ML24058A338
| ML24058A338 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/07/2024 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-2702 | |
| Download: ML24058A338 (1) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Docket Number:
(n/a)
Location:
teleconference Date:
Wednesday, February 7, 2024 Work Order No.:
NRC-2702 Pages 1-103 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1
1 2
3 DISCLAIMER 4
5 6
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONS 7
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 8
9 10 The contents of this transcript of the 11 proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 12 Commission Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, 13 as reported herein, is a record of the discussions 14 recorded at the meeting.
15 16 This transcript has not been reviewed, 17 corrected, and edited, and it may contain 18 inaccuracies.
19 20 21 22 23
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
+ + + + +
3 712TH MEETING 4
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 5
(ACRS) 6
+ + + + +
7 OPEN SESSION 8
+ + + + +
9 WEDNESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 7, 2024 11 The Advisory Committee met via hybrid In-12 Person and Video-Teleconference, at 1:00 p.m. EST, 13 Walter L. Kirchner, Chairman, presiding.
14 COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
15 WALTER L. KIRCHNER, Chairman 16 GREGORY H. HALNON, Vice Chairman 17 DAVID A. PETTI, Member-at-Large 18 RONALD G. BALLINGER, Member 19 CHARLES H. BROWN, JR., Member 20 VICKI M. BIER, Member 21 VESNA B. DIMITRIJEVIC, Member*
22 JOSE MARCH-LEUBA, Member 23 ROBERT P. MARTIN, Member 24 THOMAS E. ROBERTS, Member 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
2 DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL:
1 DEREK WIDMAYER 2
3 ALSO PRESENT:
TIM McCARTIN, NMSS 6
SCOTT MOORE, ACRS 8
PRIYA YADAV, NMSS*
10 11
- present via video-teleconference 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
3 A-G-E-N-D-A 1
PAGE 2
Opening Remarks 3
Opening statement.............
4 4
Agenda and items of current interest 6
5 Integrated Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal 6
Proposed Rule 7
Remarks from the Subcommittee Chair....
7 8
Presentations and discussion with the NRC 9
staff...................
7 10 Committee deliberation and Preparation of 11 Reports (closed)
............. 89 12 NuScale Topical Reports on Subchannel Analysis and Rod 13 Ejection Accident Methodologies/Preparation of Reports 14 Remarks from the Subcommittee Chair.... 89 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
4 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 1
1:02 p.m.
2 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay, this meeting will 3
now come to order. This is the first day of the 712th 4
Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Reactor 5
Safeguards.
6 I am Walt Kirchner, Chairman of the ACRS.
7 Other members in attendance are Ron Ballinger, Vicki 8
Bier, Charles Brown who just stepped out, he'll be 9
back, Vesna Dimitrijevic is attending virtually, Greg 10 Halnon, Jose March-Leuba, Robert Martin, David Petti, 11 and Thomas Roberts. Matt Sunseri will be joining us 12 virtually tomorrow afternoon. I want to note we have 13 a quorum. Today the committee is meeting in person 14 and virtually.
15 The ACRS was established by the Atomic 16 Energy Act and is governed by the Federal Advisory 17 Committee Act, FACA. The ACRS section of the U.S. NRC 18 public website provides information about the history 19 of this committee and documents such as a our charter, 20 by-laws, federal register notices for meetings, letter 21 reports, and transcripts of full and subcommittee 22 meetings, including all slides presented at those 23 meetings.
24 The committee provides its advice on 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
5 safety matters to the Commission through its publicly 1
available letter reports. The Federal Register notice 2
announcing this meeting was published on January 10th, 3
2024. This announcement provided a meeting agenda as 4
well as instructions for interested parties to submit 5
written documents for a request for opportunities to 6
address the committee.
7 Today's designated federal officer for 8
today's meeting is Mr. Derek Widmayer. The 9
communications channel has been opened to allow 10 members of the public to monitor the open portions of 11 the meeting. The ACRS is inviting members of the 12 public to use the MS Teams link to view slides and 13 other discussion materials during these open sessions.
14 The MS Teams link information was placed 15 in the agenda on the ACRS public website.
16 Periodically, the meeting will be open to accept 17 comments from members of the public listening to our 18 meetings. Written comments may be forwarded Mr. Derek 19 Widmayer, today's designated federal officer.
20 A transcript of the open portions of the 21 meeting is being kept, and it is requested that 22 speakers identify themselves and speak with sufficient 23 clarity and volume so that they may be readily heard.
24 Additionally, participants and members of the public 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
6 should mute themselves when not speaking. And that 1
also pertains to cell phones.
2 During today's meeting, the committee 3
will consider the following topics, Integrated Low-4 Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Proposed Rule, and 5
NuScale Subchannel Analysis and Rod Ejection Accident 6
Methodology Topical Reports.
7 And before proceeding, I'd just like to 8
note, on behalf of the committee, the passing of 9
several former ACRS meeting members, Joe Henry, who 10 was an ACRS member and chair of the committee, back in 11 the 1970s timeframe, and also went on to be a 12 commissioner and chairman of the Commission. Forrest 13 Remick, also an ACRS member who was also chair, that 14 was in late 1980s timeframe, and also become a 15 commissioner. And finally, Mario Fontana, who also 16 was an ACRS member. So we acknowledge their dedicated 17 service and extend our condolences to their families.
18 And now at this time I'd like to ask other 19 members if they have any opening remarks.
20 Okay. Hearing None, I also note because 21 of potential COI considerations, Member Halnon is 22 recused from deliberations on the next topic, LLW rule 23 topic. And with that, I am going to turn to Member 24 Ron Ballinger to lead is on our first topic for 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
7 today's meeting. Ron?
1 MEMBER BALLINGER:
Thank
- you, Mr.
2 Chairman. Today we're going to hear what we believe 3
will be the closing, ultimate presentation on this 4
proposed rule which has been under some form of 5
deliberation for about 15 years, near as I can tell.
6 We had a subcommittee meeting on December 7
the 5th where we had a pretty extensive presentation.
8 And the presentation today will be a bit of a 9
condensed version of that. And we expect that we will 10 write a letter after this presentation. And I don't 11 know who would like -- would somebody in the staff 12 like to make a comment?
13 Okay, you have the floor.
14 MR. TARTAL: Thank you, good afternoon, 15 everyone, I'm George Tartal. I'm a senior project 16 manager in the Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and 17 Safeguards. And I'm the project manager for the 18 Integrated Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal 19 rulemaking.
20 My co-presenters with me today are Dave 21 Esh, Tim McCartin, and Priya Yadav, all from NMSS, and 22 I'll note that Priya is going to be presenting 23 remotely. So when we get to her slides, I'll ask that 24 she be allowed to speak.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
8 We presented on this rulemaking to the 1
ACRS Subcommittee on December 5th, 2023, and we're 2
happy to return today to present to the full 3
committee.
4 For our presentation today, I'll start 5
with a quick overview of the scope of the rulemaking.
6 Then Dave will discuss the safety case and technical 7
assessments and the time frames for the technical 8
analyses. Then we'll move on to Tim, who will talk 9
about GTCC waste considerations and waste acceptance.
10 Then Priya will talk about exception criteria, 11 significant quantities, and implementation guidance.
12 Then we'll come back to me at the end with a brief 13 update on next steps for the rulemaking.
14 On this slide, this is a high level 15 summary of the scope of this rulemaking. And the 16 following slides will describe these changes in a lot 17 more detail.
18 The scope of this rulemaking is based on 19 the staff's recommendation to the Commission in SECY 20 Paper 20-0098 which was to integrate what were at the 21 time two ongoing rulemakings, one for addressing waste 22 that hadn't been previously considered in the 23 development of Part 61, such depleted uranium, and one 24 for addressing disposal requirements for greater than 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
9 Class C or GTCC waste.
1 The Commission approved the staff's 2
recommendation and the SRM to that paper. Over the 3
past year or so, we've been developing this new 4
integrated proposed rule.
5 The proposed rule will consolidate and 6
integrate the criteria for licensing the disposal of 7
GTCC waste into Part 61 with other low level waste, 8
require conducting site-specific analyses for all 9
waste streams, including depleted uranium, and GTCC, 10 include a graded approach to the compliance period, 11 revise the definition of low level waste to include 12 trans-uranic waste, address physical protection and 13 criticality concerns in GTCC waste streams, and 14 provide for agreement to state licensing of those GTCC 15 waste streams that meet regulatory requirements for 16 near-surface disposal and do not present a hazard such 17 that the NRC should retain disposal authority.
18 So that's a very quick overview of the 19 scope of the rulemaking. And at this time, I'll turn 20 the presentation over to Dave Esh, and then Tim and 21 Priya will follow. And they're going to provide you 22 a more detailed presentation on the proposed changes.
23 Dave?
24 MR. ESH: Thank you, George. And good 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
10 afternoon to the committee. Member Ballinger, I share 1
your optimism of hopefully this being the last time we 2
see you. But I wouldn't be expected by any outcome in 3
this process.
4 So there are some key messages I wanted 5
to relay about what we're doing and why we're doing 6
it. The first one here, the proposed changes will 7
remove limitations that we have right now in the 8
requirements that were developed.
9 So the way the Part 61 current regulations 10 work is they were derived considering what waste was 11 expected to be low level waste in the early 1980s.
12 And so that means both its characteristics, its 13 radiological characteristics, what radionuclides are 14 present, and their concentration.
15 So when you do that, and then you fast 16 forward to today, 40 years later, in some cases the 17 wastes are different. And so how do you make a 18 regulation that was derived for certain waste and 19 certain conditions work more generally?
20 And that's what we're attempting to do in 21 this rulemaking. We believe the most effective way to 22 do that is through the site-specific technical 23 analyses. I think that is the closest we can get to 24 being risk informed in this process in low level waste 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
11 disposal. And I'll step through the pieces of the 1
technical analysis and other relevant components to 2
describe to you why we think this is the best approach 3
for the problem.
4 These proposed changes we believe are 5
consistent with domestic and international practice.
6 Now, there is quite a bit of variability in domestic 7
and international practice, so you could pick an 8
individual data point and say oh, well, that's 9
inconsistent. But if you look at the global picture 10 of all the data points, we think we're as consistent 11 as we practically can be.
12 Now we would assert that the waste that 13 has significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides 14 is more challenging to dispose in the near surface 15 than, quote, unquote, traditional low level waste. And 16 you'll see that across the international spectrum.
17 So some programs, and I'll go into this in 18 some more detail, they'll address this issue with 19 policy. Others will address it with design, and some 20 will address it with technical analyses, and others 21 will address it with a combination of all of those 22 components.
23 We do believe that the technical 24 requirements must align with the characteristics of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
12 the waste, so if we have new wastes that have 1
different characteristics than the traditional waste, 2
then our regulatory structure and scheme needs to be 3
able to acknowledge those characteristics and provide 4
proper technical requirements for them.
5 Next slide, please. So there's different 6
ways to achieve safety and compliance. So safety can 7
be achieved through the disposal concept. This is 8
done in some programs, such as Germany where they 9
basically state that all radioactive waste must go in 10 deep geologic disposal. So by policy, they avoid near 11 surface disposal.
12 Another method is through prescriptive 13 design. And a good analogy there, I think, would be 14 RCRA disposal, disposal of hazardous waste in the U.S.
15 under EPA. So that's a prescriptive design approach 16 where you have the standard design for the materials 17 and all the materials go in the same design.
18 And then the third item here is through 19 technical analyses. And that's more of a -- you 20 analyze your problem, so what's your site, what's your 21 design, what's your waste, and come up with the 22 optimum approach for that solution and show that, 23 through your technical analyses, that you can meet 24 your performance criteria.
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13 Our approach, the proposed approach leans 1
more heavily on the technical analyses, because this 2
affords the most flexibility. And the U.S. situation 3
is a bit different than some of the international 4
ones, so in the U.S. we have a big country with a lot 5
different potential disposal site environments. And 6
that can be important in the technical analyses, so 7
the risks that are derived when you put waste in those 8
locations.
9 In many of the international programs, 10 they might have one disposal facility in one location.
11 So you can, in that case, as a regulator, derive a 12 prescriptive design to solve that problem. But when 13 you're dealing with a wide range of different wastes, 14 different disposal sites, and you want to let 15 engineers be engineers, then the technical analysis 16 approach to solving the problem becomes more 17 favorable.
18 Next slide, please. So the components I'm 19 going to talk to you about are safety case and these 20 technical assessments. And I'll give more detail on 21 each of these slides going forward.
22 The safety case, it's widely recognized 23 internationally. We believe that this original Part 24 61 developed in the 1980s has many of the elements of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
14 a safety case. And so therefore it doesn't require 1
significant change to present the -- to achieve the 2
principles of what a safety case is trying to do. And 3
we believe that the safety case is useful to 4
stakeholders in order to better understand the basis 5
for decisions.
6 So in one sense you want the safety to be 7
achieved in the most efficient way possible. But then 8
you also have to balance that with ensuring that your 9
stakeholders understand the basis for your decisions, 10 why you're making them, and why both the licensee and 11 the regulator believes the facility can be safely 12 operated.
13 14 So the technical analyses right now are 15 found in Section 61.13 of 10 CFR, Part 61. There are 16 different components there. And in this rulemaking, 17 some of these elements are new. But most of them are 18 not. So the first one, performance assessment, in the 19 existing regulation that's typically referred to as 20 pathway analysis. That's to demonstrate 61.41, that's 21 protection of a member of the public who is located 22 off the disposal facility.
23 So the disposal facilities, you know, they 24 might be many hundreds of meters in each dimension.
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15 And then there's a buffer zone around them. They tend 1
to be located in areas that are pretty isolated with 2
not many people. They currently have four operating 3
in the U.S. in the states of South Carolina, Texas, 4
Washington, and Utah. They're all near surface trench 5
type disposal facilities of different depths. And 6
then there's some additional engineering that goes 7
into each one.
8 So the performance assessment is to look 9
at after you're done operating, you close the 10 facility, generally you'll put some sort of engineered 11 cover over the top of it to serve a variety of 12 purposes. You'll limit water getting into the waste, 13 to prevent biota to get into the waste, to keep the 14 waste there, so to limit erosion, and to inhibit 15 future use of the site by humans.
16 All of those -- then technical aspects are 17 evaluated in a performance assessment. And that looks 18 at, over the long-term, different time frames, how 19 that radioactivity may be released from the facility 20 and what sort of impacts it may cause to a person 21 located off the disposal site. So that part is not 22 new, it's just renamed. All the existing facilities 23 have already done that type of analysis.
24 The second one there, intruder assessment, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
16 that's 61.42 in our regulations, that part will be 1
new. And I'm going to talk about, you know, why that 2
is and why it's new. I should say it's not new for 3
all. Some of the existing licensees and their 4
regulators have completed intruder assessments and 5
some have not. So it's not completely new.
6 The third one down, the site stability 7
assessment, that is also not new, that aligns with 8
61.44 in our regulation. But it would be some aspects 9
of --
10 (Audio interference.)
11 MR. ESH: -- should implement it, would be 12 new for significant quantities of long-lived waste.
13 So you're going to hear, when I talk today, we're 14 making a distinction between the, quote, un-quote, 15 "traditional low level waste," and then some of this 16 new low level waste that might have different aspects 17 and different considerations.
18 The fourth
- one, operational safety 19 assessment, is going to be possibly necessary for 20 certain types of GTCC waste. And I will explain that 21 in more detail, but otherwise, it is also not new.
22 And then the final part would be new, but 23 it would only apply for significant quantities of 24 long-lived waste. This is to look at the very long-25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
17 term component of some of the waste that might be 1
disposed.
2 So now I'll go through each of these in a 3
bit more detail. Okay, so the safety case is a high 4
level summary of the information. We think this is 5
a valuable addition. It was given to us in one of the 6
numerous Commission directions to us. And this is, I 7
would like to have you think about executive summary.
8 So in a condensed form, if you, as a 9
committee member, wanted to look at the basis for one 10 of these facilities, and how it was licensed, and why 11 they believe it's safely operating, you should be able 12 to go to Google and type in safety case, you know, 13 site name, or site location, and pull up what this 14 document would be and be able to see what's the basis 15 for this facility, and why it was licensed, and why 16 it's operating.
17 They don't need 1,000 pages to do that, 18 you know, tens of pages is probably going to be 19 appropriate to get the message across and clearly 20 describe it. In the licensing of these facilities, 21 there may be hundreds or thousands of pages that are 22 generated to demonstrate that all the regulatory 23 requirements are met.
24 But the safety case itself, we think, is 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
18 an important addition to what's done now. We do 1
believe that it is important for the public to have 2
transparency of these decisions and understand what 3
the basis for the decisions are.
4 (Simultaneous speaking.)
5 MR. BLEY: I think I asked you this 6
before. But after you just described that process of 7
Googling for the safety case, safety case hasn't been 8
typically an NRC used term. It's used in Europe a 9
lot. Is it now a part of NRC's lexicon, and should 10 people be noting this more broadly.
11 MR. ESH: Yes. Thanks, Dennis. And right 12 now it is not part of our regulatory language and 13 documentation. So if you pull up the existing 14 regulation, it's not there. In this proposed 15 regulation, it will be there, albeit very lightly.
16 But in the guidance document, NUREG 2175, we step 17 through what we think the information that somebody 18 should supply for a safety case or to describe the 19 safety case.
20 And the reason for this is, like I said, 21 we wanted to take a light-handed approach to this, 22 because we believe it's all there. All the 23 information is there in the existing process and 24 licensing decisions. There just needs to be some 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
19 distillation and repackaging of that information to 1
make if useful, more useful to the stakeholders.
2 MR. BLEY: I hate to nag on this one 3
thing, but is it being considered any more broadly at 4
the agency or is it just applicable to this rule?
5 MR. ESH: Yes, I can't answer that 6
specifically. I mean, in my opinion it is a strongly 7
adopted international practice. But NRC tends to be 8
at the forefront of a lot of these safety evaluations, 9
analyses, et cetera. And the components of the safety 10 case, I think, are present in so many of our 11 regulatory programs.
12 So experts in safety case in some of these 13 international programs, I'm sure they would quibble 14 with that, and they would say no, you don't have this, 15 you don't have that. They do things differently. For 16 instance, in the area of waste disposal they might do 17 what they consider to be a safety case for the site 18 selection process. And then they do a safety case for 19 operations. Then they do a safety case for closure, 20 and they do a safety case for post-closures. They do 21 these different safety cases for different steps in 22 the process.
23 Our licensing process isn't like that. So 24 we do -- all the licensing basis for each of those 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
20 steps in the process has to be provided up front in 1
your initial application. And so they'd have 2
differences like that. You know, you could have an 3
interesting discussion about the safety case and how 4
it's implemented.
5 But I think the principles of the safety 6
case are present in much of what NRC does. Yes, we 7
could improve the language in some cases and bring it 8
forward, but I don't know if that would materially 9
change the decisions that are made and how they're 10 made.
11 MR. BLEY: Yes, I don't think so. I 12 appreciate your discussion. And I guess we'll be 13 using it here in kind of its obvious informal meaning.
14 And that's fine.
15 MR. ESH: Yes, okay. Thanks, Dennis.
16 MEMBER MARTIN: Member Martin, simple 17 question, when you make a point about an expectation 18 for this high level summary, do you plan on having 19 kind of a NUREG-0800-like standard content format to 20 ensure the quality of the product that you expect?
21 MR. ESH: Yes, so in our existing 22 regulatory process, we have NUREGs that outline the 23 format content of the applications and then how the 24 standard review plan basically, how that information 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
21 is reviewed.
1 As you'll see, if you if you take a look 2
at the guidance document that we've made to go along 3
with this, it is, I would say, a more performance-4 based approach to the content that somebody would 5
generate. So we don't provide a checklist of, you 6
know, A through B with Steps 1 through 17 --
7 (Simultaneous speaking.)
8 MR. ESH: Yes. We don't do it that way.
9 Because if we were licensing, say, for the agreement 10 states, all these facilities are in the agreement 11 states when they do the licensing, if we were 12 licensing 100 or 1,000 facilities, then yes, that 13 would be warranted. When you're licensing four, or 14 maybe one, in the next decade --
15 MEMBER MARTIN: One off --
16 MR. ESH: Yes, right.
17 MEMBER MARTIN: Or four off.
18 MR. ESH: -- that it might have a unique 19 design and it might be designed to take a unique type 20 of waste, I don't know how amenable that is to --
21 (Simultaneous speaking.)
22 MR. ESH: -- to that regulatory process 23 right now.
24 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: That's why --
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22 MR. ESH: Yes, it might require a bit more 1
iteration with the regulator and the licensee, and/or 2
agreement state regulators and the NRC, you know, to 3
make sure we're all get on the same page. But those 4
things are easily done with, you know, modern 5
technology and everything.
6 The other two, last two points here on the 7
safety case, we think it will provide and describe the 8
strength and reliability of the technical analyses.
9 If you're relying on it, you have to demonstrate that 10 the technical analysis is doing what it's supposed to 11 do. And it includes consideration of defense-in-depth 12 as well as the safety relevant aspects of the site, 13 facility
- design, the managerial, engineering, 14 regulatory and institutional controls.
15 So there's lots of pieces that go into 16 the safety decision. It is not just the technical 17 analyses. But technical analyses do play an important 18 role in the safety decision.
19 I will highlight here that defense-in-20 depth is going to be present in the low-level waste 21 regulations, at least I'll explicitly mention by 22 terminology. That was at the direction of the 23 Commission also, as was safety case in one of our 24 previous iterations.
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23 We have taken a light-handed approach with 1
that now too, because we pointed out to the Commission 2
when that first came in, they were thinking of it, I 3
think, primarily in the view of reactor design. And 4
a passive disposal system is quite a bit different 5
than an active reactor system.
6 So the way that you demonstrate, and 7
evaluate, or consider that you have defense in depth 8
might be different or is different for a waste 9
disposal system and some of those other types of 10 systems. We talk about this in the guidance. We 11 provide ways that somebody could demonstrate that they 12 have defense in depth.
13 The way that these facilities are 14 designed, they inherently have a lot of defense in 15 depth. So the selection -- the remoteness of the 16 site, and selection of the site, the geology of the 17 site, and then there's engineering that goes into the 18 barriers, containers, waste forms, buffer materials, 19 cover system. And then finally all the managerial, 20 operational, and institutional controls provide 21 another layer of depth of protection. All those 22 things work together to achieve the performance 23 criteria.
24 Next slide, please. So each of the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
24 technical analyses I'll step through in a little bit 1
more detail here. The performance assessment is 2
basically the technical analyses completed for the 3
existing sites for the potential impacts of off-site 4
members of the public.
5 These are synonymous with what we call 6
performance assessment. Performance assessment is not 7
necessarily terminology that's used internationally.
8 Some international programs do. They usually more 9
commonly refer to it as post-closure safety 10 assessment. So post-closure safety assessment will 11 include what I'm going to talk about here with 12 performance assessment.
13 It usually includes intruder assessment, 14 and then we specifically break out this piece on 15 stability, because many of the early facilities in 16 the U.S. had a lot of challenges associated with 17 sufficient stability.
18 So just to understand the context 19 internationally, they use somewhat different 20 terminology. Performance assessment is commonly used 21 in the U.S. in this field and in this industry. The 22 understanding tools and capabilities have improved 23 significantly, and we think people should be able to 24 take advantage of those tools in this process. By 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
25 using the technical analyses you can take advantage of 1
these improvements and understand tools and 2
capabilities.
3 We have developed a pretty significant 4
guidance document to support the proposed 5
requirements. It's NUREG-2175. It goes through all 6
of this in a lot more detail than you'd probably ever 7
care to read. It covers things like FEPs here, 8
Features, Events, and Processes.
9 So that's how you get the scope of the 10 assessment correct, what you can omit and what you 11 need to put into the assessment, uncertainty, you 12 know, about different types of uncertainty, aleatory 13 and epistemic, how you might evaluate them, different 14 sensitivity and uncertainty methods.
15 And then the area that I think is probably 16 the most important for this process, model support, so 17 this isn't just about doing calculations, usually 18 these are models. And so you have to support them.
19 Performance assessments and these other calculations 20 extending out into time, you can't validate them in 21 the same way you would a normal model, you know, if 22 you're building a bridge or something like that.
23 Because of the time frame, because it's a 24 human health impact that you're trying to evaluate, so 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
26 you have to get creative with the model support. And 1
we have a pretty good section on that of how somebody 2
might go about that. It includes things like, you 3
know, comparing to other models, and looking at 4
subsystem results, consideration of analogs. There's 5
a whole bunch of things you can do to support these 6
models.
7 MEMBER BALLINGER: This is Ron Ballinger.
8 I'll grant that sophistication of modeling tools and 9
the computing power have gone up by orders of 10 magnitude. But I guess my question is has the 11 uncertainty and the result changed, especially the 12 long-term? Yes.
13 MR. ESH: It's a good question. So I 14 think the uncertainty and the long-term result, the 15 understanding or confidence in it, has improved. The 16 calculated uncertainty might not show that, right. So 17 if you have the ability to generate more probability 18 distributions that go into these models, and there 19 usually are a lot of them if you're doing a 20 probabilistic analysis, and you propagate that all 21 forward, you can get a broader variance in the 22 results, calculated variance in the results.
23 But if you do your model support, you can 24 develop a good understanding about what's driving that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
27 variance, how you might be able to mitigate it, 1
changes to your design that can mitigate the 2
uncertainties. So all those things go into this 3
process. The performance assessment process is 4
usually iterative at a given site. And it might start 5
out more uncertain and less confident. And as they go 6
through their iterations, they develop more 7
confidence.
8 Next slide, please. I'll show you an 9
example here, this is from the guidance. This is what 10 it looks like in the upper left there, the picture of 11 a real facility, it no longer accepts waste, but it 12 isn't officially closed. It's a near surface trench 13 facility covered by a geomembrane. There are some 14 pictures of barrels and trenches there. So that's 15 your starting point as real system.
16 It's characterized by data and other 17 information like, you know, the example in the chart 18 there with all the noise. That feeds into development 19 of a conceptual model. The conceptual model is shown 20 in the middle of the left hand side. There are some 21 little barrels there under the ground, so that's your 22 unsaturated zone. That would represent the waste.
23 And then how waste gets out or how 24 radioactivity can get out of these systems, usually 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
28 you can have some transport in the unsaturated zone, 1
possibly through a surface water body or through and 2
aquifer, so leaching of the waste down to an aquifer, 3
transfer through an aquifer, extraction through a 4
well, or discharged to a surface water body.
5 You can also have release, gaseous 6
releases that end up in the air and then get in the 7
atmosphere. Basically any of those releases then end 8
up in the potential food chain or human environment.
9 It's the same as like a severe reactor consequence 10 analysis. You have a pathway analysis and all the 11 exposure pathways that you evaluate on the back end 12 then.
13 But what might be similar and/or different 14 from some of the systems you might be familiar with is 15 that these are truly system models for each one of 16 these components. Like, the aquifer might be a model 17 unto itself. And that's shown on the right hand side 18 here. So the dash on the left expands to the figure 19 on the right hand side.
20 There's a conceptual model for the 21 hydrology, the hydrologic conceptual model shown at 22 the top. And then that gets represented as a 23 numerical model or a computational model which is 24 shown in the center there with a bunch of cells, and 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
29 how the different components are oriented, and 1
ultimately described by equation.
2 So you see at the bottom there's a 3
transfer function, you have a little graph of a pulse 4
that's a release, and that's out of the way, so out of 5
the system. It gets into the aquifer which is shown 6
by the cylinder in the center. And then you see the 7
pulse, X, on the other side. So that's your 8
numerical, mathematical model and your transfer 9
function for how that release ends up at, say, the 10 well location or the receptor location.
11 So that little piece then might be 12 represented in detail, or it might be what's shown on 13 the bottom left there, an abstracted model or some 14 modification. So we allow the use of and encourage 15 the use of abstractions if they represent the 16 essential features of the more detailed modeling.
17 But these performance assessments might 18 have many, many different conceptual models or 19 numerical models that all fit together in this model.
20 And we use that to estimate the system performance 21 which in this case is the radiological dose to a 22 person living offsite from this facility.
23 Next slide, please.
24 MEMBER MARTIN: Just real quick?
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30 MR. ESH: Yes.
1 MEMBER MARTIN: You have this guidance in 2
the NUREG. Do you envision any new regulatory guides 3
at that level that will eventually come from these 4
efforts?
5 MR. ESH: Yes. I don't think we envision 6
any regulatory guides, but we have started very 7
recently on a task to develop training, develop 8
training materials and a training class that we could 9
use with, especially, our agreement state regulators 10 to make sure that we effectively communicate with 11 them these products and how they may implement them.
12 Regulatory guides aren't too common in the 13 low level waste area. We do have some branch 14 technical positions, but they're few and far between 15 and not used as commonly as they are in, I think, like 16 the reactor space.
17 MEMBER MARTIN: I was hoping we'd see you 18 more often.
19 (Laughter.)
20 MEMBER MARTIN: Despite what Ron --
21 MR. ESH: Member Ballinger promised this 22 the last time, I think. So --
23 MEMBER BALLINGER: Just get into 2175 and 24 about six months from now, when you get through 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
31 reading it, ha, ha, ha.
1 MR. ESH: Yes. We have a good team. I 2
drew the short straw and got the speaker role here, 3
but we have a good team that developed all those 4
materials. So I don't have time to go over everybody 5
and their contributions, but there's a lot of people 6
that have worked on this project.
7 The next technical analysis assessment 8
that I'd like to go over is the intruder assessment.
9 This is the one that if you're going to change it, if 10 you're going to get rid of everything else, you need 11 to keep this one, okay. The way Part 61 is structured 12 right now is the intruder protection, 61.42, is 13 provided by the waste classification system and the 14 waste classification tables, Table 1 and Table 2, and 15 the regulation.
16 Those were derived by the NRC using 17 generic calculations considering what waste they 18 thought would be disposed of as low level waste in the 19 early 1980s, and how it would be disposed. So those 20 tables are based on a human site and shallow disposal.
21 So many of the modern sites don't meet either of those 22 criteria.
23 So they tend to be more arid and they tend 24 to be deeper. So you're applying restrictions for a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
32 human shallow site on offsites, regardless of the 1
technical features of those sites, and possibly maybe 2
additional engineering or other things that might go 3
into them. It works, it's protective, but is it 4
efficient and effective? It definitely not is 5
efficient and effective as it could be.
6 So the other thing is the assumption was 7
made essentially that no low level waste would differ 8
substantially from what was considered in that initial 9
analyses. So the list of radionuclides that are found 10 in the tables, Table 1 and Table 2, represent any type 11 of low level waste that's generated. If it's not in 12 Table 1 and Table 2, then it's default Class A, under 13 61.55(a)(6), okay.
14 So something like large quantities of 15 depleted uranium, uranium isn't on the tables, so it's 16 automatically Class A and would only be limited to the 17 Class A requirements. It's definitely a bigger 18 challenge than normal Class A waste. So this logic or 19 what I've described to you would apply to new waste.
20 So if you have new reactor systems or 21 cycles that generate different waste, and isotopes and 22 radionuclides that aren't listed in the tables, they 23 would also be Class A by default, may or may not be 24 appropriate, depending on the
- isotopes, and 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
33 radionuclides, and their concentration.
1 So what we're changing here is we're 2
requiring that everybody do a site-specific intruder 3
assessment. And that will ensure that whatever waste 4
you're putting in that site is going to be analyzed to 5
ensure the intruder protection under 61.42.
6 This is a flexible and risk informed 7
approach. We think it's the best way to solve this 8
problem. There's a lot of criticism of this intruder 9
component to NRC's regulations. I think it serves a 10 lot of great roles, so it does provide a limitation on 11 some of the uncertainties that you might consider in 12 other parts of the problem.
13 Because if you have to evaluate the 14 intruder, that's going to generate some restrictions 15 on the type of waste that you take. You'll identify 16 your boundaries. That will help alleviate some of the 17 concerns associated with the long-term uncertainties 18 for certain radionuclides or isotopes. And it 19 provides a framework that you can evaluate not just 20 the potential for offsite impacts but the potential 21 for onsite impacts.
22 We rely on or provide for that somebody 23 can rely on up to 100 years of institutional controls.
24 That's active institutional controls. So that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
34 involves a fence, security, monitoring, you're going 1
to prevent anybody from being on that site for 100 2
years.
3 But it would be expensive, or it could be 4
expensive to provide that sort of active controls for 5
much longer periods or indefinitely. And therefore, 6
at some point, you move from active controls to 7
passive controls. And it's when you move to that 8
passive control range where this evaluation of the 9
intruder comes in. And we don't expect that to 10 happen.
11 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: So for curiosity, 12 when you say intruder, are you talking about sabotage, 13 a terrorist?
14 MR. ESH: No, it's not advertent, it's 15 inadvertent, yes.
16 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: So anybody that walks 17 into the (audio interference).
18 MR. ESH: Yes. So it's shown there on 19 lower right, the types of things that were considered 20 when the original regulation was developed. So if 21 somebody might come in and build a house, they might 22 excavate for some reason, they might put in a well for 23 getting water for domestic or agricultural purposes.
24 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: The intruder is 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
35 (audio interference).
1 MR. ESH: Yes, inadvertent intruder. We 2
usually use inadvertent. I probably -- yes, we should 3
probably always include that on it, yes. It's not 4
sabotage or advertent processes. We don't -- it's not 5
designed to protect them.
6 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Yes, I know, for 7
example, 100 kilos of TNT can do a lot of damage.
8 MR. ESH: Right, yes. Now the challenge 9
is here that there's lots of difference in opinion 10 about what are the scenarios, so what are people going 11 to do and why?
12 We believe this is a regulatory construct 13 to deal with this long-term containment or isolation 14 issue in a practical way. It's a regulatory 15 construct. It's not a risk calculation per se. And 16 we are not applying the same dose standard to the 17 inadvertent intruder which is applied to the offsite 18 member of the public. That reflects the likelihood of 19 the scenario.
20 We don't expect this, this is not an 21 expected scenario. It's a less than expected 22 scenario. If it was an inspected scenario there'd be 23 no health and safety basis for using different dose 24 limits for the person on one side of an imaginary line 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
36 compared to the other side of the imaginary line. So 1
that's the part that definitely, if you jettison 2
everything else, you need to retain this.
3 Next slide, please. So one thing we did 4
to try to look at, well, why is it there are these 5
differences of opinions about this whole construct and 6
how it's used, is I took the information I had on any 7
disposable facility I could find. And I gave it to a 8
GIS expert. And I said find me the nearest resident 9
to the facilities. And that's what's reflected in 10 this chart here.
11 And what you'll notice is a couple of 12 things. One, the minimum distance is greater than 100 13 meters, so you have at least 100 meters from any 14 facility in the world, that I could find, and the 15 nearest resident. I believe that's a facility in 16 Germany, Morsleben, which I actually toured a couple 17 of years ago.
18 There's crops grown right up to the fence 19 of the facility. So, you know, people are right near 20 where that -- now, that's a deep mine facility. It's 21 an old salt mine, I believe, so it's not a surface 22 facility like the ones in the U.S.
23 At the other extreme, you see the far 24 right point, that's a facility in Australia by Tellus 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
37 Holdings. They have 100 kilometer access road to get 1
to the facility. And my GIS expert did find some 2
people that were closer than 100 kilometers, but that 3
looked like it was a little mining site of some sort.
4 It wasn't a true resident. That's a fly in, fly out 5
facility for the workers. They have trouble getting 6
people there because of how remote it is.
7 But what you see is that these facilities 8
are pretty remote in the present day, most of them.
9 The question becomes where do these dots end up as you 10 go forward 100 years, 500 years, 1,000 years, right?
11 Are the people going to stay far away from the 12 facilities as everything goes on socioeconomically in 13 the world, or are you going to get migration closer to 14 the facilities? Who knows.
15 But we have some confidence that right now 16 the siting is effective, and they are pretty remotely 17 located. And if you choose a good site, especially 18 that there's really no resources there, there's no 19 mineral resources, it might be hard to live there, 20 it's hard to envision why you would get people 21 encroaching on those types of facilities.
22 Now the one in Germany, for instance, it 23 looks like they're doing growing great crops right 24 next to it. So, you know, there's no reason why 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
38 people wouldn't want to live there. But some of these 1
are fairly and pretty inhospitable places. So this 2
construct and this information, I think, was important 3
to consider when we looked at our intruder assessment.
4 MEMBER BROWN: Can I --
5 (Simultaneous speaking.)
6 MEMBER BROWN: I didn't mean to interrupt 7
you --
8 (Simultaneous speaking.)
9 MEMBER BROWN: How much acreage is devoted 10 to these throughout the U.S. right now, generally?
11 MR. ESH: For the disposal facilities 12 themselves?
13 MEMBER BROWN: Yes.
14 MR. ESH: It's relatively small, you know, 15 so they might be a few hundreds of meters by a few 16 hundreds of meters, like active disposal area --
17 (Simultaneous speaking.)
18 MR. ESH: For one of them, yes. And then 19 they have supporting land around the facilities.
20 MEMBER BROWN: So we have four of them 21 right now?
22 MR. ESH: Yes. They have supporting land 23 around them, and a fence, and a buffer zone around 24 the facility. So I'll have to think about, like, how 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
39 many acres or square meters that might be.
1 Chris, do you have a --
2 MEMBER BROWN: Forty-five thousand square 3
feet.
4 MR. ESH: Yes.
5 MR. MCKENNEY: It's Chris McKenney, Risk 6
and Technical Analysis Branch. It's approximately 100 7
acres or less per one. Some of them --
8 MR. ESH: For each one of them?
9 MR. MCKENNEY: For each one of them. Some 10 of them, a lot of land, like WCS is, I think, on a 11 15,000 acre farm is what it used to be before it 12 became a WCS. But the active area is way reduced.
13 You know --
14 MEMBER BROWN: I always think about the 15 active area for the -- not the surrounding --
16 MR. MCKENNEY: Yes. It's pretty small 17 below that. But that would be for, like, all the 18 above ground structure and everything else that they 19 have. They might have it -- they have a licensed area 20 of 100 acres or less to have a facility. And then 21 they'd be on only a few acres.
22 (Simultaneous speaking.)
23 MR. MCKENNEY: Yes.
24 MEMBER BROWN: You wouldn't be using the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
40 full 100 acres.
1 MR. MCKENNEY: No, you would not separate 2
these disposal sites too. They keep them, like, we 3
made a trench here, we're making a trench as close as 4
we can to it. We're making another trench. We're 5
making a new disposal facility, face on, exactly 6
against each other.
7 (Simultaneous speaking.)
8 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: How big of a problem 9
is the generation rate? I mean, every time you walk 10 into a place and you take off your gloves, you have to 11 bury them, or you consider an incident?
12 MR. MCKENNEY: We have -- 2012 the NRC 13 issued an update on the volume reduction strategy for 14 the reactor, well, all reactor material. And there 15 has been a great reduction since 1980 when we started 16 here, down to, like, less than 30 percent of waste 17 because of --
18 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: By generation or by 19 pressing it together?
20 MR. MCKENNEY: Generation because of the 21 fact that people were reusing things as much as 22 possible. We redesigned all types of activities to 23 not generate waste in the first place. And treatment 24 methods and going to, like, other reductions, like 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
41 going to dissolvable MPP clothes so you don't have to 1
dispose of those now into a low-level waste site.
2 All sort of practices continued from 1980, 3
and continue to, to avoid the generation, and the 4
ability to reuse, and other methods to avoid things 5
becoming -- taking longer to become that final waste 6
point, reducing that.
7 (Simultaneous speaking.)
8 VICE CHAIR HALNON: This is Greg. Just 9
the cost alone kind of forces that reduction process.
10 And utilities have been doing that for years, 11 compacting, and reducing, and reusing.
12 MR. MCKENNEY: Yes, that's what --
13 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: There's a theory on 14 that, you can put a tax on tobacco people smoke less 15 for about three months, and then they start the 16 smoking again.
17 (Laughter.)
18 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: It's a balancing act.
19 MR. ESH: Yes. I was going to add exactly 20 what you added, that the market forces drive, part of 21 it too. If you have to spend a lot of money getting 22 rid of waste, then you might say, well, how can I 23 spend less money and dispose of less waste?
24 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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42 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: -- over in that area.
1 MR. ESH: Yes.
2 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: I mean, in Florida 3
you run out, where I now go, disposal places for 4
regular trash. I mean, mountains --
5 MR. ESH: Yes, I don't 6
MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: They want it close 7
to the house.
8 MR. ESH: I don't think we have a disposal 9
capacity issue in the U.S. right now. Even though we 10 only have four facilities, they have plenty of 11 capacity for the waste that's being generated for the 12 foreseeable future.
13 And if you got to the point where you do 14 start needing capacity, many times the operating ones 15 will seek expansions if they're able to. Because 16 they're established in the community, they've provided 17 the regulatory basis already, and if they have the 18 land and the capability to expand, then usually that's 19 what happens.
20 MEMBER BROWN: Is there a projection of 21 the usage rate, the disposal rate now in terms of the 22 available capacity? Is it 100 years before they're 23 full, or is it ten years? I mean --
24 MR. ESH: I don't know the answer to that.
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43 (Simultaneous speaking.)
1 MR. ESH: Does somebody else, one of the 2
other staff members, Chris, do you know the answer to 3
that?
4 MR. MCKENNEY: Honestly, NRC doesn't track 5
that. That is outside the Atomic Energy Act 6
procedures. We are to establish what capacity 7
generated is safe. The federal government established 8
legislation, a compact system among the states. The 9
states can join into compacts to -- and it is the 10 state's responsibility to develop disposal capacity.
11 And they have a tracking system through DOE to track 12 out waste generation rates.
13 And then the compacts track that to say 14 will they need expansions. And they work to say 15 whether they need a site or whether they can continue, 16 as most compacts do right now. They all use the 17 Texas-Vermont Compact as their disposal source along 18 with the second site and the Pacific Northwest Compact 19 because energy solutions.
20 MEMBER BROWN: So the safety aspect, not 21 necessarily --
22 MR. ESH: Right.
23 MEMBER BROWN: -- can you accept more?
24 MR. MCKENNEY: We do have a regulation in 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
44 Part 62 which is about emergency access. If there 1
were to be a situation develop, that a waste type 2
needed access to a disposal facility and, for example, 3
the compact said don't, we have a method that we can 4
open the door. But we have never had to use that.
5 It's just on the books.
6 MR. ESH: So next slide, please.
7 MEMBER ROBERTS: On this slide, is there 8
a curie aspect to this risk part? It seems like maybe 9
you're using the disposal deficit as a surrogate for 10 curie inventory. Or is there -- it seems like the 11 risk really relates more to the, you know, about 12 curies in the disposal site more-so than the proximity 13 to population.
14 MR. ESH: Yes, possibly. There's not 15 really a radiological component to this particular 16 figure. There will be to a couple that I'll show you 17 coming up. But you will notice that probably there's 18 a higher percentage of symbols that are more than a 19 shallow depth than there are for the U.S. and for the 20 Department of Energy.
21 And I think that's because those points 22 have shifted more to the left of the figure, closer to 23 people. So they tend to put them deeper if they're 24 closer to people.
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45 Next slide, please. So site stability 1
assessment, I'll go through this pretty quick. This 2
is an important part of the regulation because many of 3
the problems with the early disposal sites arose from 4
the short term stability issues, primarily with 5
surface water management.
6 So they found, they conceptually thought, 7
well, we can choose an impermeable geology. We'll dig 8
it up, we'll put waste in it, and we'll close it. It 9
turned out it's not that easy. Water gets where you 10 don't intend it to, and volumes you don't intend it 11 to.
12 And then the waste itself can have a high 13 porosity, so you can have subsidence, and settlement 14 for the waste as the containers degrade or the 15 materials used to backfill, if they aren't compacted 16 properly, for instance. Those problems were addressed 17 through design and safe characteristic requirements 18 that are in the existing regulation, and we're 19 primarily not changing those at all.
20 The site stability part that would be 21 changed in this proposed rule is that, when you move 22 into the disposal of significant quantities of long-23 lived radionuclides, then that could require a long 24 term stability assessment that's a little bit 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
46 different than what you would do for typical waste.
1 And that's because when you move into the 2
long term, and the hazard is present in the near 3
surface, then you have to start worrying about more 4
than what's going on with the waste. In the 5
engineering itself, you have to start worrying about 6
the stability of the site overall.
7 Now, we recommend in our guidance that 8
when you're in that -- if you are in that scenario, 9
which should be rare for most facilities, because not 10 a lot will probably desire to take these significant 11 quantities of long-lived radionuclides, then you can 12 evaluate that in the context of 61.41 and 42.
13 So we think this is a risk informed 14 approach, because for those you're calculating, you 15 know, estimates of human health impacts for 61.41 for 16 an offsite member of the public and 61.42 for an 17 onsite member of the public, rather than the abstract, 18 or the indirect measures of health that might be like, 19 well, how much settlement is allowable?
20 Well, who's to say? Like, six inches 21 might be -- maybe you have a requirement for six 22 inches or 15 centimeters of total consolidation. And 23 that doesn't matter for a hill of beans when it comes 24 to human health impacts. So we think that's the right 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
47 way to solve that problem.
1 There's a couple of ways that that's done 2
now, this long term stability. It's done in the 3
context of engineered design, so that's like NUREG 4
16.23 which is shown at the top there. That's erosion 5
protection control that's developed with consideration 6
of the EMP, the probable maximum precipitation and the 7
probable maximum flood.
8 And then you size your rock for the cover, 9
you go through a scoring procedure to ensure that the 10 rocks are going to be durable for the environment that 11 you intend to place them. But you're basically 12 protecting against surficial erosion in that manner 13 through an engineered design approach. I worked with 14 the individual who made that guidance, and is now 15 retired, to extend it to our problem that could have 16 some longer time frames.
17 The other way that it's done is through 18 geomorphological modeling such as in computer tools 19 such as Siberia or CHILD. That's being done at the 20 West Valley site by the Department of Energy to 21 evaluate the decommissioning of that site, because 22 it's a site that is likely to experience high rates of 23 erosion.
24 Next slide. You have a question?
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48 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Yes. Could you just give 1
a shorthand for what significant quantities is defined 2
as?
3 MR. ESH: Yes. So it's not a short 4
answer. I'll give you a short answer now. We have 5
some slides on it.
6 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay --
7 (Simultaneous speaking.)
8 MR. ESH: So basically the concept is --
9 the answer to that question is a contextural, or 10 contextual and relative answer based on your site, the 11 engineered design of that site.
12 And so we, as a regulator, can't just 13 specify, you know, X curies of plutonium-239 is 14 considered a significant quantity. Because it might 15 differ somewhat substantially based on the 16 considerations I just stated.
17 Instead, we have a guidance -- we have an 18 appendix in our guidance document that steps through 19 how one might answer that question of do I have a 20 significant quantity. And it starts simple with 21 screening and then progresses to more complicated 22 using more inputs and variables.
23 But it still should be a relatively -- if 24 you're doing very complex modeling to answer the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
49 question of do I have significant quantities, then you 1
should probably already be doing the long-term 2
assessment which is where this comes in. So the 3
significant quantities comes in, as I'll talk about in 4
a few slides here, in the context of the compliance 5
period essentially, or how long you're going to 6
analyze your problem.
7 Okay. Next slide, please. So the next 8
part is the operational safety assessment. This is 9
typically achieved through a combination of system 10 procedures, controls, and training for the operating 11 facility. They've been operating for many, many 12 decades and have done so very safely. So that's a 13 testament to both their licensees and the regulators, 14 that they've done this very effectively.
15 NRC did evaluate accident scenarios when 16 Part 61 was developed, different types of fires, such 17 as a trench fire. But those analyses did not result 18 in changes to Table 1 or Table 2, so in the waste 19 classification system. Because NRC thought at that 20 time that the items listed in the first bullet were 21 going to work effectively. And that's proven to be 22 true, those things have worked effectively, no change 23 needed there whatsoever.
24 The only place where you could possibly 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
50 need some change, and that's where we discussed this 1
in our rule and guidance package, is that when you 2
move to GTCC waste, some of that may have very high 3
levels of certain radionuclides, plutonium, for 4
instance.
5 It doesn't take a lot of plutonium in a 6
fire to cause a big impact, okay. So when you're in 7
that scenario, then you should be doing your site-8 specific operational safety assessment to determine if 9
you need anything more than your typical controls, 10 procedures, et cetera, that you're applying for your 11 traditional waste.
12 And it's not overly cumbersome, those 13 types of calculations. If you start relatively 14 simple, you could do them in a spreadsheet, for 15 instance. You don't need a computational model to do 16 that sort of calculation. You do your leak pathway 17 factor, your respirable fractions, you know, how much 18 ends up in the air, how long the fire duration is, if 19 you're looking at a fire, for instance, and then do 20 your atmospheric dispersion calculations with Chi-21 over-Q or a numerical model, or whatever you want to 22 do.
23 So this isn't burdensome. We do believe 24 it could apply to certain types of waste when you move 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
51 up in the risk factor. That would be very consistent 1
with what's done with other nuclear facilities, 2
whether it's a fuel cycle facility or something else.
3 Next slide, please. So I'll go over time 4
frames here relatively quickly and hopefully allow you 5
enough time to ask as many questions as you want on 6
this topic. We looked at this and had a long debate 7
over it internally and externally.
8 The Commission gave us direction. We 9
looked at it and said it pretty much has two options, 10 a peak dose approach, and that's used in a number of 11 programs, especially internationally, or use a 12 different compliance period depending on the long-13 lived component if the waste.
14 We liked the second option better for a 15 variety of reasons. We think it's more flexible and 16 site-specific. And so what that ends up in as the 17 bottom bullet there, this compliance period would be 18 1,000 years, so that's how long you're going to do the 19 technical analyses if you do not have significant 20 quantities of long-lived radionuclides.
21 Otherwise, we would analyze 10,000 years 22 plus a performance period, so the performance is post 23 10,000 years out into long time eventually. And I'm 24 going to talk about this in detail in a few slides.
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52 We carefully examined comments on this 1
issue. We got a lot of comments. One of our primary 2
considerations is what are the practices in the 3
agreement states. Because they're the ones that host, 4
that regulate the facilities, it's their citizens that 5
would be impacted by the facilities.
6 We have this whole process where NRC makes 7
regulations. And then our agreement states make 8
compatible regulations that they implement. And we go 9
through an evaluation to ensure that they're 10 compatible.
11 There's these things called compatibility 12 classes which you probably don't want to learn about, 13 but the bottom line is here that the compatibility 14 class for this would likely allow the agreement states 15 to be more restrictive. So if they wanted to use 16 longer time frames they could, but our requirement 17 would essentially set the minimum standards that each 18 one should use.
19 We did consider in great detail what has 20 been done in the U.S. and internationally. That 21 doesn't mean that what we're proposing here is 22 identical to everyone of those data points, because 23 there is a lot of variability in the data. But we 24 think we are consistent with what's done from a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
53 principle standpoint.
1 Next slide, please. We will acknowledge 2
that the uncertainties in society, and especially 3
environmental conditions, will increase over time.
4 But we also believe that that doesn't mean that 5
that's a reason to stop your analyses or not do 6
analyses.
7 We have to provide requirements that are 8
going to allow for the safety of disposal, not just 9
the disposal. So whatever way you choose to get to 10 safety, that's fine. If you don't like the analyses, 11 there's different ways to get there, such as what's 12 listed in the bottom here. In Germany they say, well, 13 we don't, for whatever reasons, policy, or because of 14 the uncertainties, we're going to require that all 15 radioactive waste be placed in a deep geologic 16 repository. That would be one way to solve the 17 problem, wouldn't it?
18 I don't think it's necessary or effective 19 for certain types of waste. For other types of waste, 20 it is. Mr. McCartin here worked on a high-level waste 21 project for most of his career, will probably tell you 22 that geologic disposal is the right way to go for 23 high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel.
24 Some of these low-level wastes can get 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
54 pretty risky, right. So those low-level wastes are 1
not all created equally. Some of them are not very 2
risky at all and some of them are pretty risky So you 3
need a regulatory program that's going to allow you to 4
evaluate or accommodate each.
5 In most international programs, there are 6
restrictions placed on the long-lived radionuclides 7
that are appropriate for near surface disposal. The 8
most common level that that's set at is around our 9
Class A limits in the U.S. So they say if you're at 10 Class A, sure, go ahead and do near surface disposal.
11 If you're greater than Class A, then you're at 12 intermediate depth or deep geologic disposal.
13 You can also use design requirements for 14 special waste or special scenarios, such as one way to 15 mitigate radon from depleted uranium is to put it 16 deeper. And it's very effective. It's not expensive 17 maybe, compared to some of your other options. It's 18 used in our uranium mill tailings management if we 19 need to mitigate radon fluxes.
20 The primary way you do that is to put 21 cover materials that hold moisture through a greater 22 thickness. A very simple approach, keep in place 23 then, but it's a simple approach to solving the 24 problem. Next slide, please.
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55 So here's this, what I'll spend a little 1
bit of time on. This was generated to try to answer 2
this question of, well what do people do? Because we 3
got comments that, in the previous iterations of this, 4
that basically whatever NRC was proposing was not 5
consistent with what people were doing.
6 I didn't think that was the case. So, we 7
went through, I don't know, 30,000 pages of documents, 8
lots of very big reports to extract this information 9
out of it. And there's a lot reflected on here.
10 So, the dots themselves, you see there's 11 green ones for Department of Energy, red for the 12 commercial facilities in the U.S., and the blue are 13 international. So there's, each component is 14 represented there.
15 First message is, you see the dots, and 16 this is a long, long plot, and for timeframes. And 17 what's on the Y axis is the fraction of the Class A 18 limits for long lived alpha emitters. So, those are 19 your plutonium, americium, you know, the things that 20 drive long term risk that aren't very mobile.
21 You see that the values generally increase 22 from lower left to upper right. So, as you get to 23 more concentrated long lived alpha emitting waste 24 generally the analysis timeframes are longer, okay.
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56 So that's message Number 1. And that's exactly what 1
we're proposing in this regulation.
2 So, the green area is kind of how our 3
requirements would lay over the state Act. That's 4
what that green area is showing.
5 Message Number 2, you'll notice that the 6
blue symbols for international tend to be more to the 7
left than the domestic and the DOE ones. There's a 8
variety of reasons for that.
9 But I think part of it is in that previous 10 dot plot that I showed you the people are closer to 11 the facilities. So they analyze them longer. They 12 want to have more confidence due to the actual physics 13 and chemistry of the problem that people are going to 14 be protected, rather than relying on isolation and 15 other forms of control to protect people. Okay.
16 For each of the different colored sets of 17 dots they all tend to trend kind of lower left to 18 upper right. International do that. The domestic 19 commercial facilities, the red ones, and the green 20 ones, DOE. So they're all kind of doing what we're 21 proposing in this regulation.
22 Now I will say, we had a meeting recently.
23 And one commenter looked at this figure and said, well 24 I think this demonstrates that most facilities if, you 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
57 know, use 1,000 years in their evaluation. I looked 1
at that and I was like, what? I don't see that. But 2
maybe I'm looking at it differently than you are.
3 It looks like the predominant approach is 4
that they use longer analyses. All of these 5
facilities have been licensed and are operating. So 6
the closed symbols are operating. The open symbols 7
are closed. So, they all were licensed using various 8
forms, different types of analyses here.
9 Another criticism we got about this is the 10 fact that the X axis says compliance period or time 11 evaluated in the assessment. Well the reason for that 12 is, everybody uses different language to describe 13 these things. They don't all use compliance period.
14 But when you talk to them, you talk to the 15 regulator, you talk to the operator, you look at their 16 reports, they're using the long term technical 17 analyses in their licensing decisions in some form or 18 another.
19 I don't care what you call it. Call it a 20 compliance period. Call it a performance period, 21 whatever. They're using the information on the long 22 term characteristics of the problem to make their 23 safety decisions or to factor into their safety 24 decisions, not make their safety decisions.
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58 Now the black line there, Class C, and 1
then the arrow for GTCC, that is to show that if we 2
implement this proposed regulation some types of GTCC 3
are falling at the upper range of what people have 4
done, okay.
5 So in the U.S. we believe we can specify 6
requirements that will provide protection of public 7
health and safety. But it should be acknowledged that 8
this is not, you're at the hard end of the problem.
9 You're not at the easy end of the problem, okay.
10 That's a important message for you to take away today.
11 Now, if there's questions on this one, I 12 have another one similar to it. Let's go to Slide 18.
13 So this is similar to the previous one. But it's only 14 long lived mobile. So that's technetium-99, iodine-15 129, carbon-14.
16 The couple of things from this. It still 17 pretty much trends from lower left to upper right.
18 But maybe not quite as strongly. And one thing you'll 19 notice is that there's not a
lot of these 20 radionuclides present. They all are generally below 21 1/10th of the Class A limits in the U.S.
22 Even with that being the case though many 23 of these radionuclides are the risk drivers in the 24 assessment. So it's the mobile long lived ones that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
59 you usually see coming out of these assessments.
1 The system can result in a delay of when 2
those come out. But a delay is not a mitigation of 3
risk. What we really look to see in these systems is 4
reductions in risk, rather than delay in risk.
5 Delay is good.
But reduction is 6
preferred. Because reductions, regardless of how 7
correct or incorrect you may be about the timing, is 8
going to ensure that somebody is protected once that 9
radioactivity eventually gets there.
10 If you're curious, the point way up at the 11 top, on the upper right, is a facility in South Korea.
12 Next slide, please.
13 So the last piece I'll talk about is this 14 performance period analyses. This is for those 15 facilities that will accept waste with significant 16 quantities of long lived radionuclides, what do they 17 do after the compliance period? That's called the 18 performance period.
19 It's going to be similar but different in 20 that the standard is going to be to reduce exposures 21 to the extent reasonable achievable. But it's not 22 going to have a dose limit for that period, per se.
23 The reason why we structured it that way 24 is it is a very long time assessment. And we probably 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
60 need to face the reality of what people do with 1
radiation in their own lives, and how restrictive you 2
should be with that long term information.
3 Because there is considerable uncertainty 4
associated with it we do want to ensure that we 5
achieve transparency with the stakeholders on what's 6
expected for the long term performance of these 7
systems. But these outputs are, should not be 8
constituted as a measure of projected human health 9
impact.
10 So what we describe in our guidance 11 associated with this is there's a variety of ways you 12 could do it. If I was doing it I would probably start 13 off with running my assessment out for the long time, 14 and see what it tells me.
15 Then I would also consider comparing to 16 other metrics. So if there's heartburn and 17 apprehension about using long term calculated doses, 18 you could use fluxes, compare it to natural fluxes, 19 like it's done in one of the Scandinavian programs, I 20 think Norway perhaps.
21 You could look at subsystem performance, 22 or how the individual components might be releasing 23 material, and what you might be able to do to reduce 24 that. So, can I change a material and make a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
61 measurable impact at minimal cost?
1 It's those sorts of decisions that you 2
would do in this analysis, similar to ALARA, but not 3
identical to ALARA.
4 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Yes. So we don't 5
forget. Is this conclusion very expensive? Because 6
it feels to me that once you set up your model for 7
1,000 years you can run it to 10,000 years. I mean --
8 MR. ESH: Yes.
9 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: --it cost you much 10 money though.
11 MR. ESH: Yes. So the cost is a 12 consideration. And I would assert this. If you have 13 a good site and a good design, then the costs 14 associated with changing that analysis timeframe is 15 minimal, okay.
16 If you have a site and design where you're 17 pushing the limits of what that site can accept, then 18 it's going to get, it could get more expensive for 19 your calculations.
20 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Is it, is the cost, 21 I don't see it with a part that you are going to 22 encounter a problem that you would have to fix. Or is 23 it the cost of CPU cycles?
24 MR. ESH: Oh, so yes. Not CPU cycles.
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62 Because generally now CPU cycles are cheap, right.
1 But in PHD hours, yes. In PHD hours is where your 2
costs would come in.
3 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Yes. But my question 4
5 MR. ESH: They hire you as a consultant 6
and they say, we need 1,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> for you for this 7
problem now instead of 100, then it gets more 8
expensive. So --
9 (Simultaneous speaking.)
10 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: -- table.
11 MR. ESH: It's --
12 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: It's never --
13 MR. ESH: -- intellectual labor, yes.
14 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Rather than hiding 15 the head under the sand, say I don't want to know what 16 happened after 1,000 years.
17 MR. ESH: Yes.
18 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Because if I know I 19 have to fix it.
20 MR. ESH: Yes, right. And I don't think 21 it's as much as I think it is. Intellectual labor and 22 say you have a new process that kicks in at that 23 longer timeframe, and you need information to put in 24 to model it, right.
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63 So you might either need to do a 1
literature search to get the information, do some 2
field measurements, you know. There might be 3
information needs associated with a process that would 4
apply for the longer term that doesn't apply for the 5
shorter term. So there's that part of it too.
6 But I definitely, if I was in their shoes 7
and faced with the long term analyses I would start 8
simple and progress to, you know, the more complicated 9
and expensive.
10 In many cases if you talk to the 11 practitioners, like there's one that retired, and he 12 worked in this field for, I don't know, 35 or 40 13 years. He said, yes, like, you know, once you've set 14 up the 1,000 year calculation and provided all the 15 inputs for it, it's not a multiple more expensive to 16 do the longer term analyses, it's percentages, you 17 know, ten percent, 20 percent or something, you know.
18 It's not --
19 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: One you have you --
20 MR. ESH: -- a factor of ten more 21 expensive to do ten times longer, right.
22 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: And finally, if there 23 is some uncertainty on your model of 10,000 years 24 versus 1,000 you should listen.
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64 MR. ESH: Yes. I mean, so I really, one 1
of the things I heard which I liked least out of all 2
of this 15 years of process is this argument that 3
large uncertainties mean you should do less.
4 I don't know. That doesn't, no. I'm 5
saying, I'm not attributing that to Member Ballinger.
6 I'm saying that we heard that line of thinking, and it 7
doesn't make sense to me at all, right.
8 We, you don't apply that in any nuclear 9
regulatory system and say, well I really don't know 10 what's going to happen. So here, I'll give you a 11 lesser requirement. I mean, you have to make a safety 12 decision. So what are you going to do to make that 13 safety decision?
14 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: What if you do 15 bounding operations?
16 MR. ESH: Yes. Start with a bounding.
17 And then sharpen your pencil and get more detailed and 18 sophisticated if you need to, right. So --
19 MEMBER PETTI: I have a question on the 20 previous slide.
21 MR. ESH: Yes.
22 MEMBER PETTI: Carbon-14, I know that this 23 is very sensitive in your -- I'm talking about the 24 disposal of irradiated graphite, which is an advanced 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
65 reactor material. And they're very super sensitive, 1
because it gets biosphere, yes.
2 But I had never heard it really talked 3
about in the U.S. waste lexicon. I mean, iodine-29 4
for sure, tech-99 for sure. But not carbon-14. And 5
I was always trying to figure out what the difference 6
was.
7 I mean, is there a difference in terms of 8
the, you know, their specific rules versus what we do?
9 The graphite manufacturers have asked me about this.
10 Because it has, it's fascinating.
11 It's oxygen, okay, that's trapped at 12 crystallite edges when they fabricate it that gets on 13 the neutron radiation, or nitrogen.
14 Nitrogen, sorry, nitrogen. You're right.
15 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: I'm on the Wikipedia 16 page for carbon-14.
17 MEMBER PETTI: Okay.
18 MR. ESH: So, I just worked on this 19 project with the IAEA on irradiated graphite, okay.
20 So, and one of the messages I had to them was, are the 21 disposal facilities in the U.S. contain carbon-14, 22 okay.
23 It's not irradiated graphite carbon-14.
24 But from a performance assessment or interior 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
66 assessment calculation it doesn't matter. It matters 1
in one aspect. And I'll talk to that.
2 But it doesn't matter whether it's carbon-3 14 in some other source or generation, or whether it's 4
an irradiated graphite. It still will translate 5
eventually into some sort of dose impact once it gets 6
in water, okay.
7 Thought the point where it will differ is 8
in the, in some cases there can be stored energy for 9
the low temperature graphite. So if you apply heat to 10 it or some energy source, then it basically self 11 heats. And it can get very hot, you know, like 800 12 degrees C or something like that. Yes. Windscale 13 yes.
14 Yes, yes. Windscale set a primary 15 example. So the irradiated graphite is a concern for 16 some of these countries. But I think the IEA is 17 working on providing case studies of what is being 18 done with irradiated graphite in different countries.
19 There is a little bit in the U.S., but not much. And 20 that's why you hear more about it for the 21 international programs and --
22 MEMBER PETTI: They're disposing, they've 23 DND's a gas reactor there. And so it's a big issue.
24 MR. ESH: Yes.
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67 MEMBER PETTI: It talks about treating it.
1 You can lightly oxidize it because it's all on the 2
crystallite edges --
3 MR. ESH: Yes.
4 MEMBER PETTI: -- and do it in a hot cell 5
or something. But that's still a lot of processing.
6 MR. ESH: So the main, so Russia has some 7
irradiated graphite that is pretty hot in terms of the 8
amount of carbon-14, probably more so than most other 9
places.
10 But that is being evaluated in many 11 programs, what the solution to it may be. The default 12 seems to be that they're all looking at intermediate 13 level depth disposal or geologic disposal for that 14 material.
15 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Excuse me. I think 16 the problem is a little similar to tritium, in the 17 sense that if any volatile hydrocarbon, the Carbon-14 18 might attach to it, then you can, same way that CO2 19 becomes water. Carbon-14 can migrate to volatile 20 hydrocarbons and move.
21 MR. ESH: Yes.
22 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA:
Whether it's 23 technetium, or something else --
24 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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68 MEMBER PETTI: Well thanks. That helps.
1 I hadn't heard the most recent stuff.
2 MR. ESH: There have been treatability 3
studies on it too. And those are interesting from the 4
standpoint of, in the assessments they'll mainly 5
assume like they did for other long lived mobile 6
isotopes, they generally don't partition very strongly 7
to the waste. And therefore, when water contacts it 8
they're released pretty readily.
9 But when you look at the graphite waste, 10 when they try to treat it, it can be pretty hard to 11 get the carbon-14 out of it, right. So, if it's hard 12 to get it out in a treatment process, it should be 13 hard to get it out in a disposal facility too, right.
14 So I think that's factoring in to the 15 solutions to it right now. And that as they get more 16 information they may find that the less aggressive 17 solutions may be appropriate for that material. I 18 think the, yes, Tim.
19 MR. MCCARTIN: Okay. As you've heard, the 20 graders in Class C waste has higher concentrations by 21 its definition than Class C. And so we looked at, are 22 there certain requirements that would need to be 23 changed in Part 61 to accommodate these higher 24 concentrations?
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69 And there's a couple of things. Currently 1
for Class C waste the requirement is that it's buried 2
at a depth of at least five meters, or an intruder 3
barrier.
4 For greater than Class C we're proposing 5
that it requires a depth of at least five meters and 6
an intruder barrier because of the greater 7
concentrations of radionuclides. That does present a 8
higher hazard to the intruder, inadvertent intruder.
9 Also along those lines, when we look at it 10 there were a few waste streams that had the potential 11 to have very large concentrations of long lived 12 transuranic radionuclides.
13 Currently the Class C limit is 100 nano 14 curies. We're proposing a threshold for the Class, 15 the greater than Class C waste that you could have no 16 higher than 10,000 nano curies per gram.
17 But recognizing there could be particular 18 designs, site characteristics. Importantly, the 19 quantity of the waste that it could be looked on, on 20 a case by case basis for approval.
21 But generally, as you get to that 10,000 22 nano curies per gram it's becoming more and more 23 challenging to demonstrate safety through the types of 24 analyses that Dave was talking about.
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70 And then there's also additional waste 1
characteristic requirements that we've provided.
2 There's a possibility for the waste stream in terms 3
heat generation, radiolysis, criticality.
4 And we'd like to see non dispensability 5
for things like, if you have enough plutonium you 6
really want to make sure there's a limit for what 7
could get out in dispersable from an operational 8
standpoint.
9 And all these kinds of things, as Dave 10 said, there's a lot of different waste streams out 11 there even for greater than Class C waste. We don't 12 know how much a particular facility would take.
13 And so that's the beauty of this 14 performance based approach where you do the technical 15 analysis. Because it will depend in part, well are 16 you taking say 1,000 cubic meters of this waste? Or 17 are you taking 100 cubic meters?
18 There is a difference in the hazard level.
19 And that's what these analyses allow you to do, is 20 look at how much. And so we've put these particular 21 requirements.
22 I want to talk, next slide, to two 23 particular aspects. And first is criticality. And 24 currently Part 61 points to Part 70 in terms of the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
71 thresholds for looking at criticality requirements for 1
prevention of criticality.
2 It's based on a quantity of fissile 3
material that's present there, without consideration 4
of the concentration of that fissile material. And 5
that's where, or the operational part.
6 We looked at what was done in Part 71 for 7
transportation, where they have an exemption for 8
fissile material that, solid fissile material of very 9
low concentration does not have to be treated as 10 fissile material.
11 They did extensive analyses to show that 12 there is really no way you could make it to go 13 critical. And so we are proposing to provide that 14 same exemption in Part 61, that if you're less than 15 that concentration you aren't subject to the 16 criticality requirements.
17 Now that's the operational part of. From 18 a post closure standpoint there is a recognition that 19 if indeed all the GTCC waste currently estimated by 20 the Department of Energy went to a particular site, 21 that could have a lot of fissile material, tens to 22 hundreds of kilograms of fissile material. Even at 23 potentially a low concentration.
24 And so what does that mean for the long 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
72 term? And so we've put in a requirement, while we've 1
provided additional flexibility with that exemption 2
for the concentration from an operational perspective.
3 From the long term perspective, once 4
again, if you have enough fissile material in a single 5
disposal unit the applicant would have to identify 6
what measures are you taking, such that this material 7
would not have an easy pathway for re-concentration?
8 Let's say everything funneled to one drain 9
would not necessarily be the best design for something 10 that had say 500 kilograms of plutonium in it.
11 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Do you see the, not 12 chemical but -- I will rather have 500 kilos of 13 natural uranium than one kilo of 99 percent enriched 14 uranium.
15 MR. MCCARTIN: Well, and that could be 16 part of their analysis, looking at what is the 17 chemical form of the material? Yes. Yes.
18 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: There is no way you 19 can mix natural uranium and make it all --
20 MR. MCCARTIN: Yes, right.
21 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: If you have highly 22 enriched uranium, which you and I wanted to throw 23 away, but --
24 MR. MCCARTIN: Right.
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73 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: -- as an example.
1 MR. MCCARTIN: Yes.
2 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: You can conceive of 3
ways of concentrating it.
4 MR. MCCARTIN: Yes. They'll have to look 5
at what they have and what they take. And I think 6
plutonium is probably, it's, plutonium is the biggest 7
concern that might --
8 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA:
How does the 9
plutonium make it there? Is contamination involves 10 the general and to be disposing of this of -- And, you 11 know, the (audio interference).
12 MR. MCCARTIN: Right. Well some of it is 13 material from West Valley that is potential for 14 disposal. The exact waste stream that has the 15 plutonium, I'd have to get back to you on that. It 16 could be some of the sealed sources. But I don't want 17 to, I'm not --
18 MR. TARTAL: TMI-2.
19 MR. MCCARTIN: I can get back to you with 20 exactly -- What?
21 MR. TARTAL: TMI-2.
22 MR. MCCARTIN: Okay.
23 MR.
TARTAL:
When they get that 24 decommissioned out there.
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74 MR. MCCARTIN: Okay.
1 MR. MOORE: This is Scott Moore. As you 2
mentioned, there are some sealed sources with, for 3
instance, could be neutron generated.
4 MR. MCCARTIN: Oh, okay. Yes, yes. Yes.
5 And, but the goal is I think, if you got anything out 6
of Dave's early part of his presentation, it was Part 7
61 was initially developed with a fixed mindset on 8
very particular waste.
9 And as time went on things changed. We're 10 hoping that some of these requirements are broad 11 enough that -- We don't know ten years, 20 years from 12 now what waste streams might be considered GTCC. And 13 this will capture that.
14 And that's the goal, to make sure the 15 requirements are appropriate and commensurate with the 16 risk. And so, that's for criticality. Then the next 17 slide is for, it's really the same issue with physical 18 protection.
19 The thresholds, and I will say the second 20 line of the first bullet exceed the thresholds in 10 21 CFR 150.14 is missing. But it's a quantity based 22 threshold. It has, it isn't based on a concentration.
23 And so, in addition, the physical security 24 requirements in Part 73 is a common defense security 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
75 requirement. NRC is the, is responsible for that.
1 That is not delegated to an agreement state.
2 And so, in looking at that, to give 3
additional flexibility where Part 73.67 does have 4
exemptions for special types of materials, and there's 5
certain material if the concentration is low enough, 6
it really does not present a threat. And it's limited 7
attractiveness for theft.
8 And so we're putting in proposing an 9
exemption there so that the physical protection 10 requirements are commensurate with that threat. And 11 that would
- allow, that exemption would allow 12 additional waste streams of sufficiently low 13 concentration to be regulated by the agreement state.
14 And they still would have physical 15 protection requirements under Parts 20 and 37, just 16 not 73. And so that was another consideration we had.
17 Because we are going to see the waste 18 streams that DOE provided in their environmental 19 impact statement does have concentrations that would 20 result in quantities that exceed the threshold.
21 But the concentrations are so low you 22 would need to divert massive amounts of waste, then be 23 able to reprocess that waste in a way to extract the 24 material.
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76 And we're, our recommendation is that this 1
waste does not meet the physical protection 2
requirements of Part 73. But as I said, 20 and 37 3
would still be enforced for physical protection.
4 And that's it for my portion. Priya's 5
next. I don't know if there are any questions on that 6
particular aspect.
7 MR. TARTAL: Okay. If we can open up 8
Priya's mic, please.
9 MS. YADAV: Okay. Can everybody hear me?
10 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Yes.
11 MS. YADAV: Okay, great. My name is Priya 12 Yadav. And I am the Part 61 project manager on the 13 rulemaking working group. I've been working on this 14 effort also with Dave since 2008. So, we've been 15 living through the many SRMs and the many changes on 16 the rulemaking.
17 And thank you for inviting us again to 18 brief you at the ACRS. And we look forward to hearing 19 your advice and guidance.
20 So I have a few slides that we will wrap 21 up with. And then we will go back to George for a 22 schedule update.
23 So I'll talk about waste acceptance. We 24 are envisioning this rulemaking to allow licensees the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
77 flexibility to develop site-specific waste acceptance 1
criteria. And so this is also a topic that was given 2
to us in one of the SRMs along the way.
3 The waste acceptance program would have 4
three components. So, the licensee would develop the 5
specific criteria, which is the allowable activities 6
and concentrations for each radionuclide for disposal.
7 The licensee would develop the waste 8
characterization methods. And they would also have a 9
waste certification program to ensure the waste that 10 arrives at the facility meets the waste acceptance 11 criteria prior to arrival.
12 Licensees could choose to use generic 13 limits for their waste acceptance criteria. So they 14 limits in 61.55 and the waste characteristic 15 requirements in 61.56.
16 Or they could develop site-specific waste 17 acceptance criteria based on the results of their 18 61.13 technical analyses, which are the analyses that 19 Dave just ran through.
20 Licensees would review their waste 21 acceptance program annually, and present their 22 proposed criteria to the regulator. And if they're 23 approved they would be incorporated into their 24 license.
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78 Generator shipping waste would still be 1
using the 61.55 waste classification scheme. So the 2
ABC greater than Class C would still be used to ship 3
the waste. And we will not be changing those tables 4
and those limits in this rulemaking. Next slide, 5
please.
6 So, a new area, a new topic in this 7
rulemaking is the concept of grandfathering. And so 8
this is an area that ACRS did provide a recommendation 9
on in 2016 in their letter to the Commission.
10 So, in the SRM on SECY-16-0106 staff was 11 directed by the Commission to allow for grandfathering 12 of existing licensees who indicated they did not 13 choose to dispose of large quantities of depleted 14 uranium.
15 So we have learned that there's some 16 sensitivity to the term grandfathering. So we are 17 considering using a different term, considering using 18 the term exception criteria, and including some 19 criteria in the 61.1(b) purpose and scope section of 20 the proposed rule.
21 And so these criteria would indicate four 22 land disposal facilities with licenses already issued 23 before this rulemaking goes into effect for these 24 licensees who also do not accept greater than Class C, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
79 or significant quantities of long lived radionuclides.
1 After this rulemaking goes into effect 2
these licensees would not need to comply with select 3
parts of our proposed regulation. So the revised 4
technical analyses. So, all of the analyses that Dave 5
went through, which would be located in 61.13.
6 The revised performance objectives located 7
in 61.41 and 61.42. And 61.42 is the key intruder 8
assessment that would have the 500 milligram dose 9
limit. And then also the waste acceptance criteria 10 regulations, which I just detailed in, we would plan 11 to put those in 61.58.
12 So, licensees who meet these criteria 13 would not be required to meet the revised regulations, 14 but would be required to comply with the original Part 15 61 regulations for these sections. Next slide, 16 please.
17 We are planning to include, as Dave 18 alluded to earlier, a definition for significant 19 quantities in the rule. And so the definition would 20 say something like, significant quantities means an 21 amount and concentration accepted for disposal that if 22 released could result in the performance objectives 23 not being met.
24 So this would be the criteria for 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
80 selection of the compliance period, either 1,000 years 1
if you don't have the, if the licensee does not have 2
significant quantities, or 10,000 years if they do.
3 And it would also be the amount for demonstrating 4
meeting the criteria in 61.1(b).
5 So the calculation of significant 6
quantities, as Dave alluded to, it's detailed.
7 Examples are provided in our guidance document. But 8
it would be different, depending on the, you know, 9
specific disposal characteristics at the specific 10 site.
11 Based on staff's work in SECY-08-0147, 12 where we concluded that for depleted uranium ten 13 metric tons was okay for near surface disposal, was 14 acceptable for near surface disposal.
15 We are considering including in the 16 regulation that less than ten metric tons of depleted 17 uranium is not considered a significant quantity of 18 long lived radionuclides.
19 CHAIR KIRCHNER: And that would be applied 20 at one site? Or how would you apply that?
21 MS. YADAV: Yes. That would be applied 22 per licensee.
23 CHAIR KIRCHNER: And what is the total 24 amount that is in the DOE's inventory?
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81 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: But one 48 wide 1
container has five tons. And you would go to the 2
(audio interference) and you got to see the end of 3
them.
4 MR. ESH: Yes. It's over a million metric 5
tons.
6 CHAIR KIRCHNER: So the bottom line would 7
be that these at least existing sites under this new 8
rule would not be taking a significant, different use 9
of the word significant, a large, as measured in many 10 tons of depleted uranium on their sites for disposal.
11 MR. ESH: Correct. If somebody wished to 12 take a large quantity of depleted uranium they would 13 be using the new criteria rather than the old 14 criteria.
15 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Thank you.
16 MS. YADAV: Sure. Next slide, please. So 17 licensees, like we said, so if they choose to use, if 18 they are seeking to use only 1,000 years as their 19 compliance period, or they're seeking to meet the 20 criteria in 61.1(b), the exception criteria, they 21 would need to do calculations for the specific waste 22 they are disposing of at their site.
23 And so, they would do these calculations 24 and then present them to their regulators. And then 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
82 determine, you know, if they are in fact not accepting 1
significant quantities.
2 And so that's why we have example 3
approaches in the new reg. And we've also included a 4
table of concentrations of long lived radionuclides 5
that could be used as screening values. Next slide, 6
please.
7 One new area that we're considering 8
including in this, in the proposed rule is to have a 9
minimum depth of disposal for significant quantities 10 of uranium.
11 So because the decay of uranium can 12 produce radon that diffuses to the land surface we're 13 considering have a requirement, you know, that would 14 say significant quantities of uranium must be disposed 15 so the top of the waste is a minimum of five meters 16 below the surface cover, the top of the surface cover.
17 Next slide, please.
18 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Now, the surface cover 19 there would be specified, or is, I mean, obviously 20 you're probably not thinking of just loose soil.
21 MS. YADAV: Right.
22 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Or maybe you are.
23 MS. YADAV: I think -- We haven't, we're 24 thinking it would be specified as like, this is the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
83 actual surface cover, the designed surface cover.
1 MR. ESH: To achieve the stability 2
criteria they, they surface covers are usually one of 3
two types. So they're usually, they're a resistant 4
design where you're using, you know, clay layers as a 5
radon barrier, and as geomembranes perhaps as an 6
infiltration
- barrier, you
- know, multi layered 7
engineered cover.
8 Newer thinking, or at least more recent 9
thinking has started migrating to look at 10 evapotranspiration covers that are simpler designs 11 with less layers, where you'd use evaporation plus 12 plants to achieve the moisture removal.
13 And they tend to be maybe a little bit 14 thicker so they have a water storage component to 15 them, which helps also mitigate something with radon.
16 Because radon diffusion goes way down with higher 17 moisture, with higher moisture content.
18 MS. YADAV: Thank you. Okay. So now 19 addressing the comment about taking six months to 20 review our implementation guidance. Yes. I have been 21 working on the implementation guidance for many, many 22 a year now. It has been published in, with Dave and 23 with Tom, and several other, you know, members of our 24 team. It does keep getting bigger and bigger.
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84 But our hope is that we've designed it 1
such that each chapter addresses one of the technical 2
analyses that, you know, Dave alluded to earlier. So 3
Chapter 3 talks about the performance assessment.
4 Chapter 4 talks about the inadvertent intruder 5
assessment. Chapter 5 talks about site stability.
6 So we hope that it could be used as a 7
reference guide. And we don't intend for anybody to 8
kind of start at Page 1 and end at Page 600.
9 So hopefully you guys have received kind 10 of a pre-decisional version of that, you know.
11 Hopefully that, you know, kind of gives you kind of 12 glimpse into what, you know, the changes that we've 13 made with this rulemaking.
14 So there are currently two public versions 15 available. In 2015 we issued for public comment a 16 draft Nu Reg 2175. And then we briefed your committee 17 in 2016 and we made a draft final version available.
18 Those are both available on the public website.
19 But for this rulemaking we're updating and 20 calling it Revision 1. And we added an appendix for 21 GTCC disposal. So if you just want to refer to 22 Appendix G that talks all about GTCC.
23 Appendix H addresses this whole concept of 24 how to figure out what significant quantities are for 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
85 what waste streams. And then, and overall we've 1
updated the guidance to be, you know, conform with the 2
proposed ruling, which --
3 And that is my last slide. So with that 4
I can go back to George.
5 MR. TARTAL: Okay. I get to wrap us up 6
here. So this slide talks about next steps for the 7
rulemaking. It's a pictorial view of the rulemaking 8
process, and shows you where we're at now.
9 As I mentioned earlier we've been working 10 on this proposed rule for well over a year now. We've 11 held two public meetings now on this rulemaking. We 12 had the first on in May of last year. And then we 13 just held the second public meeting last month in 14 January 2024.
15 We've been presenting on this topic for 16 quite awhile now to various audiences, such as 17 agreement state regulator workshops. We've been 18 getting the word out on this project. And we plan to 19 submit the proposed rule to the Commission in May of 20 this year.
21 And then if the Commission approves we'll 22 publish the proposed rule in the Federal Register and 23 request public comments, and then work on developing 24 the final rule, that at this point we're preliminarily 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
86 targeting to deliver it to the Commission in November 1
of 2025. And of course that depends on how quickly 2
the Commission votes on it, and how many public 3
comments we get. So that's the end our slides. Are 4
there any final questions for us?
5 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Yes. I have a couple if 6
I may start. One, could you just give us a summary 7
and highlight what you received in the most recent set 8
of public meetings and comments that might be 9
actionable or influence your, this process?
10 MR. TARTAL: Well, that's a tough question 11 to take on. We, I think we heard from a really wide 12 range of stakeholders. Anywhere from industry 13 representatives who were concerned about the 14 regulatory analysis, and concerned about costs for 15 their facilities. Would we be increasing costs for 16 their facilities?
17 We heard from non Government organizations 18 who were concerned about any kind of waste disposal, 19 and things of that nature.
20 I don't think we heard anything though in 21 either of the public meetings that we've held that 22 would give us pause as to the content of our 23 rulemaking. I think we're still very confident in our 24 approach.
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87 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay. I should have 1
narrowed my question down to the content. Then 2
secondly, what about comments from the agreement 3
states that currently have sites?
4 MR. TARTAL: Okay. We're a little bit too 5
early for that unfortunately. We're right in the 6
process of requesting the agreement state comments at 7
this point.
8 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay.
9 MR. TARTAL: So --
10 CHAIR KIRCHNER: So that was not part --
11 (Simultaneous speaking.)
12 MR. TARTAL: Right.
13 CHAIR KIRCHNER: -- comment period.
14 MR. TARTAL: Yes.
15 MR. ESH: We did have a member, agreement 16 state member on the working group from the state of 17 Texas, who took part in all of our meetings, and has 18 been helpful to have participate with us.
19 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay. Thank you. I 20 thought I heard Dennis. Dennis, did I hear you trying 21 to ask a question?
22 MR. BLEY: You did. And you already asked 23 the one I was going to ask, to the more general form 24 would be, how much confidence do you folks have we're 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
88 going to get through this?
1 CHAIR KIRCHNER: That's a less fair 2
question than my question, Dennis.
3 MR. BLEY: It is. It feels no matter how 4
they would have gone, there's going to be a lot of 5
opposition. But I think you've done quite a job to 6
get to this point.
7 MR. TARTAL: I guess I'll start and just 8
say that the staff is confident with the proposal that 9
you have gotten to look at. I think we have a sound 10 and reasonable basis for the rulemaking.
11 And again, as I mentioned a few minutes 12 ago, we haven't heard anything from our stakeholders 13 that seems to imply that we're doing the wrong thing.
14 So I'm pretty confident, at least from my staff point 15 of view.
16 MR. ESH: Yes. My joking answer is 0.00 17 percent. But my real answer is, I agree with George.
18 I think we put a lot of work in to try to make a smart 19 and balanced regulation addressing the realities of 20 what we're facing with these proposals for some 21 different wastes, and everything that's going on in 22 the nuclear fuel cycle, and the reactors, fusion, et 23 cetera.
24 And as Tim alluded to, these changes if 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
89 implemented should be flexible enough to deal with 1
those challenges as they come forward. And we won't, 2
where my kids or grandkids won't be here briefing your 3
kids or grandkids about the need for new changes to 4
the regulation.
5 So we do have a task that was given to us 6
by the Commission, to consider revising the waste 7
classification system after we got through this 8
process.
9 That would be a much more difficult task 10 and a bigger challenge because of how the waste 11 classification system has many tendrils that extend 12 all throughout different laws, programs, et cetera.
13 So, but that is out there if we do get 14 through this process, to consider if we need to change 15 the waste classification system, and how we might do 16 that.
17 I have lots of ideas about what we could 18 do, and do smartly with that. But, you know, I've 19 been conditioned to know that it's never going to be 20 as easy as I think it would be.
21 MR. BLEY: Well, thanks for taking that --
22 MR. MCCARTIN: I just, I guess I would add 23 that as has been said, we believe we have put together 24 a solid proposed rule. But the emphasis is on 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
90 proposed.
1 Now the benefit of the comment period is 2
you get a lot of comments with, from a lot of 3
different people, different groups with different 4
perspectives.
5 And hopefully that makes for a better 6
rule, final rule based on, I'm not sure what it will 7
be. But I'm sure there's aspects that we will rethink 8
because of the comments we received. And it sure 9
would be nice to go out for public comment.
10 MEMBER BALLINGER: Any other questions 11 from members?
12 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Hi.
13 MEMBER BALLINGER: Vesna.
14 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Yes, yes. That's 15 me. I just couldn't resist actually just to come back 16 to something which was brought in discussion there, 17 when we were talking about large uncertainty. And 18 then said that, the presenter said that obviously you 19 don't do less when you have large uncertainty.
20 So then I was going to ask actually, so 21 does that mean that, will that be part of a need to do 22 more? And then more of what? I just would like to 23 hear the presenter opinion. More of what we need to 24 do when we face large uncertainty.
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91 MR. ESH: Yes. That's a good -- That was 1
me, Dave, that -- Yes. That was a good, that's a good 2
question. And there's a variety of things you can do.
3 So there is a iterate process to the technical 4
analysis in the modeling, for instance.
5 So if you identify that you have large 6
uncertainties, many times people will go back and 7
they'll sharpen their pencils, or collect more 8
information to try to reduce or mitigate those 9
uncertainties.
10 Some are irreducible, you know. So 11 sometimes you'll have something that it doesn't 12 matter. You can't collect more information to better 13 define the probability distribution for a parameter, 14 for instance. So that has its limitations.
15 But in this process it's not just all 16 about the technical analyses. So you can implement 17 new engineered barriers. Or in particular, for low 18 level waste disposal in the U.S. not a lot of waste 19 conditioning occurs.
20 Internationally a
lot of waste 21 conditioning occurs. So there's an opportunity if we 22 needed it, to apply material science and engineering 23 to mitigate some of the uncertainties associated with 24 say natural system performance. That's one way to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
92 mitigate an uncertainty.
1 So the other thing is like if you have 2
uncertainty associated with near
- surface, the 3
performance of a near surface disposal facility, you 4
can always go deeper, which lessens many of those 5
driving forces that cause that uncertainty, whether 6
it's from climate, human interaction, plant and animal 7
interaction, erosion. Depth is one mechanism that can 8
mitigate those sources of uncertainty.
9 So for instance, the near surface disposal 10 facility in Texas, it's a near surface disposal 11 facility. But it goes down almost 40 meters. It's a 12 very deep near surface disposal facility. Great 13 facility to mitigate those types of uncertainties that 14 I just talked about.
15 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Okay. Well, thanks.
16 And I'm glad you presented to be what you had in mind.
17 Because, you know, I always just personally don't 18 believe the answer is to address the big uncertainties 19 to do more quantification. Because then we lose more 20 parameters, more assumptions, more uncertainties.
21 And in the general we have introduced 22 calculation of uncertainties in this century to all 23 these quantifications. But we didn't really have the 24 clear approach what to do in the case when we have 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
93 such large uncertainties like here, you know.
1 What is the implications? We don't really 2
have a clear definition how do we use these 3
uncertainties which we start as demanding, or prompted 4
by.
5 And in my opinion, just this is totally 6
personal. And this is very important subject for me 7
in the general, is that the, one of the solutions of 8
it should be to choose the different approach, or 9
different method.
10 If we are facing large uncertainties then 11 you go back to your Slide 16 and look in other 12 approaches, you know. So the thing is, back to what 13 I think should be really one of the considerations.
14 Not that I have a comment. You have done 15 state of the art quantification or something. But way 16 of addressing uncertainties could always be just to 17 look in the, you know, different approach. So, okay.
18 That's just my comment to those uncertainties which 19 are here really large.
20 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay. I see that Steve 21 Schultz has his hand up. Steve, go ahead.
22 MR. SCHULTZ: Yes. This is Steve Schultz.
23 The comment I wanted to make, or a question I have is 24 related again to public information, communication to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
94 the public.
1 You've mentioned the meetings that you 2
have had and the upcoming ones associated with the 3
rulemaking. Have you also considered, given the level 4
of effort in terms of knowledge and development that 5
has gone into this, more communications in venues such 6
as the Regulatory Information Conference upcoming, or 7
the American Nuclear Society meetings, to get more out 8
about what you've done?
9 Because the accomplishments that are being 10 shown in our public meeting today are quite 11 substantial. This would be to George or to Dave.
12 MR. TARTAL: Yes. This is George. I'm 13 going to start answering that question. Maybe others 14 have some things to add.
15 As I mentioned, we've been trying to get 16 the word out to a number of different stakeholder 17 groups. And I think I mentioned agreement states is 18 one of them.
19 We've been traveling to various places to 20 present on this rulemaking. I think we did a poster 21 at the RIC a little over a year ago. We've been doing 22 other things like that ever since we've started 23 working on this integrated proposed rule, the restart 24 of this rulemaking.
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95 So I think that's how I would answer, that 1
we've been trying to get the word out as much as we 2
can. But at the same time, you know, the more that we 3
do those kinds of interactions the more it takes us 4
away from writing the rule. So we've been trying to 5
balance the outreach with making progress on writing 6
the rule.
7 MEMBER BALLINGER: I just had a thought.
8 Recently the ANS published a white paper, if you want 9
to call it, related in high level ways to their 10 proposal with how to deal with especially the long 11 term issue.
12 Is there thought to enlisting the ANS on 13 the low level waste side? I mean, I don't know if 14 it's appropriate. But it, they did a pretty good job 15 on the high level waste white paper, whatever.
16 MR. MCCARTIN: Well, they're certainly 17 free to comment on the proposed rule when it comes 18 out, you know. And I think they've commented before.
19 I'm not, on the -- okay, draft regulatory basis they 20 might have commented.
21 MEMBER BALLINGER: Okay.
22 MR. MCCARTIN: And, but --
23 MR. MCKENNEY: Well, I believe the Health 24 Physics Society also has (audio interference) these 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
96 ones too. This is Chris McKenney. The, but we have 1
been talking about this rule. Again, it's been in 2
development in various forms for 15 years.
3 And it's been, at its core a lot of it is 4
very similar to the 2016, except for the GTCC, which 5
of course was not addressed in the 2016 rule that went 6
to the Commission.
7 And so we have been going to a lot of 8
things. It happens to be that there is a regulatory 9
information conference like event that is for waste 10 management. The Waste Management Symposia in the 11 United States, which is an international conference.
12 And we have been talking about this for many, over a 13 decade on this topic with them, and interacting with 14 the international community also at international 15 meetings on the topic too.
16 For those who are much more into the, 17 again into waste management is a comment. They're 18 sick of us talking about it so much.
19 MEMBER BALLINGER: This is the one in 20 March?
21 MR.
MCKENNEY:
Yes.
It
- happens, 22 unfortunately this year the Waste Management Symposium 23 is the exact same week as the Regulatory Information 24 Conference. I believe next year they will be on 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
97 separated times. But they have been together for the 1
last couple of years.
2 And, or we haven't discussed like enough 3
on the issues of like performance assessment and 4
stuff, or timeframes in that way. But we have had 5
staff who have worked on waste related issues where, 6
you know, on the, for the generator side of waste 7
forms, and other things like that, to make sure that 8
the generators are able to produce a proper waste form 9
in the past.
10 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Ron, before we go to 11 committee deliberations, and then on to a proposed 12 letter report, I think we should take comments from 13 the public, and then take a break.
14 MEMBER BALLINGER: Okay.
15 CHAIR KIRCHNER: So with that --
16 MEMBER BALLINGER: I was kind of, okay.
17 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Let me go ahead and open 18 it to any participants online. If you wish to make a 19 comment please state your name, affiliation if 20 appropriate, and please make your comment. You'll 21 have to unmute yourself.
22 And I'll just pause here and wait for 23 anyone to speak up. Hearing None, I think then at 24 this point we'll take a 15 minute break that will 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
98 allow us a chance to set up for the next deliberations 1
and letter writing.
2 And with that we will just take a short 3
recess here until, let me look at the clock, 3:15 p.m.
4 Thank you.
5 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 6
off the record at 3:01 p.m. and resumed at 3:58 p.m.)
7 CHAIR KIRCHNER: So, on our agenda we 8
have, yes, I think we're done with Sandra. Do you 9
want, one last housekeeping thing, Ron. Do you want 10 this evening to work on this, this afternoon, this 11 evening? And then bring something back --
12 MEMBER BALLINGER: Well, if I get 13 something from Dave and I get something from Vesna 14 I'll go away and produce another revision.
15 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Yes. I'm asking a 16 leading question. Do we return this afternoon, or do 17 we wait until --
18 MEMBER BALLINGER: I think 1:00 p.m.
19 tomorrow would be -- Yes.
20 (Simultaneous speaking.)
21 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay.
22 MEMBER BALLINGER: Because I'm going to 23 stick around for the rest of the meeting.
24 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay. All right.
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99 MEMBER BALLINGER: So I won't do anything 1
until Dave --
2 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay. All right. So, we 3
will come back to letter writing when we finish P&P 4
tomorrow morning. Okay. With that, on our agenda we 5
have a report out from the NuScale Subcommittee.
6 And since I am the lead for that I would 7
like to report out on behalf of the subcommittee that 8
we heard from NuScale and the staff on their 9
subchannel analysis and rod ejection accident 10 methodology topical
- reports, as revised and 11 supplemented.
12 There were not, at least I think in the 13 opinion of the subcommittee, major significant changes 14 to either of the methodologies. We had previously 15 written letters on the initial urgings of both topical 16 reports as were referenced in the design certification 17 application.
18 So the subcommittee recommends that the 19 full committee not review these methodologies, and not 20 write a letter report. Rather that we take this 21 information under advisement.
22 And when we turn to the standard design 23 application review, in particular Chapters 4 and 15, 24 we will examine how the methodologies were applied in 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
100 the areas of reactor design and accident analysis.
1 So that is the recommendation. And I need 2
from the committee a decision whether you accept that 3
recommendation or you would prefer to write a letter 4
report on these topics?
5 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: On preliminary --
6 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Go ahead.
7 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: If the votes are only 8
allowed on P&P? Or can we take a vote now, this being 9
the full committee. And then --
10 CHAIR KIRCHNER: We often take votes on 11 all kinds of matters, including wording and letters.
12 So yes. Is there anyone that feels we need to write 13 a letter report on these two methodologies?
14 MEMBER BIER: Can you repeat exactly what 15 the letter would be addressing? Sorry.
16 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Well, if we were to write 17 a letter report it would be, the first order, a 18 reprise of the letters we wrote in 2018 on subchannel 19 analysis, and 2020 on rod ejection accidents.
20 The significant revisions and/or 21 supplements to the topical report methodologies were 22 mainly in the subchannel analysis methodology to add 23 a statistical treatment and approach for evaluating 24 critical heat flux.
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101 And in the case of the rod ejection 1
accident analysis, at the time we reviewed the topical 2
report the draft reg guide that covers rod ejection 3
and rod drop accidents were BWRs and DWRs had not been 4
issued.
5 So the standing guidance and criteria that 6
was in the Reg Guide 1.77 and the standard review plan 7
were in transition, I guess is the way to describe it.
8 And subsequently we pointed this out in our letter on 9
the rod ejection accident methodology.
10 And then NuScale came back and showed in 11 some example problems application of their methodology 12 against the criteria or figures of merit from the new, 13 then newly issued Reg Guide on rod ejection accidents.
14 And that seemed to be a plausible and 15 reasonable approach. And based on that it was the 16 consensus of the subcommittee that this did not 17 require writing a new letter report. Is there any 18 discussion --
19 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: They weren't seeking 20 exception to the new rule.
21 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Yes. There are no 22 exceptions --
23 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: I know that.
24 CHAIR KIRCHNER: -- to the guidance that's 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com
102 in the Reg Guide --
1 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Only there would be 2
(audio interference) and publish the CR.
3 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Yes.
4 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Not worth it.
5 CHAIR KIRCHNER: And as some of our 6
subcommittee members pointed out, that the inclusion 7
of the statistical treatment was just bringing up 8
their methodology to what is current state of the art 9
practice elsewhere. So, if there's no other comment 10 11 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Make a motion --
12 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Jose, why don't you make 13 the motion?
14 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: I make a motion --
15 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Because you were our 16 primary reviewer.
17 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Yes. I make a motion 18 that we take a vote to take on what, all you said, and 19 not write a letter. Do we need a second?
20 MR. RODGERS: I think you first. I'll 21 second.
22 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay. Any further 23 discussion? All those in favor?
24 (Chorus of aye.)
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103 CHAIR KIRCHNER: Okay. I think that's 1
unanimous. So we will enter a short paragraph into 2
the meeting summary that repeats, probably in better 3
English, what I just shared with you.
4 And with that, and we're done with our 5
NuScale topical reports. And I can release the court 6
reporter. Do we need, Larry, the court reporter for 7
any further parts of this meeting?
8 Okay. Then I thank you. And I think 9
we're done with your transcriptions for this meeting.
10 Yes, thank you very much.
11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 12 off the record at 4:05 p.m.)
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INTEGRATED LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL PROPOSED RULE ACRS Full Committee Meeting February 7, 2024 George Tartal David Esh Tim McCartin Priya Yadav
- Rulemaking scope
- Safety case and technical assessments
- Timeframes (compliance period)
- GTCC waste considerations
- Waste acceptance
- Exception criteria and significant quantities
- Implementation guidance
- Next steps 2
Agenda
3 Integrated Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Rulemaking Site-Specific Analyses Consolidate and integrate criteria for GTCC and 10 CFR Part 61 rulemaking Conduct site-specific analyses for all waste streams including DU and GTCC waste Include graded approach for compliance period Include TRU waste in the definition of LLW Address physical protection and criticality concerns in GTCC waste streams Provide for Agreement State licensing of certain GTCC waste streams Rulemaking Scope
- Proposed changes will remove the limitation that the requirements were developed for particular waste types (concentrations)
- Site-specific technical analyses are risk-informed regulation
- Proposed changes are consistent with domestic and international practice
- Waste with significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides is more challenging to dispose in the near-surface than traditional low-level waste
- Technical requirements must align with the characteristics of the waste 4
Key Messages
5 Safety and Compliance
- Safety can be achieved through different means:
- Disposal concept
- Prescriptive design
- Technical analyses
- Proposed approach leans more heavily on technical analyses to afford greater flexibility
- Safety Case Widely recognized internationally Original Part 61 has many elements Useful to stakeholders to better understand basis for decisions
- Technical Analyses (§ 61.13)
Performance assessment (not new - renamed)
Intruder assessment (new)
Site stability assessment (new for significant quantities of long-lived)
Operational safety assessment (for some types of GTCC waste)
Performance period analyses (for significant quantities of long-lived) 6 Safety Case and Technical Assessments
- A high-level summary of the information and analyses that support the demonstration that the land disposal facility will be constructed and operated safely - think executive summary.
- Provides reasonable assurance that the disposal site will be capable of isolating waste and limiting releases to the environment.
- Describes the strength and reliability of the technical analyses.
- Includes consideration of defense-in-depth protections and safety relevant aspects of the site, the facility design, and the managerial, engineering, regulatory, and institutional controls 7
Safety Case
8 Performance Assessment
- The technical analyses completed for existing sites for the potential impacts to an offsite member of the public are considered synonymous with a modern performance assessment
- Understanding, tools, and capabilities have improved significantly since the early 1980s
- Significant guidance developed to support the proposed requirements for performance assessment (e.g., FEPs, uncertainty, model support)
9 Performance Assessment - Guidance Example
10 Intruder Assessment
- The basis for § 61.55 in the current regulation is an NRC intruder assessment
- Revised requirements would allow for a site-specific intruder assessment This is a flexible and risk-informed approach
11 Intruder Assessment
12 Site Stability Assessment
- Most problems with early disposal sites arose from short-term stability issues
- Those problems were addressed through design and site characteristic requirements
- Disposal of significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides may require long-term stability assessment
- Addressed in the context of § 61.41 and § 61.42
13 Operational Safety Assessment
- Operational safety (§ 61.43) is typically achieved through a combination of systems, procedures, controls, and training
- Accident scenarios were evaluated by NRC when Part 61 was developed
- Some GTCC waste may contain sufficient radioactivity that an operational safety assessment may be necessary
14
- Commission direction has two options
- Peak dose or
- Use different compliance periods depending on the long-lived component of the waste
- Staff is considering the latter option - flexible and site-specific
- Compliance period of 1,000 years without significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides otherwise 10,000 years and performance period Timeframes (Compliance Period)
15 Timeframes (Compliance Period)
- Carefully examined comments on this issue
- Primary consideration is current practices by Agreement States (AS)
Compatibility class will likely allow the AS to be more restrictive
- Considered what has been done in the US and internationally
16 Timeframes (Compliance Period)
Uncertainties in societal and environmental conditions will increase over time Regulatory approval to allow disposal needs to evaluate impacts, recognizing the uncertainty - not stop the analysis Other approaches could be used to mitigate uncertainties:
Require deep geologic disposal (i.e., Germany)
Place restrictions on long-lived radionuclides appropriate for near-surface disposal Use design requirements (e.g., 10+ m disposal depth for significant quantities of depleted uranium)
17 Timeframes (Compliance Period)
18 Timeframes (Compliance Period)
19 Performance Period Analyses
- Performance period only applies if significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides will be disposed
- Expected proposed standard is to reduce exposures to the extent reasonably achievable
- Provide transparency to stakeholders on the expected long-term performance of the disposal system
- Long-term results not a measure of projected human health impacts
- Near-surface disposal requires 5 m depth and intruder barrier
- 10,000 nCi/g threshold Case-by-case approval by Commission
- Additional waste characteristics requirements in
§ 61.56 Heat generation, radiolysis, criticality Not dispersible 20 GTCC Waste Considerations -
Disposal
Current requirements under Part 61 require demonstration of criticality safety procedures for preventing criticality accidents without consideration of the concentration of fissile material in the waste (prior to disposal)
Provide an exemption for radioactive waste with very dilute concentrations of fissile material for which there are no credible means to achieve a critical condition Include an additional requirement for disposal units containing significant amounts of fissile material (following disposal)
Applicant must identify design measures that limit the potential for reconcentration of fissile material 21 GTCC Waste Considerations -
Criticality
- Current requirements mandate licensees receiving or possessing nuclear material (SNM) in quantities that exceed the 10 CFR 150.14
- Must satisfy the physical security requirements of 10 CFR 73.67, a common defense and security regulation that can only be enforced by the NRC
- Provide an exemption in NRC Regulations (10 CFR 73.67) for physical protection of waste at a near-surface disposal facility containing very dilute quantities of SNM
- Physical protection of radioactive waste commensurate with the threat and limited attractiveness
- Physical protection requirements remain under 10 CFR Parts 20 and 37 22 GTCC Waste Considerations -
- Site-Specific Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) (§ 61.58)
- Generic: Use § 61.55 limits, § 61.56
- Site-Specific: results of § 61.13 technical analyses
- Licensees review their waste acceptance program annually
- If approved, incorporated into license
- Generators still use § 61.55 for waste classification 23 Waste Acceptance
- § 61.1 (b) (Purpose and scope)
- Exception criteria
- the land disposal facility license was originally issued before the effective date of this rule; and
- the licensee does not accept GTCC or a significant quantity of long-lived radionuclides after the effective date of this rule
- Licensees who meet these exceptions do not need to comply with revised Technical Analyses (§ 61.13), revised Performance Objectives (§ 61.41 and § 61.42), and WAC (§61.58)
- Excepted licensees would be required to comply with original Part 61 regulations for these sections above 24 Exception Criteria
- Definition in § 61.2
- Significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides means an amount (volume or mass) and concentration accepted for disposal after the
[effective date of this rule] that could, if released, result in the performance objectives of subpart C of this part not being met.
- Amount for selection of compliance period (1,000 or 10,000 years)
- Amount for demonstrating meeting exception criteria
- For the purposes of this paragraph, less than 10 metric tons of depleted uranium is not considered a significant quantity of long-lived radionuclides.
25 What are Significant Quantities?
- Site-specific calculations to determine what amounts are significant
- Though a simple approach is preferred, to properly account for the multiple key factors a more complex approach could be needed
- Determined by licensee and approved by regulators
- Example approaches included in NUREG-2175
- Table of concentrations of long-lived radionuclides for potential use as generic screening values 26 Significant Quantities
- Potential addition of minimum depth requirement
- § 61.52 Land disposal facility operation and disposal site closure.
- Significant quantities of uranium must be disposed so that the top of the waste is a minimum of 5 meters below the top of the surface cover.
27 Minimum Depth of Disposal for Significant Quantities of Uranium
- Draft NUREG-2175 issued in 2015 for public comment
- Draft final version of guidance published in 2016 on NRC Part 61 website
- Updates for Revision 1
- Appendix for GTCC waste disposal considerations
- Appendix for approach to calculate significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides
- Revisions based on proposed rule language 28 Implementation Guidance
Develop Proposed Rule that Integrates GTCC and 10 CFR Part 61 Rulemaking Hold Public Meetings and Comment Period Submit to Commission for Approval Develop Final Rule Revise NUREG-2175 and Develop GTCC Guidance Hold for Commission Approval of Proposed Rule Submit to Commission for Final Approval Publish Proposed Rule Hold Public Meetings and Comment Period Issue Final Guidance Publish Draft Guidance Develop Final Guidance May 2024 Publish Final Rule November 2025 Hold for Commission Approval of Final Rule Public Meetings Onsite meetings at sited states and virtual meetings Rulemaking Guidance You are here Next Steps