported to the state promptly, the NRC would like those events reported within the next working day
170 1 which would be called into the Ops Center. Otherwise, if you had 2 reports like a gas gammatograph or something that's routine that would 3 just be sent in on a monthly basis if you were using the NMED Program.
4 In any event, though, what we're really missing is follow up 5 information. We get a report of a source or incidence that was lost.
6 And even though the gauge might be found three weeks later or a month 7 later, it never gets posted to the database because we don't get the 8 follow up information.
9 We also have that same issue involved in a number of 10 over-exposure reports because the over exposure really -- you wouldn't 11 know that until some investigation is done. If you notice here, we are 12 asking if you would to submit hard copies of inspection investigation 13 consulting reports when you have more significant events and you have 14 these kind of things that take place such as inspection investigations 15 if you would send us copies of the reports.
16 The reason for wanting copies is that we put those in the 17 NRC regulatory information distribution system which is called RIDS.
18 And so anyone who is looking for those events would be able to retrieve 19 those reports because we tie those into the NMED record.
20 We are going to try a program of asking the contractor to 21 call the states back if we don't have sufficient information to make 22 sense of a record in NMED. In particular, we get a number of reports in 23 which we don't have the isotope activity, model and serial numbers. And 24 as you listened to the presentation earlier and if you look at the 25 application of NMED on the Internet, you will see that you can -- if you know a serial number, this is current right now. If you know a serial
171 1 number of any device, the Internet version now allows you to put in that 2 serial number, and it will look up if there is any record or report of 3 that device having been sent in to NRC.
4 So model and serial numbers are very important. Just to 5 highlight what we thought -- or at least I thought, perhaps, were things 6 of importance in 1998, was again the Internet version. We got the 7 Internet version of NMED running. We published a newsletter. The 8 newsletter, we hope, will help promote the use of NMED.
9 We also hope it's a good feedback mechanism for allowing 10 your staff or others to spread information around if there might be 11 particular points they may be interested in. We'll try to provide 12 helpful hints, you know, to those using the database of the newsletter 13 also. It's less formal. The newsletter actually is on the Internet.
14 It's Adobe format. So actually you can just print it out of the 15 Internet -- if you access the NMED on Internet, it prints out just like 16 you have it there.
17 We also -- AOD, we completed a study using NMED data on loss 18 of control of a curie bits. The manuscript is completed, and that 19 should be published probably by the end of November.
20 Things that we're planning to do next year. The big item on 21 our NMED list is supporting the conference on radiation control program 22 directors office source project. We're going to have to rewrite our 23 software for NMED because of YK 2000 and so forth. That's a big part of 24 what we're going to have to do.
25
172 1 And the big initiative is we really want to try to work 2 closely with the agreement states and try to get those numbers up at 3 least to where we have 100 percent participation.
4 The last slide is just for information interest. I just 5 thought sometimes people may wonder how many events do we get to come 6 into NRC. And it's interesting that in 1993 was when we started the 7 NMED Project. The number was higher than it is now. It dropped down, 8 but started back up. What happened, I think, is that we improved the 9 definition somewhat of what was reportable. This count here represents 10 events that have been sent in that have a requirement in the NRC or 11 agreement state regulations to be reported.
12 And earlier, there was less care given, I believe, in terms 13 of ensuring that they actually met a reporting requirement. Then as we 14 get down here to 1996 and start up 1997, we're starting to get more 15 reports from agreement states. Also, NRC picked up gaseous diffusion 16 plants in March of 1997, and we saw an increase from reporting of those 17 facilities. So that concludes the part that I have. If there are any 18 questions.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Sam. That was a great overview.
20 How about comments on NMED? Jake?
21 MR. JACOBI: First of all, I congratulate you for putting 22 NMED on the Internet as a half step. Colorado, maybe we're unique 23 because we've never been able to just have an e-mail of information like 24 the programs supposed to work. And when I look at your data where many 25 states are sending you information that's not in the NMED format, I maybe assume maybe Colorado's not the only state.
173 1 And to me, it seems it might be more economical if instead 2 of rewriting your program in AXIS-VII and distributing it to the states 3 and having to redistribute to the states every time you want to do an 4 update, if you had data entry directly off of the Internet, it would 5 save you times of all the data distribution, and you wouldn't have to 6 worry about systems firewalls, trying to transfer information back and 7 forth.
8 And any time you wanted to update the system, you could do 9 it right then and there.
10 MR. PETTIJOHN: Okay. We're going to offer -- we plan to 11 offer limited, I guess, data entry by way of Internet. However, I 12 believe that the states -- this is our belief -- that the states would 13 not necessarily benefit because you have to maintain two separate 14 databases. What will in fact happen is because of the current software 15 with Microsoft software that in our next application you will simply be 16 invisible, that you're not on the network. In other words, you won't 17 know from your desk top whether you're actually -- in other words, 18 there's a transparency between the desk top and the Internet.
19 But if we have data entry so that you put all of your events 20 into a common database, then you would, I believe, would have to put all 21 of your events, even the ones that may not really be events, into that 22 database.
23 MR. JACOBI: But isn't that what I thought I heard you ask 24 that you would like us to use this for all of our information?
25 MR. PETTIJOHN: Well, operationally, we find that NRC's, when I was doing this for a good while, that we have events that don't
174 1 really meet reporting requirements or they're just under review, and 2 they're really things that we're looking at that we have to keep track 3 of.
4 And so those are the reasons that we had to keep a local 5 database. But just to answer your question directly, we are going to 6 offer -- begin offering with the offering source project an option for 7 states to enter information. But, again, because you know NRC is only 8 regulating atomic radioactive material, and so there is a problem of the 9 state having to maintain two separate databases. If anyone else has any 10 comments on that.
11 MR. CAMERON: Don Bunn, I think, California.
12 MR. BUNN: Yes, thank you. Yeah, I, too, wanted to add to 13 Joe's talk as well as Sam, E-23 Committee of CRCPD met in October, also.
14 We discussed primarily landfill alarms, and we came away with the 15 recommendation that we're going to present to NMED that these be 16 included in the NMED database.
17 They severely impact our staff, our resources, although 18 they're mainly contamination events. They can be handled probably at 19 the site when you get there with your portable MCA or your appropriate 20 equipment. They still impact greatly on all the state programs.
21 And rather than place them under the other category, I think 22 it would be helpful if they were separated by themselves as landfill 23 alarms or as resource recovery materials in the environment that are 24 showing up all over the countryside. And you know, I would like to see 25 the orphan source program go on, but also take care of contamination events, too.
175 1 MR. PETTIJOHN: Thank you.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Don. And thanks, Sam and Joe 3 for the presentations. We're going to be going to John Greeves from the 4 NRC now for a presentation on the clearance rule. And just let me 5 remind everybody that the reception tonight is at 6:30, not 6:00, and it 6 will be in the Terrace Room, and that room is right off of the front 7 registration desk when you come into the hotel.
8 All right, John, you ready?
9 MR. GREEVES: Well, good afternoon. Can you hear me?
10 AUDIENCE: No.
11 MR. GREEVES: How about now?
12 AUDIENCE: Yes.
13 MR. GREEVES: Some of you have handouts. I'm going to try 14 and speed things up. So I'm going to skip a couple of the slides.
15 There's handouts out front. They've been out there for a while.
16 It's probably good we didn't mention to Commissioner Diaz 17 about the extra half-hour. Actually, I was a little worried about him 18 spending four hours talking about the subject I was going to be 19 addressing this morning. So fortunately there is quite a bit of the 20 material that I have that is not repeat activity.
21 But what I really want to talk about are two activities, 22 one, we refer to as the clearance rulemaking, and the other is the 23 standard review plan that we are developing for the license termination 24 rule follow up.
25 It is interesting. We have talked today a lot about resources. There's a lot of resources that the agency has committed to
176 1 both of these program areas, and it sort of makes me wonder what's going 2 to happen in the future when the agreement states grow.
3 I just worry five years from now how the agency's going to 4 fund these types of activities because we do -- fortunately, I do have a 5 fair amount of resources applied to both of these activities.
6 And I think of both of these as items that very much are 7 going to affect the agreement states. Most of the action is with you.
8 You actually have most of the licensees. And part of my bottom line is 9 I would like to encourage you to engage in this process on both the 10 clearance rulemaking and the standard review plan development.
11 I heard some reference to encouraging some screams. I'm not 12 looking for any. But I think these two items actually may provide 13 partly some of the answer for the old site issues. They both go towards 14 a risk-informed approach, and I think they're going to give part of the 15 answer to that difficult problem with some of the old sites.
16 As far as the clearance rule, the first slide there, it's 17 really an international issue, and the topic is control. How do I move 18 material out of a controlled situation into an uncontrolled situation 19 where further control is not needed. There's a lot of activities going 20 on internationally on this topic.
21 Currently, the thing that has been used in the past is Reg 22 Guide 1.86, and that is built into a number of license conditions. I 23 know the agreement states use that vehicle. And it only addresses 24 surface contamination.
25 On another front, we have in the past put together some in the SDMP Action Plan some ad hoc criteria on volumetric contamination.
177 1 This also is one of the troubling areas. Unfortunately, we've had to 2 rely on a 1981 branch technical position, and what really is needed is a 3 dose-based analysis. That's the job that's ahead of us. We've got the 4 science. We need to move forward with that. I think a number of you 5 are familiar with the fact that we do have some numbers for uranium, 6 cobalt and cesium that we've been using in the past. But we need to 7 move forward into a regulation format, and that's what the clearance 8 rule is about.
9 Moving on to the next slide, the Commission actually asked 10 us to initiate this process back in 1994. And at the same time, we had 11 on our plate the decommissioning rule. So the actual rulemaking part of 12 this was deferred until we could complete the license termination rule.
13 While that was going on, both NRC and EPA did develop some 14 technical basis background for these activities. In February, the staff 15 forwarded to the Commission a paper presenting three options for the 16 clearance activities. And three of those options included continue to 17 use the existing guidance that we had which is flawed, is not strictly 18 dose-based; support EPA in the development of a clearance rulemaking.
19 At the time we went forward with this, EPA in fact was 20 talking about moving forward. Subsequently, they did slow down in that 21 process. And then the third alternative was to initiative an 22 independent rulemaking by the NRC staff. And I think, as everyone is 23 aware, in June the Commission came out and asked the staff to proceed 24 with a dose-based regulation to address this issue.
25 We had actually been planning on doing this in the year 2000, and it's been accelerated to begin as we speak in FY 1999. And we
178 1 also were asked to use the enhanced participatory rulemaking approach 2 that has worked with Part 35. So that's the approach that will be used, 3 and to focus on unrestricted use of background level.
4 As I said, this is an international approach. A number of 5 things that the Commission pointed to and that we're familiar with is 6 some of the work that's been done at IAEA. IAEA has a tech doc 855 that 7 points in the direction of something like a one millirem per year 8 threshold. There's a similar report from the European Commission, that 9 their Report 89. The contractor that's been working on this for the NRC 10 is SAIC, and we're currently looking at a report and commenting on it 11 that they have developed.
12 They looked at some 20-30 scenarios. The Commission asked 13 us to focus on realistic scenarios that addressed the types of things 14 that happened with metals and concrete. The Commission asked us to 15 develop a comprehensive rulemaking process for metals, concrete 16 equipment and including soil.
17 The Commission identified that it's possible to narrow the 18 scope of this process if delays would result. And I'm just pointing out 19 that including soil is going to be one of the more difficult processes 20 to address in this construct. Next slide.
21 As far as plans that the staff has, we will be forwarding a 22 paper in November. We have recently formed a steering group and working 23 group to address these issues similar to the Part 35 Working Group, and 24 Steve Collins is a member of the steering group, and Russ Myer from 25 Texas is part of the working group.
179 1 Also the Office of Research is part of these groups, NMSS, 2 state programs and OGC have representatives. We also are looking to 3 find ways to get input from the Environmental Protection Agency and 4 other agencies. And we have solicited input from the ISCRS Group.
5 That's the Interagency Steering Committee on Radiation Standards, and 6 Steve Collins put together a nice article in the CRCPD news brief 7 identifying some of the activities of that group. So I think that was 8 quite useful.
9 Currently, our plans are to put together a draft assessment 10 on metals and concrete, and we expect that to be available in January of 11 1999. Additional items that are going to require a fair amount of work 12 are individual dose assessment for soils. As I said, this is going to 13 be the one that is a bit tricky, and we're going to engage the industry 14 and see if we can get some support out of the industry to help carry 15 part of the load and the development of those efforts.
16 We also will have to look at the collective dose assessment 17 and cost benefit analysis associated with these activities. I would 18 point out that substantial progress has been made by EPA in developing 19 their technical basis to date. We've spent a lot of time talking to 20 them, and it turns out that the comparison between the work that SAIC 21 has done and EPA is only a couple of factors off, and this I find 22 heartening. It to me shows that as far as risk assessment, we're doing 23 things pretty much the same when you can track the assumptions included 24 in the process.
25
180 1 Unfortunately, the risk management topic is one that we have 2 had some difficulties with. So I just mention it's worked out quite 3 well to look at the EPA data on this front.
4 The next slide indicates we'll be putting out an issues 5 paper in February, and that will be used in the facilitated public 6 meetings that we can look forward to in the spring/summertime. And so 7 far, it looks like Atlanta, Chicago and Washington are sites that would 8 support such meetings.
9 I would encourage you to participate actively in that 10 process. We need wide support to come to a resolution of how we're 11 going to address these issues. And the November paper that I mentioned 12 earlier will propose a target schedule to address this.
13 The last slide which I'm not going to put up gives the names 14 of individuals that are involved in this in terms of points of contact, 15 and I'll mention one of them. Frank Cardile. Frank works for Trish 16 Holahan who's here with us today, and he's the first point of contact.
17 He's probably not going to thank me for mentioning his name and his 18 telephone number. But please do get in touch with him on that one.
19 Okay, I'm going to shift now into the standard review plan.
20 And to do this, I think this is a success for radiation protection. It 21 sort of goes back to the time in the late 1980's when it was clearly 22 recognized that we need a regulatory framework for the back end of all 23 these facilities.
24 A series of regulations were put into place, the first of 25 which was in 1988 that kicked this off. And this was the so-called decommissioning rule. However, it pretty much addressed only financial
181 1 criteria and the fact that you have to go for unrestricted release. It 2 left a lot of questions unanswered. There was not a clear standard.
3 It turns a year after that, Congressman Sinar took EPA and 4 NRC to task and told them to get on with this job. And as you can see 5 on the chart, we did move forward in a step wise fashion. The next task 6 that was addressed was the recordkeeping requirements. These are in 7 place. They're very much needed. And licensees have had some real 8 troubling times keeping up with some of their equipment here in the 9 Northeast. I'm sure you're familiar with some of the reactor 10 circumstances where materials needed to be accounted for, and it's not a 11 very pleasant process.
12 The next piece of regulation that we put in place was the 13 so-called timeliness rule in 1994. This also is a key piece that has to 14 be invoked. It essentially gives people 24 months within a reasonable 15 period of time they need to be doing something or come in and explain to 16 us where they're going from here. The last piece was the license 17 termination rule which is the 25-millirem all pathways standard for 18 unrestricted release. And I would like to thank the OAS for the letter 19 that you sent in. It -- when you're on point, it's tough to work these 20 issues. And I very much appreciated the letter that Commissioner Diaz 21 mentioned this morning.
22 So at this point, all the regulatory structure is in place, 23 and next slide, the job ahead is trying to match the underpinnings in 24 terms of the guidance. Listed here is a whole set of guidance documents 25 that are probably familiar to many of you.
182 1 The first one is the so-called MARSM guidance document.
2 This is the one that addresses the planning and the implementation of 3 surveys. There's a number of courses going on around the country that I 4 know that your staff are involved in, and I need to make sure my staff 5 get through those, too. It's unfortunate that there aren't enough of 6 those to go around. But we do try and share slots in those courses.
7 EPA, by the way, extended a couple of slots to NRC staff 8 around the country near some of our regional offices. So I know there's 9 a big demand. Skip down to 1549 near the bottom. This is the decision 10 methodology document that describes the flow in terms of the 11 decommissioning process where you go from a simple evaluation to a 12 complex evaluation. It's a good study of how you handle decommissioning 13 issues, and Sandia National Labs helped us develop that.
14 The last one on the chart is the draft reg guide for 006, 15 and this is sort of the backbone of the standard review plan 16 development. It has four areas that I'm going to mention in detail that 17 we would address.
18 The Commission did come back to us in July and asked us to 19 march off and implement this process, to over a two-year period maintain 20 a dialogue with all of the affected stakeholders, and address the 21 comments during this period. So we're all developing the standard 22 review plan which is the standard vehicle that we use and you use in a 23 licensing process. And it needs to be risk informed, and it is what I 24 call an iterative approach as the 1549 document lays out as you go from 25 a simple to a complex site.
183 1 The Commission asked us to look at some of the potential 2 conservativisms in the so-called D&D Code. I can assure you there's a 3 healthy debate within the NRC staff on this issue. The office director, 4 Carl Paperello, gives us a lively engagement on this, and, you know, 5 I've talked to a number of you about it. This is one of the things that 6 we will be testing over this two-year period.
7 We're looking for test sites. We've identified a couple.
8 And the last item is that we need to address probable ballistic 9 approaches to calculate the dose equivalent to average members of the 10 critical group. This is also the very same issue that is being 11 discussed at high level waste at the Yucca Mountain site.
12 The draft guide that I mentioned earlier lays out four 13 different areas that we are looking at as work groups that are being 14 addressed as basically an outline with standard review plan, the first 15 of which is dose remodeling. This is the one we're putting the most 16 energy in. We've had a lot of interest from EPRI and DOE. NEI is 17 funding a fair amount of the EPRI activity to address some of the dose 18 modeling issues.
19 The other issues include ALARA analysis, license termination 20 for restricted conditions. We're going to get confronted with these 21 types of issues at some of the bigger sites like Sequoia Fuels and West 22 Valley.
23 And then the last one is final radiation surveys. As I 24 said, we're in pretty good shape with that with the MARSM type activity.
25 Next. The code that the staff had developed at Sandia is a dose model code, and its intention was to have a simple, cost-effective tool that
184 1 could be used. It is basically a uniform source in it assumes that you 2 do reuse water. So it is very conservative.
3 It does only require a minimal amount of site specific 4 information. And this particular code is up on our website, and we are, 5 as I said earlier, engaged actively with discussions with EPRI and also 6 making comparisons with the RESRAD Code. I think some of you probably 7 use that particular code.
8 We had an extensive meeting last week on this particular 9 subject. Next slide. As part of this process, we're looking for ways 10 to engage stakeholders, and we've set up a whole series of formal 11 workshops that are on this particular chart. I understand Dave Prover 12 mailed out 350 copies of a text describing what we were going to do, and 13 it includes the dates listed on this particular chart, the first of 14 which is in December.
15 And we have established a website that is included on these 16 charts to provide an opportunity for NRC to get comments back on this 17 particular process. You'll find meeting notes on the website. We're 18 planning on putting up draft pieces of the standard review plan, and 19 we'd like to engage all parties and especially the agreement states in 20 terms of input to that particular process.
21 Some of the things that will be discussed in that first 22 workshop are the NRC test case that we're going to be looked at. The 23 licensees have identified a test case that they want to come in and talk 24 to us about. Resuspension factors have been a particular problem for 25 us. We also are looking for some help to refine the models for alpha contamination. We've had problems with the alphas and also with close
185 1 to background issues for uranium and thorium in terms of detection. So 2 these will be some of the topics that would be involved in that first 3 meeting.
4 And this will be my last slide. This is basically a 5 schedule of the process. I'll take a page out of the Health Physics 6 Society approach. We'd like to add members to these working groups and 7 this process because I think a lot of the issues you're going to get 8 confronted with. So any of these working groups that I described, we 9 are looking for additional help in this process.
10 I talked about some of the tables that we're developing to 11 supplement or replace Reg Guide 106. We have developed a new set of 12 values for the beta gamma emitters, for surface contamination, and we're 13 comfortable with those. Those will be out shortly for use.
14 We are not as comfortable with the alphas. As I said, we 15 had trouble with that, and that's one of the topics we'll talk about in 16 the December meeting. We expect to put out draft standard review plan 17 modules by June of next year. We expect to run through a few test casea 18 for reactors and fuel fabrication facilities to get a trial run on some 19 of these techniques. And then, as a final product, we expect to 20 finalize the standard review plan in the year 2000.
21 The bottom line here is these are the products that we are 22 developing. I think they're products that the agreement states, others 23 can pick up and use. And I'd ask for your help in the development of 24 this product, and I'd urge you to use the website. It's a very good 25 tool. We're going to try and use conference calls in addition to the
186 1 meetings cited earlier in the slides. So with that summary, I'd be 2 happy to answer questions.
3 MR. CAMERON: Great. You just heard John present two 4 topics. One, the clearance rule, and I guess questions there obviously.
5 Any concerns or questions about the clearance rule? Any advice to the 6 NRC on how they put the process together for developing the clearance 7 rule? Any questions or concerns about the relationship between NRC and 8 EPA on the clearance rule? Edgar?
9 MR. BAILEY: First of all, John, I invite you to come west 10 to Mississippi again.
11 MR. GREEVES: I expected that. I enjoyed the last time I 12 was there with you.
13 MR. BAILEY: So I would encourage you to possibly look at 14 going west of the Mississipi with one of those meetings. And then my 15 question is are you factoring in FGR-13 when you're looking at these 16 proposed clearance rules?
17 MR. GREEVES: Yeah. Federal Guidance 13 which is, as far as 18 I know, still a draft. We have relied on 11 and 12, and I think I'd 19 probably prefer if Cindy Jones who is not here to address any reliance 20 of Federal Guidance 13.
21 I think, as you're familiar, we've commented on that 22 particular document, and I haven't seen the final outcome on it. So far 23 as I know, we're not relying on it at the present time.
24 MR. BAILEY: Correct me if I misunderstand. But I thought 25 if Federal Guidance Document 13 becomes final, then it is incumbent on other federal agencies to use those generally applicable guidelines.
187 1 MR. CAMERON: Don, you want to clarify.
2 MR. COOL: Yeah, Don Cool. Let me try to clarify it a 3 little bit. There's two different types of things. There are federal 4 guidance for which EPA has the lead and which, after going through a 5 process, is signed by the president. It then in fact becomes 6 essentially incumbent upon the federal agencies to implement into its 7 process.
8 There is then a second series of things, the federal 9 guidance reports, FRG 13 being one of them, developed by EPA. And while 10 they have in general or to varying degrees -- you'll get some discussion 11 on that -- coordination, there is not the same incumbency within the 12 federal system for automatic adoption and incorporation. The reports 13 are more technical reports. They have probably greater weight than an 14 NRC new reg, but do not carry the same weight as a federal guidance 15 itself, there being only a couple of actual federal guidance documents 16 to public exposure. It goes all the back to 1959, the Occupational 17 Exposure which currently goes to 1987.
18 We are certainly aware of it. They've looked at it. The 19 technical basis that SAIC has been developing I don't think actually 20 tries to wrap in the federal guidance 13. For those of you who don't 21 know, that's a draft that's been developed that would take you straight 22 to a risk coefficient, the 10 to the minus something or other for 23 various organs. And at that point, we haven't attempted to take it 24 there. It's been taken to the point of dose. And rather than trying to 25 translate then to an organ-specific weighting factor.
MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks a lot, Don. Let's go to Alice.
188 1 MS. ROGERS: I was going to comment on you all should come 2 west of the Mississippi, too, but Ed beat me to it. But we would 3 welcome you west of the Mississippi and wish you would come.
4 It appears that you're using D&D as a screening tool for 5 whether folks should be out there doing anything or not to be in 6 compliance with time and decommissiong. That would be folks that are 7 already not doing anything radioactive any more.
8 But you don't have any training in using this tool. We 9 would really recommned that you get your training together and offer it 10 to the agreement states real soon. And second, --
11 MR. GREEVES: I agree with that comment.
12 MS. ROGERS: Thank you. I'm a little confused, and maybe 13 it's just because I'm not too good about this stuff. It looked like you 14 had a slide up there that said that you had been asked to look at one 15 millirem per year in soils. And I'm curious to understand how that 16 meshes with 25 millirem per year all pathways at a site for unrestricted 17 use in a bigger sense.
18 MR. GREEVES: What the slide intended -- where it was listed 19 as one millirem was an indication of where IAEA and the international 20 community has generally looked in terms of their technical document.
21 That is not a number that I'm not to be our number. We're still in the 22 process of evaluating where we need to go.
23 MS. ROGERS: Okay. That was my --
24 MR. GREEVES: Yeah. If you talk to the international 25 community, you will find recommendations in the range of one millirem for the recycle type materials.
189 1 MS. ROGERS: Okay. I'd understood you to say that that was 2 indeed going to be your standard. So thanks for the clarification.
3 MR. GREEVES: Right. You gave me a chance to -- again, I'm 4 not saying it won't be. But I think there's still room for discussion 5 on that process.
6 MR. CAMERON: I want to also -- I'm going to give this back 7 to you. Is there also a question implied there, Alice, about what the 8 relationship is between the decommissioning standard and the clearance 9 standard?
10 MS. ROGERS: To some extent, yes. Chip, you had also asked 11 specifically what we think about NRC and EPA's little battle going on.
12 I don't really have an opinion about that.
13 But I do have an opinion that NRC needs to be consistent 14 within its own work. That one millirem versus 25 is going to look 15 really fishy when you look at 4 versus 25.
16 MR. GREEVES: Clearly, 25 is attached to a termination of a 17 site. And the question is what are you going to do with materials that 18 can go anywhere. That's the difference, and that's part of what's going 19 to be evaluated in these workshops as we go around the country. And 20 I'll enjoy hearing views on that as these workshops develop.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I think Steve Collins has a comment, 22 and then we'll go to Aubrey, and then Ed.
23 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins, this time from Illinois. As a 24 steering group representative, I made that same comment that I was --
25 did about the 25 millirem. And one of the things that you have in the recycle thing is there's a much higher probability of members of the
190 1 public receiving exposures from more than one source. And that being 2 the logic for getting a fraction of 100, whether it be 25 or 15 or 3 whatever. But like I said, that is going to be considered.
4 But there's lots of different places where the recycled 5 material might go. And there's even thought of looking into maybe 6 different numbers other than one, higher numbers depending on where the 7 recycle would go. Like if it's recycled steel and you know it's going 8 to go into automobile engine blocks, you might be able to have a higher 9 number there.
10 Or if it's going into steel that will be used in bridges, 11 you could have a higher number there and for the concentration than you 12 could have in unknown reuse scenarios. And the steering group and Russ 13 Myer on the working group would love to have additional agreement state 14 input and your thoughts on these draft documents.
15 MS. ROGERS: My question was really specifically about soil 16 only. I understand the steel thing and all those other reuses and 17 recycling things. I was just talking about dirt.
18 MR. CAMERON: Talking dirt. All right. Aubrey.
19 MR. GODWIN: Audbrey Godwin, Arizona. You know, I hate to 20 say it, folks, but I left my crystal ball out, and I don't know how you 21 can predict too well in the future how something's going to be used.
22 You send to the car manufacturer for blocks, and he screws 23 up a whole bunch of them, and he recycles into silverware.
24 [Laughter.]
25 MR. GODWIN: You know. Maybe stainless steel spoons. I mean, you really got a problem. That's one of the problems I think some
191 1 of us have about this patient release deal. You're going to depend upon 2 somebody saying that they're going to go home and not going to have any 3 visitors when they go home and have a party. I mean, you don't really 4 know.
5 So, yeah, I think we need a number where we're not going to 6 worry too much about it if it does get reconcentrated, if it is two 7 sources, and be consistent. And I don't know what that number is 8 offhand, and we'd probably have to get the wiji board out for that. But 9 crystal ball in the future for uses of materials and what people are 10 going to do is a real low percentage win idea, I think.
11 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Aubrey.
12 MR. GREEVES: Can I just mention that effectively that's why 13 SAIC had to go through 20-30 particular scenarios to address this issue 14 because the further it moves through the chain, the lower the activity.
15 I think in most instances it's the guy that works at the yard where the 16 material comes in, and when the dust is kicked up, he's the one with the 17 highest dose in most of the cases.
18 But that's why they had to go through 20 or 30 scenarios to 19 look at this issue.
20 MR. CAMERON: All right. Ed, do you have a comment on that, 21 too?
22 MR. BAILEY: Well, except that I would suspect that the 23 highest dose occurs when it's reused for baby beds, but I don't know. I 24 would have to agree that this looking at one millirem for soil, I guess 25 you can recycle soil. Most of Texas used to be in Kansas.
[Laughter.]
192 1 MR. BAILEY: So it gets moved around a lot. But this whole 2 idea of having a different standard from two different federal agencies 3 is a real problem. And we're already seeing that where one federal 4 agency who has only one member here is saying we don't really give a big 5 rats if they cleaned it up to your standards. They've got to clean it 6 up to ours which may be significantly more clean up work.
7 So I think the Commissioner was probably right. Congress is 8 going to have to resolve this issue finally. But the staffs have got to 9 work together.
10 MR. GREEVES: Let me mention two things. When it comes to 11 the science, the staffs are working together. And I'm actually quite 12 pleased with how close we are on the numbers with these recycle issues.
13 They're within a factor or two or three in terms of the studies that 14 Sandy Cohen & Associates has performed and SAIC has performed. So I 15 think that's pretty darned close.
16 As far as the federal agencies, I think you recognize 17 there's not a lot I can do about that. I will comment on the soils. I 18 think this is going to be one of the comments we're going to get as we 19 go around the country. But recognize you all have sites. You release 20 sites. You know what's going on here.
21 It really isn't 25 millirem. That's the number. That's the 22 standard. How many of you really think you're releasing a site at 25 23 millirems? Pretty darned few. So I think most of them are a lot lower 24 than that.
25
193 1 So I don't think as a practical matter that is an issue.
2 It's an optic issue. And I think that's one of the things that we will 3 probably have to address in these workshops as we go around the country.
4 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Any last comments on this before the 5 agreement states go into their business meeting after a short break, I 6 would take it. Roland, are you going to have them right into it.
7 MR. FLETCHER: At the risk of having to run up and down the 8 halls finding a representative, I think we should probably take a break 9 now and start again like at ten of five, and maybe we can get most of it 10 done. Please don't go too far away.
11 And this is anyone who would like to sit in the audience and 12 listen to the meeting is free to do so. I mean, this is not a 13 restricted meeting.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Roland. And remember, 6:30, 15 reception, Terrace Room.
16 [Recess.]
17 MR. FLETCHER: Since we're getting something of a late 18 start, I want to go through this agenda as expeditiously as possible.
19 As you will note -- thank you. As you will note, I took the liberty of 20 putting down some subjects that I know that we've been talking about all 21 year. Of course, I guess it's no surprise that sometimes I do take 22 liberties.
23 And to try to speed up the agenda, rather than have a state 24 roll call, I think we know generally who's here. But I want to ensure 25 that only the states of Iowa and New Mexico are missing. Is there any other state that's not here?
194 1 [Laughter.]
2 MR. FLETCHER: That you are aware of. Okay. So the roll 3 call, therefore, is complete.
4 I would like to move forward. First of all, once again, you 5 know, the turnout here has been very gratifying. And I certainly 6 appreciate everyone being here. Everyone making such a great 7 contribution. And I'm hoping that that continues during this particular 8 session because there are a lot of subjects that I've just put down some 9 words, and I need some input from many of you, particularly if we're 10 going to develop any resolutions, position statements.
11 And I want you to begin thinking now. And I hope you've had 12 some conversations. But before we end, we need to nominate officers for 13 chair-elect and -- not secretary, yet. Just chair-elect. So we need to 14 nominate a chair-elect. I hope you've been thinking about someone to 15 put in those positions. So once again, I thank all of you. Once again, 16 I thank Diane for putting this together. So far, so good. We've been 17 really going well today. And we've been keeping close to time, too. So 18 thank you for that.
19 One of the things that I have tried to do and I need to get 20 some feedback on success. Most of us, I think, went full force into the 21 e-mail world this year with varying levels of success. I mean, I've 22 gotten e-mails that were squares and circles when they should have been 23 words, and I'm sure you got the same from me.
24 But one thing that I know has changed in many cases are 25 e-mail addresses. I myself went from one system to another, and I
195 1 couldn't even read my own mail from one address to the other. So that 2 could possibly have happened to you.
3 What I -- rather than have you put things down here, when 4 you get back to your locations, would you just send me an e-mail with 5 all of your particulars on it, you know, correct name, phone number, fax 6 number, all that. Just send me that e-mail.
7 I will, now that I have a little more time, compile that 8 into the most up-to-date, accurate system. And I would also like for 9 you to put down what system best works with your e-mail. My department 10 has directed that we would use Word 97, and I know some of you have 11 probably gone through the same thing.
12 But I know also that if I send out e-mail Word 97, I get 13 many calls say what was that you just sent me. So I need to know what 14 works on your computer, and I will try and I will pass on to Stan that 15 information so that we will try to make sure we communicate with one 16 another.
17 MR. KLINGER: That's probably something that should be 18 shared with NRC, too.
19 MR. FLETCHER: Okay, you --
20 MR. KLINGER: That's something that probably should be 21 shared with the NRC because there's a lot of stuff that we get, and I 22 don't know, maybe everybody else is reading it fine. But it's garbled, 23 a lot of it. Now we've gone to a new system, and it's working. But I 24 don't know if people are just ignoring the problem, or maybe they worked 25 it out at their own place. But we should be sharing that information with the NRC.
196 1 MR. FLETCHER: That's a good point, and I will be sharing it 2 with Rosetta and Kathy to make sure that they're aware of that 3 communication. Yes?
4 MR. GODWIN: The NRC when they do attachments, quite often 5 if they got more than one attachment to it, we just don't get the second 6 one. I don't know whether it's my end or their end, but I just don't 7 get them.
8 MR. FLETCHER: Are you noting these things, Kathy?
9 MR. KLINGER: That's a real good point. We used to have 10 that problem until we just went to the new NT System. Now we can get 11 multiple attachments. But NRC and other people need to be aware of that 12 because if you send a multiple attachment thinking everybody's getting 13 it, I suspect most people here can't get multiple attachments.
14 MR. FLETCHER: Well, we'll make sure when we present what we 15 discuss here to the NRC that that's one of the items that we emphasize 16 because I've had the same situation. I've gotten a beautiful message 17 talking about something that's attached. And when I try to translate 18 that which is attached, it's garbled. So --
19 MR. PADGETT: This is Aaron Padgett, North Carolina. Was I 20 next or --
21 MR. FLETCHER: Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
22 MR. PADGETT: Feedback to the NRC. The thing that's 23 confusing to me is that the attachments on one, I'll open it, and it 24 opens beautifully. No problem. The next one, I can't open it. And you 25 know, I don't know whether it was sent in the same format or not sent in the same format or what the situation is.
197 1 But it keeps moving, you know. One time, it works well.
2 The next time, it doesn't.
3 MR. FLETCHER: Terry?
4 MR. FRAZEE: Yeah, a lot of it is a formatting problem. And 5 as people continue to upgrade their systems to get to higher level 6 programs, a lot of times those formats just will not work on lower 7 versions, and that's the number one problem.
8 And when people do try to save it as a lower version, 9 occasionally that won't work well, particularly with tables. That's 10 really bad. Recently, most of you should have gotten an e-mail from me 11 within the next week about a particular SP notice that came out. And it 12 turns out that there were a couple problems with that.
13 The one that should have been a problem wasn't because NRC 14 really did not send two attachments. There was a second attachment that 15 wasn't sent. So number one, there weren't very many people that caught 16 that -- they said that there was a particular procedure, and then there 17 was also a list attached. Well, the list really was not attached.
18 However, had it been attached, it would have been a table in Word or 19 Corel at Word Perfect 8.0, I think. And when I did have NRC send me 20 that table, it's one thing to get garbled stuff. With my system -- and 21 this is my problem at my end of it, our e-mail system stripped off the 22 attachment. So I got absolutely nothing.
23 Now the problem that this could present to others where 24 either your e-mail system only recognizes one attachment, or if it 25 recognizes more than one attachment if it does the same thing and you aren't very diligent in checking to see what's coming in, NRC thinks
198 1 they've sent you the information, but you haven't received it. So 2 there's a lot of things you've got to watch with this.
3 And the bottom line is keep it simple. We're interested in 4 information. Send us stuff that's text, that's really the lowest 5 possible format. That's the best way to get it through to assure that 6 you will get something on your end. But if they start putting in 7 graphics or tables that have been created in a high version of any 8 program, and you've got something that's not going to read it, it 9 doesn't do you any good at all. It just ends up being a frustration.
10 And obviously from the response I've gotten, many people, 11 you know, haven't got time to sort through those sorts of problems.
12 MR. FLETCHER: Well, let me get these two, and then I'll let 13 you respond.
14 MR. BAILEY: Mine is a real quick one. NRC tends to use dot 15 and the person's initials. And if they would simply stop that habit, we 16 could -- most of us could directly open the attachments. Where as it is 17 now, we have to save the attachment as a different thing and go in and 18 open Word or whatever we want to do it.
19 So if you would just stop using people's initials after the 20 dot, it would really help us all.
21 MR. FLETCHER: Stu, and then I'm going to let Dick or Kathy 22 address.
23 MR. LEVIN: Well, what we discovered was in Pennsylvania, 24 not having Microsoft Exchange is hurting us. We have an antiquated 25 e-mail system, but we're supposed to get Microsoft Exchange hopefully by the end of November.
199 1 One of our people was able to decode your NRC stuff using 2 Microsoft Exchange. But I would say this. I always have to wait for 3 the stuff to come on the website which sometimes is a little bit longer.
4 The last two you sent, 083 and 084, when I got to the 5 website, I got an error message that said you hadn't posted it yet. I 6 can read the headers on your e-mail, but the text is coded like 7 everybody else's. I would prefer and my personal opinion is just give 8 me a simple message saying you've got this document and get it on the 9 website faster because I can run that in PDF or whatever instead of 10 waiting three weeks before you post it.
11 MR. FLETCHER: Okay. Who would like to comment.
12 MR. BANGART: That was going to be exactly my comment that 13 all of the letters do end up at the OSP web page site. And if anybody 14 having trouble getting access to those letters and calling them up when 15 they go to that site. Now there is -- we don't manage that website 16 ourselves. We use Oak Ridge to do that. So there is a couple of day 17 delay. But it's supposed to be only a couple of days. If you're 18 experiencing longer delays than that in finding it at the website 19 location, tell us because we think that's the kind of time period it 20 takes to get it posted.
21 But is there anybody that can't go to the website and 22 successfully call up a document?
23 MR. PADGETT: I have trouble with that, also. And I've 24 worked with your people on it, and they didn't understand why. I'm not 25 sure now whether that has been solved or not, but I was having trouble with that -- going to the website.
200 1 MR. BANGART: Okay, one example. Is Jim Myers aware of 2 that?
3 MR. PADGETT: Yes, yes. I've worked with Jim on that. And, 4 again, I think that one has been solved, and I no longer have the 5 problem. But I'd have to go back and check and make sure.
6 MR. BANGART: I'm sure that we'll commit to address the 7 problems as we know them today and do as much as we can on our end to 8 help solve some of them. But I think the best solution for most of you 9 at least is to go to the website if you're having difficulty on an 10 individual message. But I mean, given this technology, though, and the 11 different pieces of software and different versions, I think this is 12 going to be a continuing problem that we're going to have to continue 13 just to communicate on and try to keep -- address these and resolve them 14 one by one as we go along.
15 But I think the universal solution is to use the website 16 except maybe in a few cases that are relatively isolated.
17 MR. PADGETT: Dick, will you continue to notify us via 18 e-mail when you're putting something significant out on the website?
19 MR. BANGART: Yeah. I think right now -- I'll talk to Jim, 20 and we'll take the feedback that we receive on the extent of these 21 comments. And maybe the frequency and the difficulty of these comments 22 is such that it doesn't make sense to continue to try to use the 23 announcement server for all agreement states letters. And we may just 24 rely, as you indicate, on the website. I don't know. We'll have to --
25 we thought that the use of the server to transmit the all agreement
201 1 state letters was resulting in relatively few problems in terms of your 2 ability to call up the information.
3 I think what we've learned last night and today is that the 4 problem is more widespread than we had thought.
5 MR. PADGETT: It's still a preferred -- for me, it's the 6 preferred route. And again, now I use Office 97. And I'd say 75 7 percent of the time when I open the attachment, I open it with no 8 problem. Again, the next one, for some reason, I can't open. Even a 9 few when you try to save it as, it won't save it, this kind of thing. I 10 don't know what to do.
11 MR. BANGART: I think one of the problems is that we get 12 documents that we send to you that are generated from a number of 13 sources.
14 MR. PADGETT: Right.
15 MR. BANGART: It's not just our office that generates the 16 document. It's other offices. Sometimes it's an NRC contractor that's 17 worked on a new reg or something.
18 MR. PADGETT: But my suggestion is don't stop sending them 19 that way. You know, 20 MR. BANGART: If all else fails, call us and Kathleen will 21 fax it to you.
22 MR. FLETCHER: Well, that's what I was going to get back to 23 because what I'm hearing is (1) we do need to communicate what works, I 24 mean, what systems you have. I think it would also be helpful if we had 25 the information what systems you're normally transmitting up, you know.
Is it going out 97? Is it going out in WordPerfect 8.0?
202 1 So we need to have as a block of this compiled information 2 how you normally send the documents out. That may help at least in the 3 way we look at it. So we can make this one document which contains all 4 of the addresses, all of the e-mails, et cetera, and the systems that we 5 use. Maybe it will help solve this problem.
6 And you're right. It's a continuing thing as technology 7 goes forward. But we need to do something about it right now.
8 MR. WALTER: This is David Walter, Alabama. You already 9 have to make the PDF file for the website. So everyone has the ability 10 to get the free software to read adobe acrobat. If you were to make 11 that an attachment as a PDF attachment, we should all be able to read it 12 directly in the e-mail instead of having to have numerous different 13 types of versions of software to keep up with it. I think that would 14 probably be helpful for getting them every time as you and I prefer to 15 get them.
16 MR. PADGETT: I have it.
17 MR. WALTER: You know, I'd rather it come in e-mail to me 18 personally rather than have to look it up on the web all the time 19 myself.
20 MR. PADGETT: I agree.
21 MR. FLETCHER: Steve Collins.
22 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins of Illinois. Based on questions 23 and conversations I had last night and based on feedback the NRC has 24 actually received from states, they're not sure that more than seven 25 states actually receive and read the mail. So you know, I'd kind of like to know that a broader spectrum of people are actually receiving it
203 1 and able to read it and that sort of stuff because a lot of you 2 apparently may be receiving it, reading it, but never giving them any 3 feedback. So they don't really know for sure.
4 I mean, I specifically asked how many states have you gotten 5 feedback from. Normally, it's three states. But we have up to seven 6 that we actually hear from every now and then. So all of you may be 7 aware and reading it and just not responding. But I think we ought to 8 do some show of hands or something to let NRC know.
9 MR. FLETCHER: Okay.
10 MR. COLLINS: Some of the problems, mega formats, headers 11 and seals. Now when you're sending that text stuff or sending us to 12 stuff, you can clean up and eliminate headers and eliminate seals from 13 documents that you're sending out.
14 A little bit more description in the cover page or in the 15 announcement that comes, you know, the attention line or something on 16 there has to describe what's in there, what format it's in, like Roland 17 said, would help a lot. And auto formatting -- this has also caused 18 problems.
19 MR. FLETCHER: What I would say as a follow up to what Steve 20 has pointed out, I think that it is important that we do get feedback 21 when we're having these problems. If this is the first time we've made 22 mention of them, then it will be difficult for the problem to be solved.
23 So I encourage everyone that as you receive information you can't read, 24 you let someone know I couldn't read that. I can't do anything about it 25 if I can't read it.
204 1 I think it's more important to ensure that we all do it in 2 the future rather than how many did it in the past. So let's make sure 3 that we communicate whenever these problems occur.
4 Yes, let's do that. How many people are getting mail 5 without problems? Okay, how many are getting mail and having problems?
6 Okay, that's about the same number. How many are not getting any mail.
7 MS. SCHNEIDER: Kathy Schneider. Just a second. I saw a 8 couple hands I haven't heard from. I kind of help Jim as a backup.
9 Have Florida, Louisiana, have you been talking to Jim Myers about the 10 problems you were having? And anybody else? Okay.
11 MR. WASCOM: I talked to Jim -- extension instead of doc doc 12 or doc.wp for WordPerfect --
13 MS. SCHNEIDER: Okay, I've written it down. We will be 14 pursuing that, okay.
15 MR. WASCOM: I've been receiving them this past week.
16 MS. SCHNEIDER: Congratulations on your new job again.
17 MR. WASCOM: It had already been cleaned up.
18 MS. SCHNEIDER: Okay. Like I said, I know some of them are 19 people I've talked to. But those of you I saw hands go up, please call 20 and let us know, too, what your problems are so we can address them.
21 MR. FLETCHER: Okay, any more on that particular item? Then 22 let's move on IMPEP participation. Kathy gave us a presentation on the 23 schedule, and indicated that two to three additional people would be 24 helpful. So if you've got individuals to nominate, please do so at this 25 time. Richard?
205 1 MR. RATLIFF: Kathy, I think we have nine IMPEP people now.
2 And I think at first when we started, it was 14.
3 MS. SCHNEIDER: Due to -- I do best when planning these with 4 about 11 or 12 because of changes in schedules, sicknesses and last 5 minute changes, and also making sure that your team members have enough 6 time from when they're attending IMPEPs to when your state is being 7 IMPEP'd.
8 So 14, you cannot have very much work. About 11-12 works 9 really well as a cadre to pull on.
10 MR. RATLIFF: So how many do we need to --
11 MS. SCHNEIDER: We have nine right now.
12 MR. FLETCHER: So two to three.
13 MS. SCHNEIDER: Two to three would do it. And I've lost 14 some people like Martha who's retired, and Don Bunn is stepping down.
15 And with the people I have there, would I would like a little bit more 16 depth is licensing, and it could be licensing and inspection. But if 17 you have an inspector, somebody, we'll take him.
18 MR. RATLIFF: And you know, what we decided two years ago 19 was that the past chair would be NRC's contact to set up MRB meetings.
20 And this year, Bob Quill and I are supposed to go off the MRB. So we 21 need at least two new MRB reviewers.
22 MR. FLETCHER: Well, I have three names here for the MRB.
23 But IMPEP, I haven't gotten any.
24 MR. LEVIN: Kathy, just a question. What kind of time 25 commitment does this state IMPEP person need to have?
206 1 MS. SCHNEIDER: It's about -- for team members, it's about 2 three and a half weeks. For prep time, on sci time, completion of the 3 report, and then the tenets at the MRB.
4 MR. LEVIN: Is this like three and a half weeks once a year?
5 Is that what --
6 MS. SCHNEIDER: Per IMPEP review.
7 MR. LEVIN: And how many reviews would they do?
8 MS. SCHNEIDER: Most would have a state person and one of 9 our real, you know, it's been about two a year. I think Jim MacLeish 10 may have done two per year. But that's worse.
11 MR. LEVIN: So you're talking seven weeks per year?
12 MS. SCHNEIDER: Yeah. Normally, I try and have it one state 13 only having one per year. That's about what they tolerate as far as 14 their management letting them out. But we have had one or two states 15 who have helped us when somebody has had a crisis come up and helped us.
16 MR. LEVIN: So you try for three and a half, but it could be 17 seven in an emergency?
18 MS. SCHNEIDER: It could be seven. But most of the time, we 19 try and juggle the schedule so we're not putting that kind of impact on 20 to your staff.
21 MR. FLETCHER: Jim?
22 MR. MACLEISH: I was going to say I only did one per year, 23 and three weeks -- three personal weeks is a good estimate. And you 24 really get a tremendous amount. You learn a tremendous amount from 25 being the state member on the team. The state member on the team really
207 1 receives more in learning and experience than he gives in the three 2 weeks. So I'd encourage anybody that could find the time to do this.
3 MR. FLETCHER: Yeah, Aaron.
4 MR. PADGETT: North Carolina will provide someone.
5 MR. FLETCHER: Okay.
6 MR. PADGETT: I'd rather not give you the name right now.
7 But we will provide.
8 MR. FLETCHER: Well, since I'm going to be the coordinator, 9 I'd appreciate it.
10 MR. PADGETT: Okay.
11 MR. FLETCHER: Pierce?
12 MR. O'KELLY: I had told Kathy earlier that we will try to 13 provide someone probably the first of next week.
14 MR. FLETCHER: Okay. That's two. We could use one more for 15 good measure.
16 MR. BAILEY: We'll give you one to replace Don Bunn.
17 MS. SCHNEIDER: Thank you very much.
18 MR. FLETCHER: Next on the agenda is the MRB participation.
19 Today and over the past week or so, I have had three people who have 20 indicated that they would like to participate, and if they have no 21 qualms, I'll mention theirn names.
22 Pierce O'Kelly has indicated he would like to participate.
23 Diane Tefft and David Snellings. Now are there any - yes?
24 MS. TEFFT: That must be -- I must have mentioned that last 25 year. But I --
MR. FLETCHER: Oh, you're going to have to use the mike.
208 1 MS. TEFFT: I mentioned that last year. But at this time, I 2 don't think I would do it, Roland. Maybe in the future year or so.
3 MR. FLETCHER: Okay. Anyone else? The -- go ahead.
4 MR. BAILEY: How many do you need?
5 MR. FLETCHER: Well, right now we have five. And I don't 6 think we've ever had a specific number because it's availability that 7 really controls the MRB. You know, someone who's available to be 8 present is preferred when the MRB is held.
9 So usually if you have a pool of seven or eight, you're 10 better off. And that's the target I would like to have. We have five 11 right now.
12 MS. SCHNEIDER: I also want to say we're really working 13 forward to encourage video conferencing whenever we can so that there's 14 less impact on you. And we're doing better. We've had a couple ones 15 that worked real well. Marie's shaking her head. We did a nice one, 16 too. She came in, but we had region people come in. So we are working 17 on doing that also.
18 MR. FLETCHER: Okay, we'll go with --
19 MR. BAILEY: What is your policy on those of us who've 20 rotated off of doing it?
21 MR. FLETCHER: I don't have a policy.
22 MR. BAILEY: I'd be happy to do it if you're going to put 23 people who've rotated off and had a gap or whatever. It's a fun thing 24 to do.
25 MR. FLETCHER: Well, I think the only reason that people were rotating on and off was to give other people experience, but not
209 1 for any other reason. I think we had a -- Richard, you can correct me.
2 I think we had kind of an unwritten rule about the length of time, but 3 that was more for experience, right.
4 MR. RATLIFF: Right. We were going to go for two years 5 each. And then we decided that we had new people coming in. And so we 6 rotated some folks off early.
7 8 MR. PARIS: As one who is rotating off, I would encourage anybody who's 9 not done it. As one who is rotating off, I would encourage anybody 10 who's not done it to participate. It's a good learning experience, 11 particularly if you have an IMPEP coming up.
12 MR. FLETCHER: Okay. Aubrey has also nodded and said he 13 would be willing to do it. So we will put those rotating off in kind of 14 a reserve alternate kind of position so that everyone can get some 15 experience.
16 Steve mentioned earlier about the OAS, IMPEP of the NRC/SS&D 17 Program. I don't know if you have any more to add on there or not.
18 Were there any additional questions on that? Do we have a time frame 19 data?
20 MR. COLLINS: No. The time frame, as I said earlier, we're 21 going to try to -- the team leader's going to try to get an actual 22 onsite visit evaluation part of it done sometime between the second week 23 of January and the end of March. And then that sets the rest of the 24 schedule automatically. I think 74 days after that, they need to have 25 the MRB meeting, and 104 days after, to have the final report.
MR. FLETCHER: All right. Questions? Richard?
210 1 MR. RATLIFF: I wonder, Steve. You talked about the MRB 2 part of it, though. I'm wondering if the MRB could be those of us who 3 have rotated off or MRB for other states and then have one NRC person.
4 MR. COLLINS: I haven't really received much guidance from 5 NRC with the MRB. I think maybe they were shocked when they heard the 6 idea that I might actually reconstitute the whole thing.
7 Of course, I didn't volunteer to rewrite the whole document 8 if I have to do that. Right now, if I had to make the choice, I'm 9 leaning towards the idea of leaving the MRB as it is with the exception 10 of Carl not being a member and a state person being a full member at 11 that particular one.
12 But if the states here wanted to go through the process of 13 totally reconstituting the MRB just for the SS&D, we would look for 14 volunteers from the states to be on that MRB and to rewrite the 15 procedure, Gordon.
16 MR. FLETCHER: I feel everyone who feels they want to do 17 that should report to Steve. The next is an issue that did come up this 18 year. It's one that I don't think from my perspective there's very much 19 that can be debated about it.
20 My understanding that OAS membership are those states that 21 are agreement states, period. When I became a member of this 22 organization, I didn't fill out any forms. I haven't paid any dues 23 which you may want to look at. But I'm a member, and as long as we're 24 agreement states, I believe that that's the criteria.
25
211 1 But it has come up, and it may come up again. And that's 2 the only reason it's on the agenda. Any questions, comments on that?
3 Good.
4 Now we're going to talk about this probably a little more 5 tomorrow. But I thought we need to at least touch upon the hosting of 6 these meetings as we -- this is the second one we as agreement states 7 have laid out and done ourselves.
8 And as we continue to do this, I think we need to perhaps 9 lay out some keys or some guidance to step to states that may want to do 10 this in the future because there are a lot of loose ends that you learn 11 as you go along. And I know Diane has done a lot of things that none of 12 us may have thought about. And it would be good if she and Ed and, you 13 know, we could just make sure that we get some of these things down for 14 future posting of these meetings.
15 And I would also recommend that if you feel you may want to 16 host next year's meeting, please present some kind of -- even if it's an 17 e-mail proposal, make some kind of a proposal to the executive committee 18 so that we can act on that. We need to have -- you know, we all have 19 jobs, as all of us sitting in this room. So we need to have something 20 that we can really respond to.
21 I encourage all of you to think about whether or not you are 22 in a position to host one of these meetings. I think the education and 23 experience that your staff gets in something like this is tremendous.
24 And I would encourage those of you who feel you can to come forward. You 25 can even do it now if you want.
212 1 No cards on the edge? This is a very quiet business 2 meeting.
3 MR. RATLIFF: Roland?
4 MR. FLETCHER: Yes.
5 MR. RATLIFF: We figured that Austin, Texas in October is 6 really nice. It's not hot or humid. So we'll make a nomination.
7 MR. FLETCHER: All right. Austin in October. It sounds 8 good to me.
9 MR. BAILEY: Make sure it's the same weekend as a home game.
10 [Laughter.]
11 MR. FLETCHER: All right, we'll go forward with that.
12 MR. GODWIN: Roland?
13 MR. FLETCHER: Yes.
14 MR. GODWIN: Should we start thinking about doing it for two 15 years in advance or having one sort of in reserve for the next year?
16 MR. FLETCHER: I thought about it. And my only reluctance 17 is I would like, you know, Stan's not here, and I don't know -- perhaps 18 he should make that decision. But if there is a state that is thinking 19 about doing it in two years, I can give him that recommendation. Diane?
20 MS. TEFFT: Yeah, just to comment. I know myself, I'm 21 planning this meeting that one year is really short notice for the 22 hotels. And even the conference has gone to four years or something.
23 MR. FLETCHER: Four years.
24 MS. TEFFT: So that might be something you need to consider, 25 at least for early planning for the hotel or at least book the dates.
213 1 MR. FLETCHER: Is there someone who feels that it's possible 2 that they would be able to do it in two years or at least like to have 3 their name considered for two years? I can pass that information along?
4 [No response.]
5 MR. FLETCHER: Okay, well, we will be communicating by 6 e-mail once the Executive Committee has had an opportunity to meet.
7 You're making this agenda easy. Maybe I shouldn't say anything.
8 Actually, by taking care of -- we've taken care of both 9 hosting the agreement states meeting and the next meeting. So I'm now 10 opening up for any discussion topics, resolution or position papers that 11 we need to talk about here.
12 I would also like us to at least discuss the issues and the 13 proposals made by Mr. Dinger when he made his HPS presentation because 14 based upon his statistics, we are about just slightly over 50 percent 15 involved in HPS, and maybe there's some things we need to consider as 16 far as other extensions of our participation, our liaison role, et 17 cetera. Comments? Aubrey?
18 MR. GODWIN: Mr. Chairman, I move we establish a liaison 19 relationship with the National Health Physics Society.
20 MR. FLETCHER: Start again. I didn't hear you.
21 MR. GODWIN: I move.
22 MR. FLETCHER: Thank you. Okay. I heard the last part.
23 There's a motion on the floor that we establish a liason relationship 24 with the Health Physics Society. Is there a second?
25 CHORUS: I second.
214 1 MR. FLETCHER: It's been moved and second that we establish 2 a liaison relationship with the HPS. Is there any discussion?
3 [No response.]
4 MR. FLETCHER: All in favor, raise your hands. Opposed?
5 The motion carries. Now what we just have to decide how we make the 6 selections. Do we have a volunteer to be our first liaison 7 representative? Maybe you didn't hear me.
8 MS. MCBURNEY: One recommendation I make, when the Health 9 Physics Society established this liaison luncheon and with a lot of the 10 organizations that it wants to have a working relationship with, they 11 invited the current president or chair persons of those societies.
12 If you would like to, you might want to just have at least 13 for the first year have the president or the chair person of OAS 14 represent the OAS, and then maybe as time goes on, establish a more 15 permanent type liaison or rotating type liaison.
16 MR. BAILEY: Ruth, do we know if Stan is a member?
17 MS. MCBURNEY: No, we don't.
18 MR. FLETCHER: I don't think you have to be a member to be a 19 liaison.
20 MR. BAILEY: Well, no, you don't. But I think it would be 21 important.
22 MS. MCBURNEY: Well, I could send him an application form.
23 MR. FLETCHER: I will ensure that that information gets back 24 to Stan. If there is, you know, if there's a reason he can't do it, 25 then maybe we'll ask for other voluntees. Steve?
215 1 MR. COLLINS: I attended the luncheon at last year's meeting 2 just a couple of months ago. And some of the things they were talking 3 about cooperative efforts with all these organizations on training. He 4 made a big pitch about the people really doing health physics now aren't 5 necessarily health physicists when they start.
6 So there's a lot of organizations that have bits and pieces 7 of training for these people. And they're basically writing up this 8 training and getting it available to put on websites and make it 9 interactive and all that sort of stuff. And they're wanting cooperative 10 efforts from all the various organizations that could use that and need 11 it and could provide input to certain parts to divvy up the workload so 12 that a good comprehensive package gets done quickly.
13 That's one of the things that they're doing that could be 14 helpful to your staff members, new staff members in particular. The 15 other thing they're talking about doing which wouldn't, I don't think, 16 affec this group, but they proposed it with CRCPD and A&S and some of 17 the others is trying to go away from every one of these groups having 18 its own individual annual meeting. I mean, HPS can no longer basically 19 afford to have two great big meetings each year, nad they're thinking of 20 cutting down to one.
21 And what they're looking at doing, even though it would 22 narrow down the sites that could host it would be to have one great big 23 radiation protection business. If you're in that business, one great 24 big meeting each year at some location where the A&S and CRCPD and HPS 25 and there were two or three other organizations would meet in this one great big city. A lot of the sessions would be open to everybody. But
216 1 then there would be a day set aside or a day and a half so that groups 2 like the CRCPD could have their own private sessions to take care of 3 their own business.
4 But the rest of it would be open sessions for everybody. So 5 that's at least three or four years down the road. They knew that 6 Anchorage, Alaska couldn't hold it all. So it was going to be after 7 that for sure because we weren't willing to change until after that.
8 So that's what last year's meeting was about. Those are the 9 kinds of issues and topics they're talking about, some of them 10 cooperative and informative, some of them other things, money saving and 11 efficiency wise. So maybe that will encourage one of you to want to be 12 there next year.
13 MR. FLETCHER: Thank you, Steve. Ed?
14 MR. BAILEY: Are we taking topics? Is that what we're 15 doing?
16 MR. FLETCHER: Right now, we were discussing the liaison.
17 Was your comment about that?
18 MR. BAILEY: When you get to topics, I want to comment.
19 MR. FLETCHER: Okay. Anyone else on the liaison? Pierce?
20 MR. O'KELLY: I think the issue that Ruth brought up of the 21 chairmn going the first year is probably not a bad idea. But I do think 22 you might want to consider a longer term for someone to serve so that 23 they can get in and get to know the people, get to know the routines of 24 the meetings. And I think add some continuity to it over the long haul.
25 It would be more productive if you had somebody at least in a two or three-year term as a liaison.
217 1 MS. MCBURNEY: I forgot what I was going to say. The 2 liaison -- just to add to that, you probably do want to have some kind 3 of continuity. And also -- oh, the other point I was going to make is 4 that we are trying to get the government section of the Health Physics 5 Society really gearing back up again.
6 And I think that we always state that the CRCPD meeting is 7 the only meeting where you can get all the federal and state agencies 8 talking together. And this might be another avenue that you could get, 9 but all the health physicists in the federal agencies with state input 10 talking together as well.
11 MR. FLETCHER: One suggestion, and Richard and I may want to 12 take this back. A three-year commitment could be met if the chair-elect 13 is made that liaison because the chair-elect would remain on the 14 Executive Committee through the chair-elect year, the chair year, and 15 the past chair year. So you would have your three-year continuity if we 16 did it that way. Of course, I probably eliminated some candidates for 17 the chair-elect.
18 But there is another committee that the CRCPD -- I'm the 19 representative, CRCPD representative. That's the N-13, the Radiation 20 Protection Committee which last year seemed to be going away, and this 21 year we just had a meeting. Don Cool was also there. And now they seem 22 to be getting stronger.
23 And one of the things that became very obvious is when they 24 have standards that are very likely to become regulations, they very 25 much appreciate the input from CRCPD, from NRC, perhaps even DOE. But missing from that puzzle is anything from the agreement states.
218 1 So I wanted to come back and at least have you think about 2 that as another committee that perhaps we should be present on because 3 if the CRCPD representative is not from an agreement state, then 4 agreement state considerations won't be made at those meetings.
5 MR. COOL: Well, perhaps I can try to amplify for you just a 6 little bit. This in part came up because the NRC is pushing some new 7 government wide requirements associated with trying to adopt or utilize 8 industry codes and standards. And so the Commission itself, some of you 9 may have been present in the meeting we had up in Chicago. The agency 10 is moving in a direction of trying to reinforce its involvement and 11 looking to take standards like the N-13 standards, the IEEE standards, a 12 number of the reactor standards and drop them much more completely and 13 quickly within the NRC regulatory structure. It might be regulation; it 14 might be some of the guidance documents or otherwise.
15 And that immediately tripped a thought. I think it happened 16 with Roland and I a few micro seconds apart when we were sitting there 17 in the meeting that previously the states have not been involved in --
18 at least the agreement states have not been involved in any formal way 19 in the process of looking at these consensus standards that are coming 20 out.
21 And maybe our fault; maybe there's some additional 22 mechanisms. While NRC gets it and vets it fairly well within the 23 Commission itself, our process has not previously been to attempt to try 24 and get vote sheets or drafts out to the program directors. We usually 25 only have about 30, maybe 60-day clock on some of those issues, and that hasn't happened, and there might be some other mechanisms.
219 1 But it seemed to us that it might be a very good opportunity 2 for the agreements states to have an additional voice separate from and 3 in addition to the voice that CRCPD has to strengthen your ability to 4 input on the consensus standards because those are much more likely to 5 show up somewhere in NRC's regulatory regime as we go down the road.
6 MR. FLETCHER: Thanks.
7 MR. COOL: Okay, I have a little assignment. What's 8 involved in this process. The person who would be an N-13 9 representative would see documents in a couple of stages. As presently 10 envisioned, early drafts or an early draft of the document at the time 11 it's being developed by the HPSSC, the Health Physics Standards 12 Committee working group, and that gets circulated to the Health Physics 13 Standards Committee. It's also circulated to the members of N-13 for an 14 early reaction as to whether it's headed in the right direction, whether 15 there's any show stoppers or particularly difficult issues.
16 After it's actually been approved by the working group and 17 comes up through the process, then the N-13 members actually ballot 18 approval for the document. And when N-13 approves it, as with any of 19 the NC committees, it then goes and is formally published. And the 20 route now is -- you've seen them. They actually come out bound in the 21 middle of the HPS newsletters. That's how the N-13 standards are now 22 being printed and distributed.
23 N-13 as a whole committee meets once per year. Venue has 24 traditionally been a hotel near Washington-Dulles Airport, and also 25 happens in the October time frame. In fact, part of what we do or have previously tried to juggle such that the N-13 meeting and the OAS
220 1 meeting were not on the same Friday. And we've had to juggle those back 2 and forth a little bit.
3 So that's the time frame commitment. You will see eight, 4 nine, ten more or less documents that float through each year for one of 5 these ballots in one form or another. The number of documents has come 6 up because we've tried to interject ourselves a little bit earlier in 7 the process to be able to give a you've got a real show stopper here; 8 we'd never be able to go this direction kind of approach just to give 9 you an idea of the work load.
10 MR. FLETCHER: Thanks. Any other comments on that? If not, 11 Ed, you want to bring up some additional topics?
12 MR. BAILEY: Yeah. I just want to alert everybody to what 13 appears to be a new practice by the Veterans Administration. We've 14 recently had the Veterans Administration go out to a county hospital and 15 contract with that county hospital to do the nuclear medicine services 16 for the hospital -- not VA patients, the county hospital patients.
17 18 They applied for and were granted an amendment to their NRC 19 license to conduct those activities at the county hospital. It's 20 disturbing to us, and we have been discussing with NRC and have at this 21 point filed an allegation that they're doing it and shouldn't be doing 22 it.
23 It raises so many questions. One of the things that comes 24 up and is in this decommission sites, essentially when VA pulls out or 25 terminates their contract, we will be responsible for anything they've left behind. But we think it's not proper. We've asked NRC to relook
221 1 at the situation and in essence to say we've made a mistake. We've 2 erred in issuing this licensing amendment.
3 We have asked NRC in our conversations with them following 4 the allegation if this means that one of our licensees can contract with 5 the VA, and the VA can terminate their NRC license, and we can simply 6 amend the license. We've got two prime candidates in Stanford and the 7 VA hospital located next to Stanford which actually have the same RSO.
8 And we also have UCLA who could do the VA Wadsworth which is 9 just across the street from UCLA. That would make Carol Marcus at NRC 10 license, I mean -- but anyway, I think you all ought to be aware of it.
11 I don't think it's a practice that we feel is proper.
12 The VA will not have command of the staff at the hospitals, 13 and we use our own technicians to come in and do it. If a patient 14 happens to be hospitalized, that patient will be left in the hospital 15 with the hospital responsible for taking care of them, not the VA.
16 In their application, they mention two radioactive 17 materials, Cobalt 57 and Cesium 137. Specifically, they do intend to 18 use Galium. They have used Galium. So there's just so many issues 19 concerned with this.
20 And according to VA, they are intending to pursue this and 21 other locations as an additional source of revenue for the VA. So you 22 all want to look around. I think perhaps being as small geographically 23 as New Hampshire is, the VA hospital could service all the nuclear 24 medicine facilities there.
25 MR. FLETCHER: Aaron?
222 1 MR. PADGETT: I would like to ask Ed a question. Aaron 2 Padgett, North Carolina. Have you informed the hospital that they have 3 contracted with that they are illegally using radioactive materials in 4 the State of California, and that you hold the hospital responsible, and 5 you will be going after administration on that?
6 MR. BAILEY: Well, in essence, what has happened, though, is 7 that by issuing the license, the NRC has said this is an area of federal 8 jurisdiction within the state of California.
9 MR. PADGETT: Well, again --
10 MR. BAILEY: But to answer your question directly, we have 11 approached the hospital. Their initial response was, okay, we'll go 12 ahead and get a license. After talking with VA again, they've now come 13 back and said, no, we don't think we're going to license.
14 MR. PADGETT: Okay. Then you need to get your lawyers 15 involved to see how far they'll go and going after the administration 16 for unlawfully using the radioactive materials.
17 You've got two approaches. You can talk with the NRC and 18 say, hey, look, you've crossed over into the jurisdiction. You 19 shouldn't be here. I'm astounded that they would do that.
20 And then the other thing is the people who are having the 21 use on their facility approach it from the point of view that you do not 22 have a license for this material to be here. We're coming after you.
23 MR. BAILEY: But the users of the material do have a 24 license. They have been authorized by a regulatory agency to do it.
25 Now there's no question in our minds that if the VA wanted to rent a room in that hospital and treat VA patients, they could that.
223 1 And the lawyers aren't looking at it. The other thing 2 that's rather astounding to us is that the NRC, in approving this, did 3 not determine that the doctors were even licensed to practice medicine 4 in California. They didn't even ask that question. They lucked out 5 because the nuclear medicine tech who's employed by VA just happens to 6 hold a nuclear medicine from the State of California. It could have 7 been that the person didn't.
8 So there are lots of questions about how you can essentially 9 do away with the agreement that we have where they gave up 10 responsibility and yet allow a federal agency to go out and do this work 11 for a county hospital.
12 MR. FLETCHER: Okay, Jake, Stu, then Aubrey.
13 MR. JACOBI: In my opinion, this is just another example of 14 a broader issue, and that is the issue of where the line is between the 15 NRC and agreement states. At universities, there are situations where 16 federal employees work with licensed material in state rooms, and state 17 employees work in federal rooms and every mixture in between. And we 18 have a university that's been trying to find out for a year to find out 19 who's supposed to regulate certain things because it's really not clear 20 who's the user, and they're even sometimes combining private facilities.
21 And so there is another issue. Another one that we found 22 out is that every since NRC came up with its dictate on exclusive 23 federal jurisdiction, when our licensees have tried to determine if a 24 facility was exclusive federal jurisdiction, they have never got an 25 answer in the time frame they needed to do the job. So you might as well just throw that out as make believe.
224 1 Subsequently, I think NRC will combine -- I've seen some 2 fines where the people that worked in the federal jurisdiction. But if 3 you have a requirement and you can't reasonably get an answer in a short 4 period of time, I think there might be a problem with your requirements.
5 So I guess my recommendation is that we really go back and look at 6 what's NRC, what's state. And I know there's a move across this country 7 now saying unless it's really important that it's needed for a federal 8 cause that the states have primacy.
9 And I think that's the message that we should be taking back 10 to the NRC. When in doubt, it's the NRC.
11 MR. FLETCHER: Stu?
12 MR. LEVIN: Of course, some alarm because we do license in 13 NARM, and you're talking about somebody with an NRC license using NARM 14 radiopharmaceuticals. It doesn't matter if you're an agreement state or 15 not. We have the laws for licensing the NARM.
16 I've got the same problem, and I wouldn't -- we're going to 17 be on the look out to see if any of our VA hospitals are going to do 18 this. I think we could stop them at least from using the NARM 19 radiopharmaceuticals off their property.
20 They may be a federal agency, but the NRC can't license them 21 to use NARM. I don't believe.
22 MR. FLETCHER: Aubrey?
23 MR. GODWIN: As I understand the arrangements, Ed, the 24 hospital is a contractor in effect to the federal agency, and it's 25 contractor employees do --
MR. FLETCHER: No, the federal agency is the contractor.
225 1 MR. BAILEY: The federal agency has contracted with --
2 MR. GODWIN: They're the contractee, I guess, to the federal 3 agency. And if you look at exclusive federal jurisdiction or federal 4 jurisdiction, if it's contractor employees in non-exclusive federal 5 jurisdiction, even if it's one federal land, we regulate.
6 If they're contract employees -- if they're federal 7 employees, we do not regulate them.
8 MR. BAILEY: They are federal employees.
9 MR. GODWIN: All of them are federal employees.
10 MR. BAILEY: They're all federal employees. They're all VA 11 salaried people. VA is receiving the money from the hospital for 12 providing the services to that hospital.
13 MR. GODWIN: But wheh those employees leave, who is 14 possessing the material? It's the hospital.
15 MR. BAILEY: No. Well, 16 MR. GODWIN: You've got a radioactive patient now. They're 17 in therapy.
18 MR. BAILEY: Well, they danced around that in their 19 application by saying they would not administer any doses that required 20 hospitalization under 35. Whatever it is. But the problem with that is 21 that quite often people who are already hospitalized go down for nuclear 22 medicine tests. And yes, there will be radioactive patients in that 23 county hospital, particularly galium patients, AIDS patients who are 24 getting galium scans on a fairly regular schedule.
25 MR. GODWIN: I would think your medical society would do you more good than anything.
226 1 MR. FLETCHER: Are we in a position or is there sufficient 2 concern here that we develop a position paper or a resolution on this?
3 MR. PADGETT: I'd say this could be a pretty big issues if 4 it starts spreading other issues.
5 MR. FLETCHER: Ed, would you be willing to spear head the 6 development of a position paper for OAS on this?
7 MR. BAILEY: Sure.
8 MR. FLETCHER: Could we get two or three people to work on 9 it with him? Aaron?
10 MR. PADGETT: I would love to say yes, but I have some 11 things going on that I don't think will allow me to do that.
12 MR. FLETCHER: Okay. See if you can get a couple people to 13 work with you on this, and let me know. Other topics. Everything is 14 going well, huh? We're not going to have to have a meeting on Saturday.
15 Diane?
16 MS. TEFFT: Yeah, I don't have anything written down, but 17 Richard does. But the Commissioner invited out input on some topics, 18 and I -- it sounded like he said that we should be involved in some of 19 the things. And I was just going to take this opportunity to say that 20 maybe this is the place that we should organize something to follow up 21 on some of the topics he talked about. But I guess it was more general.
22 MR. FLETCHER: Yeah, he said he would be at the reception.
23 And Steve?
24 MR. COLLINS: On a different topic, I think all of you are 25 aware the Commissioner made reference to a position paper. Roland made reference to a position paper presented to the Commission which was the
227 1 OAS position paper on clean up standards. And I would like to know have 2 all of you received a copy of that three-page document? Is there anyone 3 here who has not received it?
4 MR. FLETCHER: This was back in March.
5 MR. COLLINS: This was presented to the Commission at the 6 OASSP briefing of the Commission in March. And basically, I drafted 7 most of it. And if you don't have a copy of that, if several of you 8 don't, maybe we can ask NRC to distribute it as a parf of an SP notice 9 or something. I've got about seven versions on my computer, and I don't 10 remember which ones the last.
11 MR. FLETCHER: Well, I have the last. I have a copy of the 12 last. Terry?
13 MR. FRAZEE: Way back -- well, not too far back, there was 14 the revision to what was the old B-7, the compatibility designation for 15 individual regulations came out, and I kept putting it off because it 16 was such a massive document. And finally vacation came, and I blew it 17 entirely.
18 But when I did come back, I sent off a quick note after the 19 comment period. And I only had a short chance to look at anything in 20 it. But when I went down through it, and I was looking at mostly the 21 H&S designations, and a couple of them popped out that struck me as 22 being fairly odd. They were ones that were requirements for a record.
23 And so I sent off my notes. And hey, wait a minute, this doesn't seem 24 right.
25 The response came back about the same day that the final paper came out with it, and so obviously my comments were too late. I
228 1 asked who had commented on it, and I thought, well, gee, some states 2 would. But it appears that on agreement states had commented on the B-7 3 or this revision, and ye there had been some other NRC programs that 4 had.
5 It just struck me that, woe, wait a minute, guys, we really 6 didn't look at some of these things, particularly the health and safety, 7 not that I don't have that in my regs. But it did seem a little odd.
8 It doesn't sort of fit with the whole concept of adequacy and 9 compatibility and how we're supposed to do it.
10 If you don't have that one, that's a health and safety. It 11 goes against your finding of adequacy -- not compatibility. And in my 12 book, I mean, that's a more significant finding. Inadquate because of 13 one or more regulations that we don't happen to have. So I guess a 14 couple things.
15 One is we really do need to look at some of these things 16 that NRC sends out. And the other one may be a question directed to 17 NRC, and that's in terms, okay, now that we have this table out there, 18 and if you do fine us with a couple of health and safety regulations, 19 what are your guidelines internally for -- well, does one give us a 20 finding of inadequacy, or does it take ten of these to get us found 21 inadequate.
22 MR. FLETCHER: It sounds a lot like some of those working 23 group questions. I don't know whether there's even an answer to that 24 question, but let's see if we can get one. You need a mike.
25 MR. ROGERS: And that's -- it's inherent in the MRB impact process that compatibility and the policy statement that compatibility
229 1 is based on program compatibility. And adequacy is based on program 2 wide capability and adequacy.
3 So when the MRB makes the final decision on a program 4 adequacy or compatibility, it looks at it in its totality. So, yes, the 5 requirement for some specific regulations are based on a health and 6 safety or adequacy need, and others are based on is there a conflict gap 7 or duplication because a regulation is missing or different than NRC's 8 regulation.
9 But basically the MRB looks at the program as a totality and 10 makes an adequacy and compatibility determination. So one rule that is 11 health and safety based does not mean that a program is inadequate 12 unless that rule were so important that it would mean you were not 13 providing an adequate level of safety for the citizens of your state 14 associated with the use of radioactive material. And I don't know of 15 any single regulation that's health and safety based that in my mind 16 would lead to an inadequate program determination.
17 MR. FLETCHER: Do you want to explain what you mean by for 18 information?
19 MR. GODWIN: The organization already has a position.
20 That's the position paper, and all we're doing is transmitting it to the 21 members of Congres for their information that that is our position.
22 MR. FLETCHER: Comments?
23 MS. YOUNGBERG: I'm Barbara Youngberg from the New York 24 State Environmental Conservation Department. I report to Paul Merges, 25 and he sent me here for one reason, and I can't go back unless I say this.
230 1 When we commented on the position paper, I think Paul 2 specifically said in his letter that he's like our department's 3 differences noted in the position paper, and I'm told that didn't 4 happen. So I think in this resolution, Paul would also want me to 5 express that if it's being transmitted to Congress or Congressional 6 members that it also be noted that our department didn't agree with the 7 entire position paper.
8 MR. ROGERS: She's absolutely correct. He did ask her that.
9 But instead of noting that New York disagreed, we just took out the 10 words "unanimous," and it now says great majority or vast majority or 11 something like that.
12 Paul's department has adopted an official policy of 10 13 millirem per year. And so that is the New York policy for that agency.
14 And so they can't buy into a 25 millirem per year all pathways position 15 because they officially have something else.
16 MR. FLETCHER: Let me further elaborate. The reason the 17 wording was majority rather than specifically listing a state in 18 opposition is because we had 22 responses not 30. So to list one state 19 in opposition, there may have been more. We didn't get that level of 20 response. But we did have a majority of states. So we stated what was 21 true rather than what might not have been.
22 Other questions or comments? If you've got reservations, 23 this is the time to bring them out.
24 MR. KLINGER: A suggestion that we also send a copy of this 25 to the EPA.
MR. FLETCHER: Okay. Is that an acceptable amendment?
231 1 MR. GODWIN: It doesn't bother me any.
2 MR. FLETCHER: Okay, seeing and hearing no further 3 discussion, all those in favor of the motion to send a copy of our 4 position paper to the appropriate committee for information signify by 5 raising your hands. Opposed? Okay. Okay, the ayes have it.
6 Now is someone going to identify the appropriate committees?
7 MR. GODWIN: When I get home, I'll call you and let you 8 know.
9 MR. FLETCHER: Okay.
10 MR. BAILEY: Hey, one thing. If you all went to the HPS 11 meeting, HPS put out a great Congressional handbook. And you ought to 12 -- that book alone will give you all this information you need.
13 MR. FLETCHER: Do you have a copy of that, Ruth? Okay. Is 14 it too thick to mail?
15 MR. BAILEY: Yeah, it's about this thick. It's a real 16 handbook.
17 MR. FLETCHER: Where? Okay, I'd appreciate that.
18 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins again. I want to make sure that 19 everybody knows I was representing Illinois, not a 201(3)(c) tax exempt 20 organization while we were doing this.
21 MR. FLETCHER: Okay, we are still at the point in the agenda 22 for topics, resolutions, position papers. Jake?
23 MR. JACOBI: This is just a real quick one that I'd like to 24 recommend for the Executive Committee to think about. This is a 25 multiyear project. But as we have 30 states and I hear there's five, six states who have or about to send letters to Joy, and I heard someone
232 1 from the NRC says they think pretty soon there's going to be 40 states.
2 And I hear us saying we're going to set up some liaisons and we're going 3 to work with the end committees, and we're going to start sending 4 letters to the Commission.
5 I'm thinking collectively we are spending time and resources 6 that we also collectively with a few others did through the conference.
7 And over the next several years I think it would be a good project under 8 the direction of the Executive Committee to come up with some options 9 and work with conference of how this organization and the conference are 10 going to be working together in five, ten years when most of the 11 conference members will probably -- I mean more of the conference 12 members will probably be members of this organization, too.
13 MR. BANGART: This is going to be aired in Paul's discussion 14 tomorrow. I think it's clear at least based on the Part 35 meeting that 15 the health and safety based determination or need for a rule is one 16 element of the current policy or practice that is probably is most 17 controversial right now.
18 MR. FLETCHER: Ed?
19 MR. BAILEY: I need you all's help, we have a licensee who 20 is going to install several license sources devices on a satellite and 21 shoot it up to orbit around the earth.
22 Now I know back when we did balloon launches, Aubrey thought 23 that the balloon facility had to give reciprocity to Alabama.
24 MR. GODWIN: Only when it lands.
25 MR. BAILEY: But I think it's unclear about whether or not we have jurisdiction to include orbiting satellite to authorize
233 1 materials to be put into a satellite to orbit the earth. And if anybody 2 has dealt with this question and how you license it, I would be very 3 happy to get your information and how do you deal with when it burns up.
4 MR. FLETCHER: Don't they have to be available for 5 inspection?
6 MR. BAILEY: That sounds just like those gauges on the top 7 of cracking towers you went up and checked the serial numbers on. Yeah, 8 you've got a real good telescope.
9 MR. COLLINS: I think the export rule and the clearance rule 10 together will solve this problem in two years. Let me come back. Maybe 11 you didn't catch the hint, or maybe you didn't and didn't want to do 12 anything with it when I made the statement about the OAS position paper 13 which was sent around to all of you, and basically that was pretty much 14 an unanimous document. It was revised to --
15 MR. FLETCHER: It was a very heavy majority. Let's not say 16 unanimous.
17 MR. COLLINS: Okau, that's right. We won't say unanimous.
18 A very heavy majority. One of the things Commissioner Diaz said was 19 Congress needs to hear from that dual regulation has gone on too long.
20 The states and NRC have expertise to do this. So that position paper 21 being the basis of it, it looks like maybe this organization could 22 address letters -- not only this organization, but the individual state 23 members could address letters and attach a copy of that documet to your 24 own elected officials to say dual regulation has gone on far too long.
25 Resolve it using language provided by Chairman Jackson if you liked her language and in accordance with the following position. See attached.
234 1 MR. FLETCHER: Comments?
2 MR. GODWIN: I believe it's within the capability that the 3 organization could send letters to appropriate committees as information 4 letters to committees of Congress without creating any kind of problem.
5 MR. FLETCHER: Well, what is the will of the body?
6 MR. GODWIN: The what?
7 MR. FLETCHER: I said what is the will of the body, or does 8 the --
9 MR. GODWIN: I move that we send a copy to the appropriate 10 committees of Congress for information purposes.
11 MR. FLETCHER: Is there a second?
12 MR. RATLIFE: Second.
13 MR. FLETCHER: Okay we had a second. It's been properly 14 moved and second that we send copies of the letter to the appropriate 15 committees for information, and there's a lot of additional information 16 that's got to be filled in there as far as what are the appropriate 17 committees. But question and discussion.
18 MR. PADGETT: Aaron Padgett, North Carolina. I'm not clear 19 yet on -- okay, we're sending the position paper as drafted for 20 information purposes only, and the organization is not taking a position 21 in support or in opposition to the position paper, is that correct? Is 22 that what we're voting on?
23 MR. FLETCHER: Any comments or discussion on that point? So 24 noted. Speaking of our potential future agreement states, Ohio, 25 Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and someone mentioned a sixth? Connecticut.
235 1 These are states that I understand that are in varying 2 levels of becoming agreement states. So within the next not too distant 3 future, we're going to have at least 36. And as Jack as indicated, 4 probably 40 within a five year period. So that is something we need to 5 be doing.
6 We've come to the point in the agenda where we need to --
7 the floor is open for nominations for chair elect. The floor is open 8 for nominations for chair elect.
9 MR. RATLIFF: I nominate Ed Bailey.
10 MR. FLETCHER: Okay. Is there a second for the nomination?
11 MR. BAILEY: What have I done to you recently?
12 MR. FLETCHER: It's been properly moved and seconded that Ed 13 Bailey --
14 MR. GODWIN: I move that the nominations are closed.
15 MR. FLETCHER: The nominations are closed on the name Ed 16 Bailey.
17 MR. O'KELLY: Before you move on that closure, remember how 18 Ed likes to talk and think how long these meetings are going to be.
19 MR. FLETCHER: That's why I'm having this one taped, and 20 he's going to have to play it.
21 MR. BAILEY: Remember, the chair of meetings is not supposed 22 to talk. They're supposed to just direct the meeting.
23 MR. FLETCHER: I'm glad to hear it. All those in favor, say 24 aye. Opposed. Congratulations.
25 MR. BAILEY: You didn't count the nays.
236 1 MR. FLETCHER: Well, the last two items are a break in 2 discussion with NRC representatives. We've got 15 minutes before the 3 reception. We've had some discussions with the NRC representatives.
4 They've essentially heard what we had to say.
5 We haven't really discussed specific proposals. So I would 6 like to just allow for the next few minutes any item that someone wants 7 to bring up, and we can close this meeting and not have to have one on 8 Saturday. And if no one has anything to bring up, we can close this 9 meeting and not have one on Saturday.
10 As my final act in this business meeting, I'm giving all of 11 you the opportunity for one last time to bring up any item we have not 12 covered or that we should talk about. If not, I certainly appreciate 13 your cooperation. This is probably been a meeting that stayed closer to 14 being on time than I can remember which I definitely thank you for. And 15 without further adieu, this business meeting is adjourned.
16 [Whereupon, at 6:10 p.m., the meeting was recessed, to 17 reconvene at 8:00 a.m., Friday, October 30, 1998.]
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