ML20134F710
| ML20134F710 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 10/25/1996 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| References | |
| DSI-G-3-00006, DSI-G-3-6, NUDOCS 9611070160 | |
| Download: ML20134F710 (142) | |
Text
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3 Official Transcript of Prscocdings "g2 g
1 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION i 4
f
Title:
Stakeholders Public Meetings Assuring Safe Management of Nuclear Waste s 2
- O 4 REwiyta e !
Docket Number: (not applicable) E.
NOV 05 f996 N
~
Olike Dithe
, secretary g e ;
e L Location: Washington, D.C.
. i l
- Date
- Friday, October 25,1996 4
1 Work Order No.: NRC-890 Pages 1-117 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
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0"/0012 g/ 'i washington, D.C. 20oos ,
(202) 234-4433 3eA2Tais!I'2"'
GEN PDR 0 ' N Ib
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1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 +++++
- 3. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 +++++
5 STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT AND REBASELINING 6 STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC-MEETINGS.
7 +++++
8 ASSURING SAFE MANAGEMENT OF NUCLEAR WASTE SESSION 9 +++++
10 FRIDAY 11 OCTOBER 25, 1996 12 +++++
13 WASHINGTON, D.C.
14 The Assuring Safe Management of Nuclear Waste 15 Session was held in the Jefferson Ballroom of.the 16 Washington Hilton and Towers at 1919 Connecticut Avenue, 17 Northwest at 1:00 p.m., Malcolm R. Knapp, Deputy Director, 18 NMSS,-'NRC, presiding.
19 PRESENT:
20 MALCOLM R. KNAPP 21 CHIP CAMERON 22 TIMOTHY C. JOHNSCN 23 JAMES E. KENNEDY 24- JOHN H. AUSTIN 25 LYNNETTE HENDRICHS NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 PRESENT: (CONTINUED)
'2 PAUL GENOA
.3 TONY THOMPSON
-4 RUTH McBURNEY ;
5 STEVE COLLINS 6 LYNNE FAIROBENT 7- RAY DANIELS i 8 EDWARD REGNIER
.9: JIM RICCIO 10 TOM HILL 11, JANE FLEMING 12 MEG LUSARDI {
t 13 DENNIS BECHTEL 14 GREG GURICAN 15 JIM.MILHOAN.
16 SIDNEY CRAWFORD 17 CHRIS EINEERG
.18 HENRY MORTON 19 LAWRENCE CHANDLER 20 i 21 l
22 l 23-24 1
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l 1 A-G-E-N-D-A I i 2 Acenda Item pace 3 Low-Level Waste 5 4 High-Level Waste and Spent Fuel 59 l l
5 Decommissioning - Non-Reactor Facilities 90 6
7 8
I 9 )
10 11 12 i 13 14 l 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 l .
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
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~2. I (1:19 p.m.)
l l'
3 MR. CAMERGN: I welcome everybody. This is l 4 going to be the session on the strategic arena assuring l 5 the safe management of nuclear waste. And for those of i i
i l
6 you who are here for the first time, the process is very ,
t
.7 simple in terms of audience participation. After the NRC !
8 makes a presentation on the low level waste paper -- in >
9 this case, that's the one we're staviing off with -- then 10 we're going to go to the audience for comments, 11 suggestion.
l 12 And we've been trying to make this as l
13 interactive as possible in terms of not only having a 14 dialogue with the NRC, but also having a dialogue with one 15 another on the issues. So, after we're done, if you do 16 have a point to make, raise your hand; and when you're 17 recognized, just come up to either one of the mikes and 18 I'll be out in the audience with Steve Struthers, who is 19 assisting us today, with a hand held mike to make it a l 20 little easier for you.
21 And state your name and affiliation, if l
22 appropriate;- and we'll just take it from there. After we l I
L 23 finish one issue paper, we'll move on to the next one -- j l
j 24 high level waste in this case. And I think at the end of i
I-25 that discussion of high level waste, it will be time for a
?
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- 1. break; and then we'll come back for the last paper which !
2 is decommissioning on reactor facilities.
i 3 There is another concurrent session going on I
l 4 in the next room on NRC fees, if any of you feel so I 5 disposed to go over there. And we're going to do a short i 6 wrap up at the end of the concurrent sessions today back 7 in this room. ;
l )
i i 8 Now, Mal Knapp did such a great. job yesterday l
9 that we've asked him to come back today and to present --
l 10 you're going to do ail the presentations, right; and you
- 11 have the authors of the paper here, and they'll come up 1
l 12 , .nd join us, and you'll introduce them.
13 Take it. Okay, Mal Knapp.
l 14 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: I appreciate Chip i
15 saying that I-did a good job yesterday. I thought what 16 you had actually said earlier was you're going to do ic 17 until you get it right.
18 MR. CAMERON: Yeah, its 10:00 tor.iorrow.
19 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: We are talking today-20 about three issue papers dealing with waste management, i
21 core decommissioning. -The first of these is the issue on i 22 low level waste.
23 To go back in history several years, in -- I
[ 24 believe 1994, under pressure to fit the budget reductions j 25 which were then being imposed, one of the things that we r
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1 had to consider was that we could no longer reduce our I
E l 2 programs'by trimming a little from each program. We felt I
i 3 that we had to eliminate a program.
4 Among the programs available were high level ;
5 waste, low level waste, decommissioning, uranium recovery. !
6 Recognizing our responsibilities in those areas; and r
j 7 recognizing that in low level waste, in fact, the t ,
, t 8 applications were going into agreement states; that in 9 fact, much of our regulation was on the books, we had to i
10 seriously consider eliminating the low level waste l 11 program.
12 It's not that we wanted to do it and not that 13 we felt that good progress was not being made; it's simply l
14 that given the alternatives, this was the one that we felt 15 would have the lowest impact on public health and safety 16 associated with waste management.
17 There are, however, a number of concerns about 18 an' action like that. It's extremely dramatic, and could 19 not be accomplished in compliance with the law unless some 20 changes were made to the Low Level Waste Act and the Low 21 Level Amendments Act. So, we provided to the Commission 22 later in 1995 a study of what some of the options might be 23 in terms of the size of the low level waste program, and I
- 24 what we would have to do to make the changes, and what 25 we'd be able to accomplish in such a program.
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7 1 And the Commission by this time, having -
t 2 initiated the strategic assessment process, considered t
3 that it would be best to look at the low level waste 4 program from the perspective of all of the NRC programs as 5 a part of strategic assessment. Editorial, I think this l 6 was a very good idea, because I think it's appropriate to I 7 look at these things as a collection. !
8 And we looked, I think, early on in some of 9 the earlier decisions, too parochially.
]
10 Given these circumstances, the Commission led !
11 to the issue that you see on the viewgraph. What should i
12 be the role and scope of the NRC's low level radioactive 13 waste program? And as you're probably aware, from the 14 options that were provided, we certainly considered things 15 other than reducing or eliminating the program. We also 16 included expanding it.
17 Now, the next viewgraph shows some of the key 18 factors that we have under consideration that are shown in 19 the paper.. The first I've already mentioned. All of the 20 applications which are now under way are occurring in 21 agreement states such as California and Texas.
22 Now, there is interest in progress being made 23 in one or two non-agreement states, but the NRC does not l
l 24 anticipate receipt of a low-level waste. application at j I~
25 least within the.next five years.
i t
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en- ,s 8
j 1 We also note as a factor that there is 2 resistance to siting of a variety of facilities that are .
3 i 3 undesirable or considered undesirable. But this 4 l l 4 resistance has made itself felt in the low level waste i I
i 5 facility siting. The fact that you're interest enough to i
6 be here suggests that you are familiar with these concerns
[ 7 and familiar with the difficulties at such sites as Ward i 1
8 valley in California.
l
- 9 Another factor which will affect our decisions !
j 10 is that at the moment, unlike the situation in earlier
- 11. years, there are waste management and disposal options i
12 available to most generators. That is, the Barnwell site ;
l 13 is open and is anticipated to remain open for the better i
14 part of the next ten years.
15 And that some of the experience we have such 16 as in the state of Michigan which was denied access, I 17 believe, for five years or so; it indicates that under 18 those circumstances, generators and brokers are capable of 19 safely storing their wastes.
20 Now that's not to say that we are sanguine 21 about this. As we look at the national collection of 22 generators and brokers, occasionally we find one that gets 23 into trouble. They get into financial trouble, they get 24 into safety trouble; and something has to be done. And. l 25 the NRC has had :o work with these folks and with other j NEAL R. GROSS
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! 9 1 individuals or other firms to help resolve the issues so 2 that the material could be stored or disposed of safely.
3 So please understand that while we believe 4 that the situation is not as critical as it might have 5 been two or three years ago, we still believe that the 6 management and disposal of waste is something -- of low 7 level waste is something which requires a lot of NRC l
8 attention.
9 The last bullet is the one that led us to l 10 where we are now. The program has been reduced in l l
11 response to government efforts to reduce the budget and to l
12 streamline programs. At present, the low level waste i l
13 program is operating with approximately half the staff l 14 that it had, I'd say, about two years ago at this time.
15 With these factors in mind, we provided a l
16 variety of options to the Commission. We tried to span l 17 gro*th, maintenance, and shrinkage of the program; as well 18 as alternative ways in which the program could operate.
19 The first: assume a greater leadership in the national 20 low level waste program.
21 I say the national low level waste program.
22 should the NRC take lower of a view, for example, that 23 safe disposal of low level waste is an important i
i j 24 contributor to safe management of nuclear materials; and 25 therefore, we should endorse that disposal; that we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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3 1 should, to the extent we can, encourage disposal in
. 2 whatever public form is available to us.
l l
i 3 Our present posture is one of recognizing that ,
4 disposal under our regulations can be done safely and I t
5 making ourselves available for states and others who wish l 6 to submit applications; but we have not taken a position 7 strongly encouraging the disposal of waste. Should we '
l 8 move in that direction? And if we were to move in that 9 direction, how far should we move?
10 Would we be guilty of being involved in i 11 promotion activities; which, as you know, the NRC does not i
j 12 intend to do. Second, we could assume a strong regulatory i
13 role in the national program. By and large, this would 14 mean a return to where we were a couple of years ago l 1
l 4
15 before we began to decrease the program.
16 It would be our intent to provide technical 17 leadership, to provide technical assistance to states, to j i
j l 18 continue maintenance; and as necessary, improvement of our ;
i l 19 regulations, regulatory guides, and technology for i
20 estimating the future impact of waste disposal.
[
21 The third alternative would be to retain the ;
22 current program which is very limited and which would j 23 probably move in the direction of doing the minimum amount 24 of work required to comply with the law. The fourth 25 alternative: to recognize progress and reduce the program NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l 1323 RHODE ISL.AND AVE., N W.
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11 4-1 -- would be to take the position that in fact, the Low !
2 Level Waste Acts have worked.
1
, 3 Perhaps not in the way that they were ,
I 4 originally anticipated, but the fact is low level waste 5 disposal capacity is available in this country to most l i
6 generators. Low level sites are being developed. License I. 7 applications are being submitted and reviewed, and one ,
, 8 license has been granted.
i 9 It has not turned out the way originally ,
l 10 anticipated by Congress; but nonetheless, progress has !
i 11 been made. Given this, perhaps the NRC should reduce the :
- 12 program and direct it to ensuring safe operation of the 13 existing low level sites rather than direct it towards ,
14 suoporting technologies needed to develop new sites.
1 15 Another alternative would be to transfer the 16 program to EPA. EPA is heavily involved, and they are 17 making good contributions to the disposal of TRU at WIPP.
18 The disposal of TRU at WIPP is not unlike disposal of low 19 level waste. Much of the technology is similar; many of 20 the problems are similar.
21 Arguably, if we wish the' Federal Government to 22 become more efficient, EPA could do a good job of 23 regulating the disposal of low level waste. We would also 24 note that just as the NRC has agreement states, EPA has 25: authorized states; so they could have a similar NEAL. R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N W.
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1 relationship.
2 The last option would be to accept assured 3 long term storage. It's been a matter of policy with the 4 NRC for quite a few years that it is technically sound; 5 that it is safe; and it is appropriate to permanently i 6 dispose of waste, including low level waste.
7 But there are those that say that this is l 8 politically very difficult to achieve, and that a more ;
f 9 reasonable goal would be to move in the direction of l . 10 assured long term storage -- storage in a way that waste j 1
11 could be safely managed for certainly decades, if not a l
12 century.
l 13 In the past, the NRC has not favored this )
i 14 practice or this possibility, but we might. There are 15- arguments out there in favor of it, and the question 16 arises should be rethink that position. I would like to 17 say about the options that -- for those of you that may 18 not have heard this earlier -- these are intended to be a
- 19 broad set of options.
20 They're intended to reflect "out of the box" 21 thinking. I would expect that everyone here can find at t
22 least one that they can disagree with. But we did want to 1
, 23 expand the way we think about low level waste management 24 and disposal to give the Commission, .and to give you, an 25 opportunity to see what might all be available. l l
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,, .. a 13 1 I'd also say that while these options are l 2 drawn broadly, we are not looking at a particular option.
3 We are prepared to look at elements of options. There may 4 be aspects of one and another that you might find i 5 appropriate. You may come up with a different option 6 that's not even been mentioned. And in a few minutes, I'd ;
7 like to hear your views in that area.
1 1
8 But first, I'll tell you what the Commission's i I
l 9 preliminary views are. They would assume a strong l i
10 regulatory role in the national program. That means we !
11 would return our low level waste program to the size that j 12 it was two years ago. The Commission also seeks your I i
13 comments on a couple of aspects of this -- of low level 14 waste.
I 15 Should it involve itself to a greater degree i l
16 in implementing this option to look at an integrated ;
i i
17 approach to handling processing, recycle, and disposal?
18 Put another way, we have certain regulations for disposal; ;
19 certain regulations for storage, for handling.
20 Should we step back and look at the entire l i
21 suite and say if you're envisioning a process that would l 22 store, perhaps minimize, or compact, handle, and dispose, 23 what is the optimal way from the perspective of protection 24 of health and safety and from an efficient and cost 25 effective waste management to do this?
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14 i i
e 1 We might want to look at these as a whole.
2 We'd like your comments on whether you think that would be 3 an effective thing to consider. And the last: how should 4 we address unauthorized disposal? Colloquially, this is j 5 sometimes referred to as " midnight dumping"; a practice t
l 6 which very rarely occurs, but can happen by those who I
j 7 simply.do not feel they have access or who do not have 8 financial ability to dispose of waste. i
,' 9 Is there anything in that area that we should 4
s l.
10 consider beyond that which we are doing now?
l 11 Those are the options and the Commission's i t 12 preliminary views. And now I would like to turn it over
! 13 to Chip. But before I do, I would -- for those of you ;
14 that have been here before -- at this point, Chip will 15 lead you through your comments and questions; and we'll do i
16 our best to answer them.
i 17 And when I say "we", I want to include Jim 18 Kennedy, who is the principal author of the paper and one 1 19 of the best of NRC's experts in low level waste 20 regulations. I was delighted to have him serve as an 5 _ 21' author, and I-intend to refer every question that I can't 22 answer to him as fast as possible.
1,
. 23 Chip?
4 24 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Mal. That was a very l 25 effective job at laying out the options and the factors.
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15 l i- ;
j 1 Maybe we should start with factors. They seem 2 to be very critical to the options in this paper. I guess t
3 I would ask as the first question: are these key factors )
i r l 4 accurate? Do you think that they might change? Do they !
- 5- support the preliminary option that's been selected?
\
-6 For example, does anybody have any views on l I
7 the fact that disposal and management options are i 8 available today for waste generators? I think the paper l 9 did a fairly good job of laying that out. Or, the lack of 10 broadly based public acceptance for waste facilities --
3 11 I'm just trying to test the validity of the factors that l
12 are so important to the options in this case.
2 f 13 Does anybody have any comments on factors? J l
- 1. -
j 14 Lynnette?
1
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15 MS. HENDRICHS: Lynnette Hendrichs. I'm the I 16 Director of Plant Support at NEI, and I have
, 17 responsibility for program management of low level waste.
18 I guess looking at the factors and the analysis, I don't 19 disagree with any of the facts. However, I think it 20 paints maybe a snapshot picture, and would maybe not go to 21 the broader issue of where are we going here; which I 22 think would in turn suggest maybe NRC should be taking 23 more of a leadership role.
24 For example: yes, we do have disposal today; 25- and the most optimistic projections are that, you know, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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16 1 barring political changes in South Carolina, that will 2 continue for five to ten years. However, lead times on 3 facilities and the process of siting new facilities has 4 been problematic at best.
5 So, if we don't appr.cach it from the 6 perspective of where are we going and actively show 7 leadership, I think five years from now or maybe even 8 sooner, we may see the error of our ways. And the -- and 9 then another thing that may be not be reflected here is 10 the fact that we currently have disposal and we have 11 reduced volumes and small volumes because we're mostly 12 looking at the perspective in terms of operational waste.
13 And the decommissioning situation has quite a 14 different perspective on that. The waste volumes are very 15 large, and the situation -- all of the dynamics of the 16 situations change, which I guess would suggest a very 17 dynamic situation here. This kind of says maybe we're la okay and, looking at those facts, that, you know, we don't 19 need to do too much other than respond in a regulatory 20 sense.
21 And I guess I would suggest that the dynamic 22 nature of where we need to go, and the difficulty in 23 getting there, and the different perspective -- put on the 24 problem by decommissioning waste would paint a very 25 different picture. That in fact, we do need a lot of NRC NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISUND AWL N W (202) 234 4 33 WASHINGTON, D C 20005 3701 (202) 234 4 33
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17 1 leadership in this area.
2 Thank you, j 3 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Lynnette. That's 4 exactly the type of comment that's going to be helpful to
)
5 us.
6 Mal? I 7 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Yes, I have a response ,
8 to that. First, thanks for the comment. I 9 Second, as I mentioned, one of the concerns we I
10 have with this leadership role is that we do not want to 11 get ourselves into an advocacy position. I don't want to 12 put you on the spot now; but in your comments either now I l
13 or in your written comments, any suggestions as to how we 14 can demonstrate leadership, how we can be constructive 15 without going beyond what is our appropriate agency job, 16 be happy to hear them.
17 MR. CAMERON: And Lynnette, if you want to 18 tackle that now, that's great.
19 MS. HENDRICHS: Sure. I guess I'm a little 20- perplexed about your concern over advocacy. I mean, your 21 role is public health and safety, and you've indicated in 22 the past that disposal is preferable to long term storage.
23 So, your role and taking a leadership role and doing what 24 NRC can to help site appropriate, safe disposal facilities
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[
! I something.
2 An example would be, to put it in particulars,
! 3 the Ward Valley situation where the Department of Interior
! 4 has inserted itself in a role that many of us question and 2
5 maybe saw that NRC could have played a maybe slightly ,
i l 6 stronger leadership role. And I know this question of
) 7 what your role is was -- came up.
8 And maybe if you could help us understand your I
9 concerns, we could understand where the question of too 10 much advocacy comes in on NRC's part, ,
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Lynnette.
12 I think this is a useful thread to follow in I
13 terms of what other people have to say about option one l 14 and would it be appropriate for the NRC to take a 15 leadership role; would it be helpful for the NRC to take a 16 leadership role.
17 Any other comments on that? Did you want to 18 say something?
19 MR. GENOA: Paul Genoa, also with the Nuclear i 20 Energy Institute. And just adding one other dimension --
21 that I can see where the NRC would be concerned about 22 advocacy, for instance, of the use of radioactive- i
-23 materials and technologies. And clearly, that is not the 24 role that we're talking about.
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19 1 going to use radioactive materials as enjoying those 2 benefits today. What we're talking about, rather, is 3 acknowledgement that safe disposal of the byproducts of 4 that use is a safety and health question.
5 And clearly, you have that responsibility in 6 advocating that position aggressively. It appears to be 7 necessary because, you know, quite frankly, as your paper 8 points out, in the last 25 years, we've only had one 9 facility come on line to provide additional capacity, and 10 it's only a limited amount of capacity. And that's after 11 spending about $512 million dollars, you know, in trying 12 to develop new capacity. !
13 So, I would just add that perspective. Thank l l
14 you.
15 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Thank you.
16 MR. CAMEBON: Okay; thank you, Paul. We're 17 discussing the feasibility, the appropriateness of option 18 one, which is the NRC taking more of a leadership role in 19 assuring the disposal -- the development of disposal-20 capacity for low level waste. Keep in mind that the 21 Commission's. preliminary option was option.two, which is 22 assume a strong regulatory role in national low level 23 waste programs.
24 Tony Thompson.
25 MR. THOMPSON: I think if you look at waste-NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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20 1 disposal perhaps in a slightly broader perspective, the 2 importance of NRC taking a leadership role comes through a 3 little more clearly. We've had a couple of papers here on 4 prcbablistic performance based -- or PRA and performance 5 based licensing. And if you're going to do that kind of 6 thing, you're going to be taking a lead because EPA's )
7 approach to regulation is not really geared to approach 8 things in that fashion.
9 You've got states that are addressing NORM 1
10 disposal issues which are waste disposal issues. You've i 11 got an enormous amount of information on performance l l
12 assessment that has been developed by your low level waste I i
1 13 people over time that is, I think, going to be -- would be l i
14 tremendously valuable in all this context. I I
15 You've discussed whether or not -- if not l
16 through your hand, perhaps through Congress's hand -- that 1
17 you would be addressing perhaps regulation of DOE wastes.
18 In which case, yoc have to take -- you have to be prepared 19 to maintain an aggressive position on leadership with 20 respect to technical waste disposal issues.
21 And ground water is a very problematic issue.
22 That is one that the advisory committees have said that 23 NRC needs to take another look at in this area. It's 24 turning out in the uranium facility area to be the most 25 problematic issue of all. And so there's experience there NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE. N W (202) 23M33 WASHINGTON. D C. 20005-3701 (202) 234 4433
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21 1 that -- I'm not sure that there's talking -- necessarily 2 as much cross pollenization (sic) between the -- inside '
3 the NRC as there probably ought to be on th'ese issues.
4 And finally, the whole mixed waste issue -- I ;
5 think NRC's position that there is no conflict between the I
6 low level waste standards and the RCRA approach to l
7 regulation is silly, and you ought to reevaluate that 8 position because it's standing in the way of getting rid '
9 of and disposing a lot of waste.
10 .In a much shorter time, rather than trying to !
11 treat everything, you could put a lot of this stuff right 12 into a low level waste facility because radiation is the 13 prime hazard. I 14 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thank you, Tony. Before 15 we go to Ruth McBurney, Mal or Jim, did you have any ;
16 comments at all?
s 17 MR. KENNEDY: I have one, and I'd be 18 interested in hearing particularly more about this term 19 leadership.
20 Tony, you just used the word leadership, and 21 it sounded like it had.the idea of being a technical 22 leader. .That is, having a-strong technical staff in 23 performance assessment and so forth. And that's kind of 24 like our option two, which is to have a. strong regulatory 25 role.
[
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22 1 Lynnette was using leadership in the context, 2 I think, of sort of a single minded pursuit of promoting 3 disposal in the country, like testifying before congress 4 and things like that, I think. Not in the context of 5 technical issues, but in'the context of just -- as a 6 policy matter promoting disposal.
7 So, that's what I'm interested in is --
8 leadership has two different meanings, and -- ;
9 MR. THOMPSON: Well, I guess I would say.that 10 because of the technical capability that you have and that.
A 11 the -- and the expertise that you've developed over time, :
i 12 --
l 13 MR. KENNEDY: That's a form of leadership.
14 MR. THOMPSON: -- that is the basis for being ,
-i 15 able to go out and be a more aggressive leader ~in the r
16 policy sense of -- l 17 MR. KENNEDY: The two go-together. l 18 MR. THOMPSON: Yeah, I think the two go i 19 together.
20 MR. KENNEDY: Okay.
i 21 MR. THOMPSON: I don't think you can do what ;
i 22 Lynnette is talking about if you don't.have the strong --
23 MR. KENNEDY: The foundation.
l 24 MR. THOMPSON: Right. )
1
'25' MR. KENNEDY: And so you're advocating both? ;
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23 1 MR. THOMPSON: I am; indeed.
2 MR. CAMERON: I think that's a good point is )
l 3 maybe we're putting too fine a point on the distinction il 4 between option one and option two. !
l 5 Ruth McBurney? j i
6 MS. McBURNEY: Yes; the CRCPD Board of j 7 Directors would support, as we mentioned yesterday, with 8 NRC maintaining oversight over Department of Energy's l 9 radioactive materials. It could also justify an existence ,
10 of a strong program if NRC accepted regulatory i
11 responsibility for DOE waste -- a low level waste.
12 And certainly the need would remain for NRC to 13 provide training, document review, oversight of developing 14 waste disposal technologies. For example, consolidation 15 with DOE and oversight of the DOE's low level radioactive !
16 waste research efforts would probably save a few federal ,
17 dollars -- and then regulatory program review in the la agreement states.
19 So, NRC wouldn't have to advocate new disposal 20 capacity from a policy standpoint, but certainly take a l
21 strong regulatory leadership role in these other areas. i
.22- MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Ruth.
23 I think it's interesting that we are getting i 24 some comments on the factors that lay under these options.
25 Lynnette pointed out the decommissioning waste that might NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ;
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24 1 be coming on beard. Tony and Ruth both talked about the 2 possibility of NRC assuming jurisdiction over DOE 3 facilities.
4 So, we may go back to those to test some of 5 those other factors in a minute; but how about further 6 comments on -- we've been talking about option one and a
7 option two here.
8 Steve?
9 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins from Illinois 10 Department of Nuclear Safety, but representing the 11 Organization of Agreement States. There were six states 12 that provided input to the Organization of Agreement 13 States on this_particular issue that we consolidated. i 14 Those six were Texas, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, 15 Tennessee, and Utah. i 16 So there's a conspicuous absence of two states 17 that are key there: South Carolina and Nebraska. Those 18- two states did provide information to CRCPD, which Ruth is 19 representing to you. So, they_have provided inp'st; just 20 not through the organization of Agreement States.
21 For option one, five of the six states were
- 22. opposed to NRC assuming a greater leadership role from 23 outright opposition to the belief that it is not desirable j 24 that NRC, as a regulatory agency, should promote new 25 disposal capacity.
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a 25 1 This should be advocated by the licensees 2 needing the capacity.
3 There is also opinion indicated -- the NRC 4 does not need to advocate disposal capacity. Waste 5 disposal demand will make such a determination.
6 One state believed that NRC should assume a 7 leadership role as a strong advocate for new disposal 8 capacity. One mechanism for doing this would be to 9 establish a strong regulatory stand regarding the storage 10 of low level waste.
l 11 That one particular state was Washington that 12 differed; and I'll read to you their option one comment 33 which said, "The NRC should take a leadership role at 14 sites nearing completion." So even their support was 1
15 qualified. "However, since the Low Level Reactor Waste l l
l 16 Policy Amendments Act objectives have basically been met, l l
17 they should not dedicate a lot of effort in this area."
18 I don't understand that. I can't explain it.
19 But that's what they said. Okay, strong leadership role, i
20 but not a whole lot of effort. Okay.
21 I didn't say I can't, did I? I don't 22 understand it yet. I will eventually, but --
23 "The NRC should not pursue disposal at US DOE 24 facilities because such efforts may interrupt the progress 25 that has been made in development of disposal facilities."
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26 1 That last sentence again was a State of 2 Washington comment which doesn't reflect the overall I
3 position of the CRCPD or the Organization of Agreement 4 States with regard to independent oversight of the whole 5 organization and all of its uses of material.
6 Then we go into option two. Or do you want me 7 to wait?
l 8 MR. CAMERON: Why don't you go on to option 9 two since we've sort of been maybe -- danced between them.
10 MR. COLLINS: For option two, all of those six ;
11 states were opposed to NRC assuming a strong regulatory 12 role that encompassed all low level waste activities.
13 Three states questioned the need for an enhanced staff to 14 await receipt of a low level waste facility application.
15 Other states indicated the NRC should continue 1 16 in a variety of tasks, including topical report reviews,.
17 guidance documents, report reviews, storage of low level 18 waste, training, oversight of development technologies --
19 developing technologies, and regulatory program reviews.
i 20 But there was no consensus on how these tasks 1 21 should be prioritized. Most commenting states felt that 22- states-involved in the low level waste management 23 programs,-including those with existing sites, were doing l- 24 an adequate job in protecting the environment and the t
25 public.
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3 27 1 one state indicated that some functions are 2 not needed now, such as further low level waste rule i
3 making. Another state indicated NRC might justify the 4 existence of a strong program by accepting the regulatory I 5 responsibility for DOE's low level waste.
i 6 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Steve. And we'll 7 be back to both you and Ruth when we get into some of the 8 other options. 1 1
9 Mal, did you have any questions or 10 clarifications on this?
11 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: I had a couple of 12 questions. With respect to the comment about whether it 13 would be disruptive to the current developing low level 14 sites for NRC to pursue disposal of low level waste or.
15 mixed waste at DOE sites, I just was curious whether there 16 are any other people here that hold views on whether that 17 would be a good or bad idea.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, do we have a -- Lynnette?
19 MS. HENDRICHS: Yes, I don't see that it would 20 necessarily be a bad idea without knowing more of the 21 details or, you know, better indication of how much 22 resource -- how many resources it would take. But it 23 doesn't seem -- I guess that's kind of a qualified 24 statement to necessarily be a bad idea if that oversight l 25 is needed and there's some integration of the commercial NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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i 1
' 28
\
i 1 and DOE programs. l
- 2 MR. CAMERON
- Okay; thanks, Lynnette. l L
I 2 3 I believe -- do we have a -- did you have a
! I 4 comment back there, sir, in the cardigan? No? Okay. l 5 Anybody else want to respond to Mal's question i
< l j 6 at this point?
i a.
7 Lynne?
l i 8 MS. FAIROBENT: Lynne Fairobent. Mal, I'm not
\
9- sure I completely followed your question, but I think what 10 you're asking is whether or not DOE capacity could be ;
i i 11 utilized for commercial waste if NRC takes over external j 1
12 regulation of the DOE facilities. Is that what you're 13 after?
1 14 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Not exactly, and I may !
l i f, ask Jim to clarify it. One question, for example, that ]
l 16 has been kicked around is disposal of mixed waste. Tony ,
J l
17 Thompson mentioned a few minutes ago the concerns about l 18 the mixed waste problems because of the dual regulation.
19 An alternative that has been discussed -- and I think DOE l
\
20 has mentioned it once or twice - is that they would j 21 accept responsibility for disposal of commercial mixed- -l 22 waste; the argument being that compared to the amount of 23 mixed waste DOE has to dispose of, commercial mixed waste 24 is not particularly large in volume. l 25 That could suggest -- in fact, it might almost
]
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1 29 1 be implicit in such a move that once you changed whatever l 2 laws and regulations you might need to change to be able i
l 3 to do that, disposal of what we might call " ordinary" low
'4 level waste -- commercial low level waste at the DOE 5 facility -- could also'be practical.
i
- 6 It could be doable. The real question that I '
i 7 think we're asking is: absent NRC being given broad 4
8 regulation of DOE, is it a reasonable way to go to perhaps i 9 ease the stress on present low level waste generators; or, ,
3 i 10 would it in fact be disruptive, say, to those who are 11 trying to develop sites?
12 Therefore, it would be a -- either a good'or 13 bad idea, depending on your perspective; and perhaps on 1
14 other factors that we're not familiar with. !
! 15 Jim, do you have anything to add to that i
16 question? ,
17 MR. KENNEDY: That's a good answer. You know, j 18 our primary interest and overriding interest is assuring 19 that there's disposal capacity for all.the generators in
- 20 the country into the far, foreseeable future. And having
, 21 a DOE facility -- existing DOE low level waste facility 22 take commercial waste could be one means of attaining that ,
l j 23 objective. I i . i
! 24. Whether we had to regulate it or not is .j 25 another question. I think there's some efficiency l NEAL R. GROSS -
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30 1 arguments that would tend to say that we might be best to 2 regulate it because we have a regulatory program in place 3 and guidance documents and_so forth. But they're not 4 necessarily related.
5 MS. FAIROBENT: Let me see if I can give a 6 couple of views then. First off, this particular issue 7 paper was one of the few that I saw any interrelationship 8 between the issue of NRC taking over external regulation 9 of DOE facilities and the options being discussed within 1
10 any specific paper, which I think personally I would have 11 liked to have seen more interrelationships on those issues 12 as the various options on each of the topics were being 13 laid out.
14 A couple of comments on the DOE processes.
15 DOE does not utilize the waste classification system per 16 se that NRC regulates under the A, B, C, greater than i
17 Class C on a formal policy wide basis. Okay, so I think 18 to'begin with, both NRC and DOE would have to go back in I i
19 and look at whether or not the disposal facilities that l 1
20 DOE has operating and their performance assessments that-21 are currently ongoing -- whether there would be any real-22 difference, whether it was commercial waste being put in !
23 or DOE generated waste.
i 24 Technically,- I don't think it would be.
- )
Perception may be a different issue.
25 DOE also is l
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i 31' i l
I currently, right now, going through the process of t
2 rewriting their waste management. order. And some of these j 3 same questions you're throwing out are things that they l
t l
4 are wrestling with as they develop the order rewrite. l 5 But I would also flip it a little bit and say -
- 6. that in talking with people out in the industry in a broad 7' sense, a question has also come up. Because of the fact l
8 that if we look at where we've come since the advent of ;
9 the Low Leval Waste Policy Act; and the volume of low 10' level waste being generated commercially; and the fact l
11 that if, in an ideal situation, all of the compacting 12 processes -- if'the politics of those processes allowed us l
j 13 to have all of the state compacts open, I would. question 14 on an economic basis ~whether or not we truly-need all.of 15 those sites based simply on commercial volumes today.
16 So the flip side of it-could be.maybe, in l ~
( 17 fact, we ought to be putting some of the DOE low level V l 18 waste into these compact state sites that are being 19 proposed, being developed, versus developing new DOE 20 disposal capacity for low level waste. j l
21 If you take a look at the DOE waste management 22 programmatic and environmental impact statement, the final 23 of which is due to come out mid November -- but if.you go j
' 1 1
' 24 back in and look at the draft, there is new capacity for a l l !
25 low level waste disposal being talked about in that'. I I
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l .._ ..
32 l 1 i I'm not so sure that it makes total sense that l
l 2 we develop new DOE disposal capacity in light of the 3 amount of commercial capacity under way if we can overcome 4 the politics that's keeping that progress from being l
5 implemented. On the other hand, maybe the guid pro quo is 6 that DOE in fact takes commercial mixed waste and we do y 7 some trade off balancing.
8 You know, I just don't know that -- well, let 9 me back up. I know we're not in the same situation we 10 were when the original Low Level Waste Act was passed, i 11 And politically, I don't think anybody wants to advocate !
l 12 we reopen that process again. But on the other hand, I'm
]
13 not so sure as a taxpayer that it doesn't make sense that -
14 we go back and look at that.
15 The economics simply are not there to support-16 13 commercial sites or 11 commercial sites today. As far 17 as capacity wise, if the three current sites stay open, I 18 think there's adequate capacity for the commercial low 19 level waste today that's being generated.
20 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. And that's a very 21 intriguing way to look at it, and I might ask Mal and Jim 22 -- when you look at it from that perspective, does that j 23 change the options that would be selected in any way?
24 What are the implications for the options if you look at 25 the disposal of DOE waste in commercial facilities?
l
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I - . - ,
_ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ -. _ _______ . . = _ , . . _ _ - . _ . . _ . . _ _ _ . _ _
.< a . )
i 33 l L i l 1 Obviously it's an important point, but does it j 2 have an implication for the options? . ,
-3 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Jim may want to say i 4 something; but frankly, I'd like to think about that for a
! 5 while. That's just not something that I had --
i 6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I 7 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: --
I had considered j 8 very carefully prior to this. I-appreciate the concept. {
9 I don't know. !
\
! 10 Jim, do you have any thoughts on that? !
i k
11 MR. KENNEDY: I'm like you Mal. I can feel 12 myself sort of resisting it, and that means that's' good )
13 because it's a new idea and I need to think about it. I i
)
14 think you said a lot, and it's something I'hadn't thought i 15 of -- or we hadn't thought of.
i 16 MR. CAMERON: Jim's our barometer on that.
f 17 Lynnette? i 18 MS. HENDRICHS: Yes, this is somewhat of a 19 different question than I thought I was responding to 20 initially, which was NRC oversight of both types of 21 facilities and not necessarily the concept of sending 22 waste to their sites or theirs to ours.
23 A couple of points I'd like to make in that f 24 regard is -- well, the main theme, if you will, is
- 25 flexibility in our thinking. Because if anything is l l
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1 1 1
34 l t
1 important, it's -- this is a dynamic situation, and I 2 think the-more flexible and the more market forces can be i 3 relied on, the better the solution ultimately; and better 4 meaning that it.will fit the need and may even have some i
t l 5 efficiency in cost effectiveness in the process. ;
6 But in that vein, I'd like to suggest that !
7 maybe there's not necessarily a need to overlay the l l
t t
l 8 regulatory systems. I mean, we've found with mixed waste :
- 9 that when that happens, the result is a disaster. And !
i 10 perhaps DOE waste sites can accept commercial waste under !
t 11 their own system. If it hasn't been proven to be broken, i l 12 why do we need to fix it? l 13 And I guess flexibility again is the theme in 14 terms of, you know, who are we to stand back and dictate l 15 that it goes one way or the other? I mean, ultimately, I i 16 think our objective as a nation for DOE or commercial' l
17 waste is we want a few sites, we want adequate capacity.
18 We're not in a position to go back and necessarily dictate l 6
I 19 the solution, but to be flexible and recognize all 20 opportunities and options when they present themselves.
21 It might be a better approach.
22 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Lynnette. f 23 MR. KENNEDY: I want to add one thing, Chip,
- 24 with respect to what both Lynnette and Lynne said. And 25 that is, with respect to DOE and the states, one of the NEAL R. GROSS
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.. o .
35 1 main reasons for having the Amendments Act in the 2 beginning and something NRC has supported all along is 3 states making a choice as to where their waste goes and 4 working it out among themselves.
5 So, I'd be particularly interested in hearing 6 from the states what they would think about DOE taking 7 commercial waste-- not just mixed waste, but commercial 8 waste in; particularly maybe in light of -- you know, I 9 think when you compare the curies that they're going to be 10 leaving on site versus the commercial site, the waste 11 streams, I think, are enormously different.
12 I mean, that would argua for going that way.
'3
_ i But --
14 MS. McBURNEY: That is a big consideration.
15 This is Ruth McBurney. j l
16 An I understand it, however, DOE is also l I
17 looking for commercial sites for their waste. We've got a )
18 situation --
19 MR. THOMPSON: Yes, they're doing it.
20 MS. McBURNEY: Yeah.
21 MR. CAMERON: Yes; that's a good point too, 22 Ruth. I don't know if we want to get into an in depth 23 discussion of that.
i l 24 Tony, do you have -- why don't you go ahead l
l 25 and then we'll go to Steve.
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36 l 1 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, I was just going to make l
2 that point that there is a lot of mixed waste, for ;
3 example, at Hanford that, if it could be disposed of in an l
4 existing low level waste facility -- it wouldn't even have '
? i 5 to go off the Hanford reservation, and they could'save the !
( \
6 United States Government one hell of a lot of money if you (
i 7 can solve this mixed waste dilemma and acknowledge that - I i
8 - and address what the risk is -- this gets to your sort l 9 of risk based regulation.
10 And if the risk if the radionuclides involved l
11 and you can work out a problem, DOE could use an existing 12 commercial waste facility right there and save a lot of-13 money.
14 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Tony. Steve?
15 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins attempting to 16 represent the Organization of Agreement States.
17 MR. CAMERON: You have a number of different 18 guises. Either you're a private citizen or you represent 1
19 them, and now you're attempting to represent them? !
j 20 MR. COLLINS: Well, you threw a question in !
l 21 that wasn't in your papers that you're asking.
1
! 22 MR. CAMERON: I see. You're very careful. j 1'
23 MR. COLLINS: And I haven't even had legal i I
i 24 training.
25 MR. CAMERON: No, I thought Mal probably
('
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. .. ,. 1 38 s
't 1 and then over to Ed Regnier. r i
t l
2 MR. DANIELS: Ray Daniels, Defense Nuclear l l
3 Facility Safety Board staff. I'm speaking as a private [
I l 4 citizen here. But it's my understanding at Hanford there ;
L 5_ is an environmental restoration disposal facility, so- ,
6 ca.lled ERDF, which has capability for five million cubic l 7 meters which is. accepting mixed waste. :
l- !
l 8 And in fact, all of the waste that's being l i
l-9 generated in the environmental restoration side is going :
10 into that facility and it started work this summer So, !
11 I'm surprised that they're looking for off-site disposal j 12 for Hanford. Maybe there's some special case wastes that l r
are involved, but - - - just a bit of information. I 13 l
j t
14 MR. CAMERON: And thanks for that information, 15 Ray.
16- Ed?
17 'MR. REGNIER: Yes, Edward Regneir, Department 18 of' Energy. I just wanted to add another note of --
19 another consideration, I guess, or perspective to throw in 20 on the acceptance of commercial waste by DOE. And that's
~21 an observation that, although DOE sites are DOE sites, 22 they are located in a state.
23 There must be no one from the State of Nevada
24 here, or you would have probably heard from them in that j l
. 25 certainly I think our best, if -- or certainly one of our a
i.
1
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.~ . .. . - . . . ..- - , . . . . . - - . . . . - - - . . , . . - - . .. - - . . .
39 !
1 1 better sites for disposal technically of low level waste ,
~
2 is at the Nevada Test Site in Nevada.
3 In many of our sites -- we'd like to send 4 waste there. However, that state is quite concerned about 5 the issues of equity and becoming the single or primary )
1 6 centralized disposal site for all of DOE waste to the l 7 point where, you know, out of respect for this opinion at 8 this time at least, there has been a moratorium on any ,
9 additional sources or generators of DOE waste going to !
l 10 Nevada such that we are not now allowing, as I say, any )
11 new generators of our own waste to be shipped there. )
12 From that perspective, I would presume that 13 the State of Nevada would have opinions on that or l i
j 14 certainly probably want some type of considerati':n-of a 15 quid pro quo or other benefits that would go along with 16 what they would probably view as a disadvantage of being 17 the -- even though it's a DOE facility, they're still'the la state it's sited in, and they look at it that way.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Ed. There are 20 people here who live in the State of Nevada, but they 21 don't represent the State of Nevada, and they probably l l
l 22 won't be responding to that but will be active later on in i
l 23 the high level waste discussion. Let's go back to a l
i l 24 couple of threads that were suggested by some of the i
! N 25 Organization of Agreement State comments.
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_ . _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _1 _
l . . . ,, _
r 40 l l 1 One of the things the Commission is interested j t
2' in is well, if you choose a particular option, how do you l
3 implement that. What are some ways of implementing that? ;
l 4 And I think just something to keep in mind and we can go 5' back and talk to it later -- the suggestion was made in !
6 the agreement state comments thy.t one way the Commission 7 could assume a greater leadership role --- not a l l
8 regulatory, technical role, but a greater leadership role )
9 -- would be to prohibit the storage of low level waste, ,
10 Is that correct, Steve? And I mean -- was t 11 that the comment that was made? From the State of t
12 Washington, I believe.
13 And while he's looking for.that, I'd just --
14 I'm just bringing that up as a -- just think about that. ;
15 What does that mean to assume a greater leadership role? l i
16 How do you do that? And I guess another thread is -- was i
17 suggested also in the agreement state comments, and I j think people might have comment on this, is that if you
~
18 19 assume that all those factors are correct, does that 20 justify the preliminary option, option two; which I think 21 was raised by the majority of the agreement states?
l 22 So why don't we look at that for a minute. j
! 23 Lynnette?
l 24 MS. HENDRICHS: I'm your buddy, Chip, to help 1
[
25' you whenever you're killing time and people are looking l
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I 41 ,
i i for things. I have a couple of points to make. Kind of ,
i 2 going back a little bit, NEI has developed a set of ,
3 principles on how we intend to navigate this landscape of 4 low level waste disposal and the dynamic nature of it and i L
5 the many changes. ;
6 And I wanted to clarify that one of our 7 primary principles is that the host state's desires should
)
8 be respected. In no way should the solution be 1
9 implemented in such a way that it would override, for i i
10 example, any host state that didn't wish to take certain 11 categories of waste.
12 What we are leading for, I guess, is more the 13 option that if it would permit such a state one, to go u
14 ahead and build the facility -- you know, if you build it, 15 they will come -- and then in the future, if the option --
16 if it made more sense to their public than it had in the
- 17. past, that other waste streams could help defray costs or, 18 you know, made sense then, that that would be acceptable.
19 But in no way some of the -- I didn't want l
20 some of the remarks that I had made to be misconstrued as 21 not being respectful of what the states are doing and 22 their right to not accept waste as it stands under the Low i i
.23 Level Waste policy Act. l 24 To go to the second question of what that j 25 leadership role might look like for the NRC, I think part i
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42 i 1 of the; issue that will plague NRC or anybody else in t 2- trying to take a real strong leadership role is to have a ;
3 better. sense of what our direction is. And in that i 4 regard, in order to apply these principles that we have, 5 we are interested in getting a dialogue going and coming f l .
6 up with a plan that is -- again, doesn't dictate actions, j 7 but perhaps recognizes the uncertainties and can be more ,
8 flexible and not necessarily radical. i 9 You know, we're not necessarily talking about i
10 throwing out the act and dictating a whole new solution, 11 but can in fact help us all -- all the participants.have i i
12 more of a sense that we are going in a common direction; l
13 that there are some uncertainties, but that an optimal' '
14 system will look to address those. !
15 And of course, NRC would be a key player and i
16 leader in that objective.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, and just before we go to 18 your colleague Paul, would that dialogue include all of 19 the affected and interested parties: not only the NRC, ,
1 20 but citizen groups, state government, local governments? 1 21 MS. HENDRICHS: Yes, it would to a point. I .
22 mean, our first objective then -- I presume that's what !
-23 Paul was going to mention, is we're having a workshop in j 24 Knoxville, Tennessee the 12th and 13th of November, and l t
25 that's just a first in a series. We don't intend to have i
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43 i.
1 it' answer all questions or come at it from all 2 perspectives, but as a way to open that dialogue. l 3 We specifically solicited regulatory agencies, ;
4 companies developing disposal sites, and processors. We f !
t 5 have not, to this point, solicited direct participation !
6 from who might --
you might consider your public interest j 7 groups. ,
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay, but that might -- as this 9 dialogue continues, that might occur because of obvious }
t 10 importance of having those viewpoints.
11 Yes?
l 12 MS. HENDRICHS: The answer is yes. i i
13 MR. CAMERON: All right. ,
14 MR. GENOA: Yes, Paul Genoa again. And I just !
j 4
15 wanted to get back to one of your key factors, slightly 16 different. But you asked how could the NRC be an ]
1 17 advocate, for instance, or play more a leadership role.
18 One of the key factors acknowledges the lack of broadly 19 based public acceptance and the fact that that has 20 significantly affected the development or slowed the 21 development. .
1 22 I think one role, leadership role, is to stand ;
I i
23 up for the health and safety implications of the existing l
. i I
, 24 regulations to essentially -- to make it very clear to the i
- 25 public in a convincing way, in a public way, and out front !
i c l L NEAL R. GROSS
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44 .
1 that in fact the rules as they exist are protective ,
i- '
2 And the public does not -- is not sure of ;
3 that. They hear many different stories and they believe !
4 those stories. And there is.not confidence that low level ;
5 waste can be managed safety in this country. And in fact, 6 if you believe it can, that that view needs to be put 7 forward.
8 And that would be an example, I believe, of a .
I 9' very supportive and helpful role.
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Paul. There's l
11 another specific example of how the NRC might implement 12 option one if the Commission chose to do that.
13 Mal?
'14 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Thank you. I would ,
t 15 like to throw out a question to follow up on that-. I l 16 think we do have some folks here that may represent i l
17 citizens' groups or may be able to speak informally, even l
l 18 though they may not represent them, but who have the l 19 concerns that citizens' groups have. ,
l 20 Any thoughts that they might have on Paul's i
21' suggestion, sometime, as we continue this discussion, r
22 would be gratefully appreciated.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Mal. Steve and 24 Ruth -- are they still'here?
- 25 MR. COLLINS: Yes.
4 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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L.e c . !
45 ,
i I
1 MR. CAMERON: Good. !
i 2 MR COLLINS: Steve Collins --
3 MR. CAMERON: -Did you find us --
l 4 MR. COLLINS: --
from the Organization of 5 Agreement States. What we said was out of the six states i 6 that comment, five strongly opposed a greater leadership l
7 role. The one that did favor a stronger leadership role 8 was the state of Tennessee. ,
9 And their comment is " Tennessee be'.ieves that l 10 the NRC should assume a leadership role as a strong j 11 advocate for new disposal capacity, option one. One 12 ' mechanism for doing this is to establish a strong 13 regulatory stand regarding the storage of low level waste, l i 14 option two.
]
15 "And this requires the NRC to totally abandon )
16 its promotion role and become a full fledged waste and !
l l
17 control regulator that allows the use of radioactive ;
18 material provided to public workers, patients, and the 19 environment are adequately protected. It is not the ),
20 regulator's role to promote any use of radioactive
- 1
! 21 material.
22 "The acceptance of this concept will help with 23 the perception the public has of NRC. The requirement 24 that a licensee will not be allowed to store waste beyond
, 25 a certain period without shutting down and a moratorium on ,
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46 i' 1 new licenses in areas where there is no disposal capacity i
2 could force the issue.
3- "Another approach is to require significant i
4 financial assurances on accumulating waste," and that ;
I 5 should probably be done anyway, "a recognition that most 6 of the states have gone beyond shallow land burial to 7~ enhanced' technology for disposal of low level waste could j 1
l 8 lead to a greate'r acceptance of the assured storage concept, option six." i 9
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay, that's an interesting' ;
11 suggestion, not only that -- I think the implication is ,
12 that -- forget about assuming a greater leadership role. i 13 That remark from Tennessee implies that we're doing ;
14 something counterproductive in terms of a long term 15 disposal strategy.
16 How about the comment on the fact that the 17 factors don't support the choice of option two? In-other :
-18 words, if all of those factors are tru'e -- now forgetting 19 for the moment Tony and Lynnette's points about --
and 20 Ruth's about DOE and decommissioning waste. If those 21 factors are true, why does that support taking a stronger 22 regulatory role rather than just maintaining the status 23 quo? ;
24 I believe that was another comment from one of ,
i 25 the states; is that correct, Steve?
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l 1 MR. COLLINS: It wasn't from the state that I l c 2 work in, so I don't remember it.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Anybody have any comments l
4 generally on the connectior between the factors and the ;
5 Commission's choice of -- preliminary choice of option )
+
6 two?
7 Okay, now *- Paul, did you have -- do you have 8 something to say on that?
9 MR. GENOA: I don't want to dominate the 10 discussion here this morning.
11 MR. CAMERON: Well, no one else is speaking at 12 the moment; so if you want to say something, feel free.
13 MR. GENOA: The point -- it had to do with the 14 factors and essentially the assumptions on the l
15 internal / external issues. Now, whether they were valid 16 and accurate and whether the options would support l
17 resolution -- and some of the issues that need to be 18 addressed -- I have to go back and say the concept of a 19 snapshot is probably a good way to look at it.
20 That I think an important consideration that l 21 was not fully developed is the sort of dynamic, yet 22 tenuous, status of the existing waste treatment and 23 disposal capacity. I don't think it envisioned that a 24 very simple, unilateral decision like changing the rate 25 structure at Barnwell from volume based to curie based l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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48 i I would completely turn the entire waste management and 2 waste processing arena upside down overnight. l 3 You know, it's totally going to change the way 4 the waste is processed after November 1st. I don't think ;
I 5 that was fully explored, the fact that Barnwell's .
I i
6 operation is totally dependant on the support of general -
7 assembly and governor, and that that needs to be 8 essentially reestablished annually.
9 It is extremely tenuous and a very dynamic 10 situation. The collapse -- it's sort of a house of cards.
l 11 Any one card falling.could collapse the entire system.
j 12 And so we could give more' thought to that. The discussion j 1
i 13 of decommissioning waste is one element, but the issue of !
l 14 electric utility restructuring is going to put dynamic l 15 forces in place.on the competitive nature of nuclear power i
16 in-this country.
l 17 And after all, nuclear power does produce l i
18 large volumes of the waste, and decommissioning wastes are 19 very large. If they are shifted ahead or behind in time, 20 the rate of generation changes dramatically. Some of the i 21 disposal facilities are only planned for 20 year periods.
I 22 And you know, decommissioning waste coming ten years ;
1 l 23 sooner or ten years later could totally change the 24 operational and financial dynamics and viability of those 25- disposal sites.
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. . ... . o, :
- 49 l 1 So, some real thought needs to be given into l
2 how that plays. I think an issue that's very important 3 and difficult to grapple with is the issue such as de 4 minimis levels of radioactivity, clean up standards, [
r 5 beneficial recycle clean up issues. Those things, if 6 factored into the discussion can have, again, profound .
.7 influence on the volumes and amount of waste that needs to ;
8 be disposed of -- huge amounts. ,
9 Just simple decisions on your part on what 10 clean up standards might be or might not be. Those things I 11 would be, you know, useful to explore. And there's some 12 others; and of course, we're going to provide those to you 13 in detail. I l
14 MR. CAMERON: Thanks for giving me the mike i l
15 back, Lynnette. And thanks, Paul. Those are very 16 constructive points.
, 17 Mal, do you have a. question or response?
18 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: I do have one i l 19 question. If'you can elaborate today, I would like to 20 hear it -- and in any case, in your final comments -- your
! 21 concern about the impact of rate structure. Could you 22 just walk through that one more time or the deregulation?
23 I'm not sure I quite followed your views on what that 24 linkage might be and how it might affect --
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50 .
i 1 issues. The first, the rate structure in Barnwell.
2 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: No, I'm sorry; I mean 3 the rate structure for utilities in general, the 4 deregulation.
5 MR. GENOA: Okay. Deregulation of electric 6 utilities will put significant financial pressure on 7 utilities and-competition and so forth, depending on the 8 rules of the game. We acknowledge that in a perfect 9 situation, it wouldn't have any impact: everything would i
10 happily continue.
11 But the rules of the game may not be totally 12 equitable. And there may be an economic disadvantage 13 placed on the nuclear utility industry. That's possible.
14 If that were to occur, you could expect decommissionings
-15 earlier than you would have anticipated. You could also 16 expect that life -- or that license renewal will not --
17 may not occur as was anticipated.
18 So instead of plants decommissioning 15 or 20 19 years or a life extension for 30 or 40 years longer; in l 20 fact, they may be making decisions today to decommission.
l 21 And I think we've seen some announcements recently that
- . 22 would verify that.
l 23 DEPUTY" DIRECTOR KNAPP: Thanks for the
! 24 expansion.
- 25 MR. CAMERON
- Thank you. We do have to --
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l 51 1 MR. COLLINS: Chip?
l 2 MR. CAMERON: --
in a few moments move on.
L 3 And let me provide a segue for you hopefully, because I 4 think you have more comments on some options.
! 5 Clare, could we see the options again?
6 Okay, I just wanted to make sure that if we -- ,
l 7 people had comments on any of these options, that we go to 8 them. And some of the outliers here are transfer the L
l 9 program to EPA, perhaps accept assured long term storage.
10 One of the arguments that the assured storage advocates 11 make is that assured storage would be more acceptable to l
12 the public than disposal.
13 And I guess I'd just be looking for anybody 14 who wants to comment on either of these two options. 1 l
i 15 And Steve, did you have some more comments on l l'
16 the options for us?
l l 17 MR COLLINS: Steve Collins, Organization of l
Yes, Lynnette bought me enough time to 18 Agreement States.
l 19 finally think through this earlier question, and then I'll !
20 go that one.
21 The factors, I think, were pretty much right 22 on target and accurate for a snapshot. One exception that
! 23 might -- could have been added with regard to low level 24 waste was that there is no real disposal or management l 25' option that is acceptable to us for americium or americium NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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.1 beryllium.
2 That needs to be worked out much better so we j 3 don't have-to go through this process of getting it to a
- 4- 00E facility that-we currently have to declare an [
5 emergency practically to get it done. But with that in 6 mind, all of the states that were commenting being against j 7 the NRC taking a stronger regulator or regulatory role was !
i 8 basically because anything that you do stronger there gets -
9 back into that concept of -- perception of you're changing 10 the rules in the middle of the game or something like ;
'll that.
12 And while technically that might not. be a j 13 problem, it just has too much potential to stop the 14 progress that's being made in any one or all of the .
15 states.
16 Do you want me to go to other options now?
17 MR. CAMERON: 'Yes, why don't you. Why don't 18 you go through --
19 MR. COLLINS: And you skipped three and four 20 and went to five and six, did you not?
I l
21 MR. CAMERON: We're at that point, I think, l
22 where we need to sort of sum up and go on to high level 23 waste. So, if you could -- if you could run through those 24 comments for us, and I think Tom might want to say i
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53 1 will get in there, so, let's -- you know, let's go
! i 2 through this.
I 3 Why don't you two guys finish up, ~ and then 4 we'll go over to Jim Riccio.
5 MR. COLLINS: Okay, we've been through option !
6 one and two fairly thoroughly. For option three, retain ;
1
.7 the current program, the states were "somewhat split i 8 between options three and four being the appropriate role 9 for the national low level waste program. States tended 1
10 to believe that this role was more appropriate than 11 options one and two.
I 12 "This option indicated that NRC would do l I
13 activities that were legislatively required or 14 significantly contribute to the national low level waste 15 program." That was a quote.
16 "However, some states felt that the NRC had 17 gone beyond this mandate such as in the development of a 18 branch technical position on-performance assessment.
l 19 Another argument for having some level of program was to 4 20 ensure national consistency in the low level waste 21 program." j l.
22 That's all for option three.
l 23 MR. CAMERON: Okay; yes, I think just go i
24 through them. And you know, these comments are coming .
1 25 into the NRC obviously, so that we're going to see them NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 54 1 and everybody out there is going to see them if they want 2 to tune into the Internet, But I think it's valuable for 3 all the participants to hear what the states' view in this 4 case is.
5 So, go ahead, Steve. Is this going to take --
6 MR. COLLINS: Five more minutes at most, i 7 MR. CAMERON: Okay, go ahead. ;
8 MR. COLLINS: Option four: recognize progress I
- 9 and reduce the program. Two of the six states indicated 1 i 10 that NRC should declare a victory and reduce'the program.
t 11 This was the preferred option of one state. This is based
.12 on the progress that has been made in siting new ,
I
- 13 facilities in states where sites appear to be adequately F 14 protecting the public.
15 Two states with low level waste sites had 16 mixed views relating-to'the reduction of the program.
17- There were questions relating to how much of the program )
18 would be reduced. One state indicated it could survive 19 even if the national low level waste program was !
20 completely eliminated.
21 For option five, transferring low level waste
'22 program to EPA, four states are -- of the six are strongly 23 opposed to any transfer of the low level waste program to 24 EPA. The recommendations range from strongly against to 25 not acceptable for many reasons.
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1 Some of these include the disruption to state 2 programs and siting efforts; the diminution of expertise 3 in the originating agency; the lack of depth and support 4 in the receiving agency; and the shifting of the financial .
5 burden from one agency to another. ;
6 For option six, accept assured long term 7 storage: four states are strongly opposed to the storage ;
8 concept. One state's very critical and suspect of the i
9 option. Two states point to the failure'of the high level i 10 waste program to sell assured storage with the monitored 11 retrievable storage program.
12 Another state indicates that it does.nothing l 13 but delay the inevitable use of disposal. Two states i 14- recognize that there may be some merit in assured long l l l l
15 t.erm storage. However, one state recognizes some of the
! 16 barriers that need to be overcome such as the public L 17 distrust of NRC regulation reactor materials, and the need i
19 for financial assurance for storage facilities. ,
l t .
19 Further, the states suggest that limited l l 20 licenses or moratoriums on new licenses for storage could l
l 2:L force-the issue. The states' comments on discussion and 22 subsumed issues -- I'll skip those. The conclusions --
l 23 there's four one sentence conclusions after boiling all 24 this down.
- 25 The majority of commenting agreement states l NEAL R. GROSS l! COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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! 56 )
1 opposed options one and two, whereby NRC takes a stronger
! i 2 role in siting and regulatory functions. A majority of I 3 the commenting states believe a national low level waste 4 program rests somewhere in options three and four. ,
! 5 And this is consistent with the results 4 6 obtained through public comment associated with SECY 7 201. A majority of commenting states believe that l 8 transfer of the program to EPA is not a viable option. ;
9 And a majority of the commenting states believe that 10 assured long term storage is not the answer in helping to 11 resolve the low level waste problem. [
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay, we're going to go to Tom ;
13 Hill quickly and then to Jim Riccio from public citizen, 14 and then I think we're going to zoom into high level i
15 waste, i l
l 16 Go ahead, Tom.
17 MR. HILL: Tom Hill representing the CRCPD l
18 Board of Directors. All regulatory programs dealing with y
19 radiative material should remain in one federal agency.
20 Consistency in approach and standards would be best served ;
21 by keeping a strong, central, and complete program.
22 Moving the low: level waste program to EPA or another 23 agency should not be an option considered by NRC.
1 24 It would probably result in the loss of i
25 expertise in the originating agency and the new low level l 3
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I 57 l l l
.1 waste program which would lack depth and support in the l L
2 receiving agency, The NRC has not considered the i
3 consequences and the havoc this would create for the 4 agreement states who do have low level waste 1 l
5 responsibility and have, over the years, worked diligently :
I 6 to assure the safe disposal of this waste. )
l i
7 Safe disposal, rather than the acceptance of 8 long term storage as described in option six, should i
9 receive greatest consideration. It would seem that the 10 acceptance of long term storage for low level waste would 11 do nothing -- let me go back and reread'that. I don't 12 think that's coming out -- I think I left a word out.
13 Safe disposal rather than the acceptance of- l 14 long term storage, as described in option six, should
- 15. receive greatest attention -- safe disposal. It would l -
l- 16 seem that the acceptance of long term storage for low 17 level waste would do nothing for the current long term j
! 18 storage versus disposal debate, except to delay the 19 inevitable use of disposal for low level waste. l 20 The CRCPD Board of Directors supports option i
21 four. We recognize progress and reduce the program as the !
22 option of choice. This option would formerly recognize l 1
23 the work toward fulfilling the objectives of the V
l 24 Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Limits Act and the 25 progress toward development of new facilities in several NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ,
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! 2 This would allow the NRC to use its limited l
l L ~3- resources in appropriate areas of the agency and terminate 4 the expenditure of unnecessary activities in the low level )
l r 5 waste program.
6 -. MR. CAMERON: Okay thank you very much, Tom.
1
.7 And I think we'd just like to thank the states generally i 8 for all the comment they've given us on a lot of the
! ~
l 9 issues. They've'put a lot of work into it'.
10 Jim? l i
l~ 11 MR. RICCIO: I just wanted to link up this
! I 12 paper with the decommissioning paper and point out that --
.l l 13 MR. CAMERON: Good. {
\
14 MR. RICCIO: -- the Office of Technology L 15 Assessment several years ago put out a study showing the
! l 16 different decommissioning options and.the results on the j 17 low level waste program. And it seems to be running l
18 counter to where the industry is headed with this rapid l
19 decommissioning. But they did note that if you use the l-i 20 safe store option, you-would'significantly reduce the low 21 level waste burden that this industry's going to have to l
22 bear. ,
1
,1 23 And I think you should take a look at that
+
24 report. ;
25 MR. CAMERON: Okay, that's something to think r
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59 ,
1 about in terms of the impact of decommissioning wastes and ,
2 -- Jane, a short comment? ;
i
! 3 MS. FLEMING: Yeah, just one real quick I i 4 comment. I just,-as a member of the public, would like to i t
5 support the position that was entered by Lynne and just l
6' state that I'd like to see you expand your options to at :
!: 7 least include a look into the possibility of using DOE 8 facilities. ;
1 9 Economically, I think it's the most sensible ;
10 way to go. Environmentally, the sites are already there.
11 It makes sense to use them.
l 12 Thank you.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Jane.
l 14 And Mal, would you like to do the overview-of
- l. )
-'15 high level waste?
l 16 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Certainly. The change l
17 of quotes that you see up here -- we have here-John Austin 18- and Meg Lusardi, who'are the co-authors of the paper. The 19 slide only mentions John, so I think what we'll do is f
20 we'll put it John with any of the errors in the paper, and 21 we'll put it Meg with any of the successes.
22 The issue is: in recognition of current ;
23 uncertainties, how should NRC approach the present high
- 24- level waste situation? The current uncertainties are i
- 25 many, but certainly two that were foremost in our minds F
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60 1 have been the legislation that has been offered in the l
l 2 previous Congress and that may well be offered in the next i
3 Congress which would change the program, which would )
3 l
4 change the standards, which would change the emphasis 5 between storage and disposal of high level waste; as well 6 as the uncertainties introduced by congressional action to
.7 reduce the DOE budget and the NRC budget.
, 8 Frankly, at this point, I'm certainly not l
9 prepared to guess what will happen. I'm not prepared to 10 guess what the next Congress will look like, let alone l 11 what actions the next Congress may take. So, I think we 12 are faced with dealing with the future for waste l 13 management -- high level waste management in the NRC and I 14 suspect in DOE where we don't quite know what our l 15 direction's likely to be, and we're going to have to do it l
16 with reduced funding.
17 I'd like to move on to some of the key i
l 18 factors. These are some key factors that DOE raised some i
f l 19 years ago. And I noted the other day that although l
l 20 they're several years old, I think for the most part they 21 are key factors today which is a comment of some sort on 22 the difficulty progress has in this particular area.
l 23 Lack of consensus among the scientific and i
t l 24 technical community and the major interest and affected 4
25 parties on fundamental elements of the program. That's a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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61 1 lengthy way-of saying that folks don't agree on a variety 2 of the aspects of the Yucca Mountain site as to what some 3 of the . technical conclusions are at this point, as to its 4 safety, or whether in fact conclusions can even be drawn 1 5 at this point.
I 6 The second concern is the unprecedented nature l l
7 of geologic disposal, the difficulty of predicting the 8 performance of a high level waste repository for hundreds 9 to thousands to -- depending on whose advice you get --
! 10 hundreds of thousands of years into the future.
1 11 The problem in existing law, which may change,
[ 12 on the linkage between siting and construction of a 13 monitored retrieval storage facility or central interim l 14 storage, if you like, and the licensing and construction 15 of a repository.
l 16 The next concern which was raised in the low
- 17 level area as well was the strong public resistance to l
18 waste management and other undesirable facilities. And l
i l 19 last, general -- indicates that DOE programmatic and 20 budget constraints -- I will try to speak for DOE on ,
j 21 behalf of the budget and direction difficulties they've i
22 had over the years, but they have had them, and those have j 23 had a ripple effect on the NRC since they will be, should
- 24 a license application be submitted, our only applicant and j 0
25 our only licensee.
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62 1 With these factors in mind, we provided a :
3 2 variety of options t.o the Commission. If you have not had !
3 a chance to look over the paper, please note that although !
4 we have only shown five options here, each of the options !
l l 5 have some alternatives or some ways they could be 6 implemented that expands this set a bit. l l
l 7 First, we could approach Congress and the i
8 administration to refocus the national program. In some !
i j 9 ways, this is not unlike the option we spoke to a few l 10 minutes ago on low level waste where we would take a l 11 larger role in management and disposal of waste. l l
12 If we were to approach Congress in such a way, l 13 there's a variety of things we could suggest. Among them, i
14 that perhaps Congress should make this decision. That the 15 decision on whether or not a high level waste facility l
\
l 16 should be licensed in. Nevada may be so difficult and so 17 politically important in this country that perhaps the 18 decision would be best vested in Congress rather than the l'
19 NRC.
I 20 There are a variety of other suggestions that 21 appear in the paper. -Another alternative would be to 22 reduce uncertainty by modifying the NRC's program. For 23 example, as I said a moment ago, there are a.large number 24 of unresolved issues about the site. In some of these, 1
25 progress has definitely been made.
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)
. .--.= - . - . - . - . - - . . . .- - ..
?
63 l 1 Perhaps we are at a time when we can resolve
( 2 these through a stipulation process or a rule making l l
l 3 process. And if we get into details on that, I'm going to i
4 have to ask Larry Chandler to say a few words about it.
5 I'm not sure whether they'll be pro or con. But in any l l
6 case, the idea of attempting to resolve some of the issues l
7 now prior to when they might appear in a licensing arena 8 early in the next century.
, i i j l 9 Another alternative: because a number of ;
i 1
! i 10 people believe that NRC has asked a great many questions 11 that are difficult to resolve, could be the creation of an l l
l 12 NRC internal review group to ensure that the technical l
13 issues that we raise with DOE are entirely in focus.
l 14 The third alternative would be to maintain our ,
l 15 existing high level waste repository program. Now L 16 candidly, you have to recognize that this is kind of a 17 moving target. Our budget has decreased by approximately 18 50% over the last several years, and so we will not at 1
l 19 this time be maintaining the program that we had, say, in 1 l !
20 1993 or 1994.
l 21 But we would continue within the resources 22 that we have to maintain the program with its present- :
f 23 direction.
! 24 The fourth option is inte. resting: take a i
?
25 minimal approach to our high level waste repository i I
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64 ,
l 1 program. We've been looking at this thing now -- I've 1 2 been with the agency working on high level waste at least
)
l 3 a fraction of that time for over 17 years. By and large, I l
4 new standards from EPA were going to come out any year.
5 EPA was going -- I mean, DOE was going to l
6 submit an application within a couple of years. And that 7 was the view we had in 1979, and that's the view l l
1 8 apparently we will have in 1997. There is at least a 1
9 suggestion that until more visible progress and commitment !
l 10 is made, that the NRC's resources to protect health and l i
11 safety, our overall mission as an agency, might be better 12 spent in other areas. )
13 And that we should consider a position that, 14 when progress is made, we will be happy to bring staff on 15 board and tune up; and until then, we will maintain a 16 watch on what happens.
i 17 The last option, which overlays some of the 18 others, is to take a position on the storage of spent 19 fuel. If you're aware of the DOE obligation which the 20 courts upheld this year that they must take responsibility 21 and whose responsibility -- as opposed to title and 22 possession, because I'm not quite clear exactly where 23 title and possession lies -- but they have to take 24 responsibility for spent fuel January 31, 1998 which is 25 now about 15 months away.
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65 i
1 How they will do that, where we will head 2 toward a centralized storage facility, or whether waste 3 will be stored for the rest of this century and part of l 4 the next at reactor sites is an issue that perhaps the NRC 5 should take a position on and try to provide some 6 leadership to the nation on what works best.
.7 Those are the options that we had provided to -
8 the Commission. And the Commission's preliminary view is 9 that they would like to maintain our existing program in 10 option three. But they would like to explore taking a
! 11 more active role in resolving some of the issues that I've j 12 just described -- again, consistent with our mission.
13 And the Commission, as in a number of other 14 areas, particularly seeks comment on what additional 15 activities we might reasonably take.
16 With that set of factors, options, and 17 preliminary views, I would now again like to turn it over l
l 18- to Chip to hear your comments.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay; thanks, Mal. Why don't we 20 take a look at the factors again and then start there, at 21 any rate, and see if anybody has some comments on these 22 factors according to DOE. Any comments on the lack of l i
23 consensus among the scientific and technical community?
24 Does everybody think that that's a true ;
3~
25 statement? I don't want to necessarily go through and do' NEAL R.' GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W. ,
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t 66 -
1 a true and false, but if there's a factor up there that 2 you think doesn't ring true that might have an implication l
3 for the commission's selection of options, it would be 4 important for us to be able to hear that.
5 Anybody have a statement on the factors?
6 Okay, well let's go to the options.
7 Oh; go ahead, Jim.
l r
l 8 MR. RICCIO: So long as this agency and DOE 9 are gearing towards trying to dispose of high level t e
i i
10 radioactive waste, you're going to meet with massive )
l l
i 11 opposition. And the rationale behind that is that we l
l 12 don't see how you can dispose of something that you can't
]
13 keep out of the biosphere for its hazardous life.
j 14 And so, as long as you keep on going down this )
15- track of where it's going to basically open up a hole at l
16 Yucca Mountain and throw this stuff in, you're going to 17 meet with opposition. Monitored retrieval in perpetuity:
i
! 18 that's basically where the public is coming at is from i
t 19 this point.
20 And it's interesting to note that there's 21 accepted assured long term storage in the low level
! 22- section~, but not really a mention of it in the high level !
l 23 jsection.
, n 14 MR. CAMERON: But is that -- I though that 25 your statement was leading to the fact that this last --
q i
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l .. ,,
67 1 and this is a good point. Is this last option that we 2 have -- take a position on the storage of spent fuel, 3 would that match up with -- was that compatible, analogous 4 to the last option in the low level waste paper?
l 5 MR. RICCIO: I think -- and taking a position l 6 would be nice, but --
7 MR. CAMERON: I'm asking -- for your benefit, L
8 for all of our benefit, I guess I'm asking that question.
l 9 And then, depending on the answer, I would go back to you, 10 Jim, to see if your understanding of the factors would 11 lead you to an option of long term monitored storage 12 rather than disposal. Is that correct?
13 MR. RICCIO: I think that's where the public 14 is at this point on high level waste, although Jane, I 15 think, wants to speak for the public as wel2.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, but let me get a 17 clarification from Mal or John or Meg on that.
18 MR. AUSTIN: Yes, option five I think is 19 compatible with your suggestion. In the past, the 20 Commission has tended to urge ultimate disposition of the i
21 disposal of the spent fuel. This would be a shift in that j 22 direction. i 1
! 23 MS. FLEMING: And another voice of the public l
i 24 that doesn't agree with Public Citizen's voice is I am --
- 25 and I know there are others of me out there -- all in ;
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68 i
l 1 favor with the NRC getting involved, pushing this forward; i
i 2 DOE pushing this forward; find a solution; find a site. j l
3 Many members of the public are in favor of storage. l I
l 4 I am personally very much against long term l l
5 site storage. I do not want to see 60, 70-odd high level 6 waste dumps spread across this country. I thin' 7 economically'it's going to be very expensive to run. i l
8 Security wise, it is very dangerous. Environmentally, it 9 is not a good idea.
l l 10 And this member of the public is all for find l
l 11 a solution.
l l
12 MR. RICCIO: If I could just clarify, I didn't l
l 13 say to leave it at the site. I said you're going to have 14 to watch this waste in perpetuity. l I
l 15 MS. FLEMING: No matter where it is? 4 l
16 MR. RICCIO: No matter where it is.
17 MS. FLEMING: Even in a hole in the' ground? l 18 MR. RICCIO: Well, we already have seen that.
19 Basically keeping this stuff at the reactor site is posing )
'I l
20 problems like with the drain down of Dresden one in that 21 spent fuel pool. Obviously, keeping this stuff at the
(
l 22 site is a problem with the problem you've already had of 23 basically the hydrogen explosion in the dry cask -- dry 24 cask disposal is a problem. .
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69 l
1 are saying we have some opinions as to what is not a good 2 idea. And shoving it in the ground and trying to forget j 3 about it isn't going to work. At least not in any public 4 manner. You're not going to get any public acceptance so 5 long as you fail to recognize this stuff cannot be s
6 disposed of.
7 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Could I pursue that ,
l ]
8 for just a second?
9 MR. CAMERON: Yes; go ahead, Mal. )
i 1
i 10 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: One of the comments we 11 got earlier is that in some areas, there's perhaps not l 12 been enough interaction between the various issue papers. {
i 13 I think what I just heard is all right, we're talking ;
14 about spent fuel or high level waste; at least there is an 15 element that says we've got to watch this stuff, you can't l
l 16 dispose of it. 3 1
l 17 Let's shift back for just a moment to low i 18 level and that assured long term storage option. Would 19 you have any comment on whether there should be some
, 20 consistency in this philosophy; or for whatever reason, ,
l 21 you do not hold that assured long term storage of low l
22 level would be appropriate -- any comment on the 23 relationship between those two areas?
l 24 MR. RICCIO: I would think that long term b
25 assured storage of low level would be wise too in light of i
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70 1 the fact that every dump that you've built is leaking.
2 So, I think that would be a viable option for low level 3 waste as well. Although, again, it would run counter to 4 the interest of this industry. <
5 MR. CAMERON: okay, and that's a comment that 6 we might want to go on to explore later on.
( 7 I think we have Dennis Bechtel from Clark j l
L 8 County. Go ahead, Dennis. l l l i 9 MR. BECHTEL: For the record, Dennis Bechtel, )
l ,
l 10 Clark County, Nevada. You made a couple of comments about j
- j. 11 the factors. As the conversation on the options goes ;
j I l 12 . forward, I can speak to that maybe a little bit later. I l 13 would not limit the factors to just DOE factors.
L
] \
14 There's a lot of other factors that are kind '
15 of unstated on your sheet there; one of which is just the 16 fact that geologic disposal is a national policy now. And 17 we seem to be talking about, you know, proposed ,
18 legislation and interim storage legislation. And as of i
I 19 right now, the policy is permanent storage of material.
l 20 And so, I think that needs to be emphasized 21 more.
l 22 There are other issues. A large issue is just i
23 the transportation of the waste. You so note in your i
24 background that the public is probably the -- more of the l
i 25 public is going to be exposed by waste transport than the L
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i 71 ;
i i publics that are actually around the reactors. And once 2 the -- if an interim storage site is selected, it's going 3 to be interesting to see just how this plays out ;
l 4 nationally, just the transfer of the waste, because 1
( 5 rightly or wrongly people are fearful of things 6 radioactive.
7 And I know the industry has had a safe record i
8 in transporting materials, radioactive materials, but i
p 9 you're talking about larger volumes of materials and-i 10 there's going to be accidents. How the public is going to 11 consider that is going to be I think a bigger issue than 12 people have discussed heretofore. ;
13 Also, another factor that could be added to l
l l 14 your list there is the fact that the NRC has recognized' 15 that waste can be stored safely at reactor sites. In j
- 1 16 fact, in some ways, dry cask storage is safer than in pool l
17 storage. I mean, it's a passive system.
18 Because of the technical uncertainty of the 19 Yucca Mountain site, and the transportation issues I just l
20 mentioned, I think we feel that it's probably better' 21 national policy to leave the spent fuel at the commercial l
l '22 reactors. And I think that's also -- I mean, the fact 23 that mste can be safely stored at reactor sites, I think
!' 24 that's a key factor that should be I think added to your ,
4
- j. 25' list.
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}.
. i
( 72 ,
1 1 That's all I nad.
l 2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Dennis. And I I
3 guess based on your last statement, what option would that ;
4 support? What implications would that have for the 5 options?
I 6 MR. BECHTEL: I think there is several options l
! 7 that you mentioned that I think we could support. I think 8 option 1 -- let me see here. You know, just indicating -- l l-9 well, taking a stronger stand I guess that waste can be .
10 kept on site safely, I think that's something that -- I l
t l
11 believe -- I mean, I live in Nevada and obviously I have a "
I 12 bias, but I think as far as national policy, I think that l 13 seems to make sense. i I
14 And I feel that with regard to option 5, the 15 NRC I think needs to take a stronger stand on that. I l i
16 think also the NRC -- we have been kind of going through j l
17 this dance with DOE, just on this viability assessment 18 over the last year or two, and it's-a little uncertain in 19 my mind. They need to have -- as I understand it, they 20 have collected pretty much all of the data that they're ;
21 going to collect for their viability assessment
- 22 determination in 1998.
l 23 And having been involved in this for a number i
) 24 of years, I do not feel that they have really gathered 25 enough information really to even make a viability I
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73 1 assessment. As they're tunneling in the Mountain, a 2 number of things have come up. They have a chlorine-36 I
- 3 issue. They have run into other faulting zones.
l 4 And I really think that says to me that they ;
1 1
5 really need more data, and it's a little uncertain in my
]
1 6 mind, once they get to this 1998 date, the viability 4
i 7 assessment, what is NRC going to do at that point to kind j 6 of -- during the licensing phase, you know, to require the l I l
! 9- Department of Energy to collect more information, I mean l 10 to actually prove that the site is suitable?
i f 11 MR. CAMERON: I think that' question is one of l l
1 l 12 the fundamental questions that we need to address in 1
- 13 deciding on these options and going and deciding on a i
4 14 strategic direction.
15 MR. BECHTEL: So I think with that in mind, I 16 think we would support, and I would hope the public would 17 support, a stronger role by NRC -- being the oversight, 18 the watch dog agency -- to ensure that the site is 19 suitable and --
20 MR. CAMERON: So that.might lead you to one of
-21 the other options, although you were saying that option --
22 this last option on storage of spent fuel would also --
23 MR. BECHTEL: Yeah, right.
24 MR. CAMERON: -- be important. And in that 25 sense I.think you and Jim Riccio' agree on the option, but NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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74 l
1 your storage mechanisms would differ. )I 2 MR. BECHTEL: Yeah. l I
I 3 MR. CAMERON: Jim would be off site, 4 monitored, retrievable, and you feel that the on-site dry 5 cask storage is --
6 MR. BECHTEL: Right.
7 MR. CAMERON: -- suitable.
8 MR. BECHTEL: Yeah, and I --
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
I 10 MR. BECHTEL: -- I see there is bits and l^
I 11 pieces of alternatives I think that NRR finds acceptable.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Dennis. I 13 think we're going to hear some other viewpoints now.
14 MR. GURICAN: Greg Gurican again, Patriot.
15 I have a couple of comments. I'd like to go 16 back to the key factors for a second. I guess the slide 17 itself right from the start having the parenthetical 18 statement speaks to the question of NRC's leadership in 19 this area to begin with. Why do we not see a slide that i-20 says " key factors according to the NRC"? And I'd like to 21 know what your key factors-are that you are considering.
22 Chip wrote up the question of truth and i reality here with regard to these key factors.
I
! - 23 And I 1
2'4 think if we look at factor number 1. I'm not sure of the I
25 intent that DOE has in making this particular statement.
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_ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . , _ _ _ _ _ . _ . _ _ _ . _ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ . . _ _ _ . _ , . _ _ . _ _ . _ _ - . . ~ _ - . . . _ _ _ _ _ _
p.o - ,.
l' 75 i 1 However, I don't believe it.
i 2 I believe that there is a significant amount 3 of consensus in the industry, especially in the scientific 4 community and amongst various parties who are interested 5 in the program, whether or not they're interested in the 6 (quote) " fundamental elements of the program," and whether 7 or not those elements are specific or within its entirety l
8 with respect to a given program versus a different 9 program. I don't think that has been addressed.
10 So if someone were to define what the program 11 is and/or define what the fundamental elements were, then 12 'we could possibly discuss what it is t. hat they may intend 13 by that particular statement. But I think if you look at 14 the issue, for instance, that was brought up and widely ;
i 15 publicized in the news not long ago that there could be a l l '
16 potential explosion if you will of the spent fuel in Yucca 1,7 Mountain once it was placed there, I think that has been 18 significantly discredited by the scientific community, and 19 we see that there is consensus at least in that area.
'20 Okay?
21- Maybe you have two scientists out there who 22 don't agree, but you have a consensus of the majority of
- 23. people who are in the scientific community and the
' -)
24 technical community who would say that it is a possible or l l 25 a viable option in a safe location perhaps. .
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l 76 l
1 So given that, I'd like to know what NRC's key !
2 factors are and if they differ with DOE's, and then where 3 you might go with regard to the options once I hear those ,
4 key factors. But I would advocate a stronger leadership ;
l l l '
l 5 role for the NRC, and if anyone has any question as to the 6 definition of " leadership" let's go to the word "to lead" l
j 7 and let's go a la Steven R. Covey, "Seven Habits of Highly 8 Effective People," who would say that to be-a leader is to j 9 have a vision, to promote that vision, and then you will l 10 have others who will follow. 1 l 1
]
11 Thank you. '
12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, and I guess 13 I would go to the panel for an answer to the question of l
14 why we chose to restate the DOE key factors, or why we 15 chose the DOE factors as our key factors. I don't know if 16 you mentioned, though, when you were talking or not, Mal, 17 but if -- it seems like there's a question on the floor 18 for you on that.
19 MR. AUSTIN: Well, we have to start somewhere l
20 in picking factors. Being an author, a co-author with l 21 Meg, I tried to step back and be truly objective and not 22 let my own biases creep in in characterizing a program )
23 that has been underway for many decades and with a lot of 24 people saying "with no progress."
l 25 I thought it would be better to take a DOE i
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77 1 characterization of the national program rather than 2 insert my own biases. Certainly, we can take a look at 3 developing factors according to NRC. It's a good 4 question.
5 MR. CAMERON: Mal, do you have something to 6 add?
7 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Yes. I'd just like to 8 note that, you know, one of the reasons we are here is to 9 hear comments on the key factors, and we will be pleased.
10 We heard a number of factors already and, please, those 11 which are here that you don't want us to use for one 12 reason or another, or those which you'd like us to add, 13 we'd be very much interested in hearing that in the 14 comments. )
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I might add at this 16 point, just as a generic issue -- and I would ask Jim 17 Milhoan to correct me if I'm wrong about this. The issue 18 came up yesterday in a discussion of the co-regulator 19 status of agreement states. There is a lot of things that 20 are written in the issues papers. The Commission reviewed 21 the issues papers, and they gave a preliminary option.
22 But the Commission didn't necessarily endorse every 23 factor, everything that was put forward in an issues 24 paper. I mean, they were basically a discussion vehicle.
25 or is that a difficult question to answer?
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78 1 MR. MILHOAN: No, it's not a difficult 2 question to answer. In fact, as I said in the opening 3 remarks, our work was to produce to the Commission an 4 issue paper with a wide variety of options.
5 The Commission, in its comments back to us in 6 the staff requirements memorandum, did select a 7 preliminary view. But with respect to those others that 8 they did not select, I really can't say they reviewed 9 every detail and would have agreed with every statement
'10 made in there, because the purpose of the papers was to be )I 11 able to focus a discussion on these directional setting ;
12 issues so that we could then determine the direction for 13 the agency to incorporate in their strategic plan, which 4 14 is the primary document that will be produced.
15 The issue papers have a function, a limited :
16 function, and a one-time function, and we will not carry !
1 1
17 those issue papers forward. Rather, we will incorporate 18 the Commission's preliminary views into our strategic 19 planning document; and, therefore, at that time the issue 20 papers have served its very limited purpose.
21 MR. CAMERON: And served the purpose of being 22 a vehicle for getting comment from the public on those
- 23. issue papers, so that that can go to the Commission for j 24 incorporation into their decisionmaking.
l 25 We also I think heard an endorsement of j NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTER $ AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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.- e , ,
s 79 1 option 1, the Commission assuming a greater leaderst.ip i
2 role. There is a number of suggested mechanisms in i
3 optivn 1 -- a congressional acceptability finding. I s
4 don't know how that relates to the other suggestion in 5 option 1 of the Commission certifying rather than 6 licensing. Is that an either/or proposition or --
7 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP:
- l. I think the 3
- 8 fundamental concept in option 1 -- that we would simply l 9 take a greater leadership role than we have now. There i
10 are a number of things that we could advocate to Congress, 11 such as certification rather than licensing. ;
12 MR. CAMERON: I see.
13 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: .Such as a decision by l 14 Congress.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay, i
16 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Such as a change from 17 DOE's development of the facility to the development of 18 this facility by a private corporation. What we were 19 simply looking at was going beyond where we are now, which 20 is to develop regulations and the ability to implement 21 them, and saying, "This is what we think needs to be done 22 nationally to get the job done." John may want to add to 23 that.
24 MR. CAMERON: To coin a phrase, why don't we 1
25 take a vertical slice on -- '
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80 1 (Laughter.)
2 -- option 1. Do pecple have opinions about 3 some of the solutions that are offered in option I?
4 " Solutions" is probably the wrong word. But some of the 5 suggestions by how NRC could take a stronger leadership 6 role? Are there any comments on any of those?
7 Okay. How about other discussion on other 8 options? I thought it was interesting in option 2 that 9 the suggestion was made that we somehow try to close out 1 l
i 10 issues earlier. I believe it was on option 2. Rulemaking l 11 was suggested, some type of licensing activity where we l l
l 12 'would close out issues. l 13 I know that issue closure has always been a 14 hot issue for the State of Nevada. I don't know whether i 15 you want to say anything about that, Dennis, from a Clark l
16 County perspective.
I 17 MR. BECHTEL: Well, just the fact that it kind 18 of goes back into just the uncertainty in the program 19 right now and the fact that I'm not sure I totally agree 20 with the vertical slice approa.ch. I'm not sure sometimes 21 you can extrapolate from a smalier issue, you know, the 22 entire problem. But I think wrestling with all of the 23 issues as early as possible I think is, you know, 24 something that should be done.
l 25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Dennis.
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81 i 1 Anybody have any comments on issue 2? We have heard some 2 support for option number 1 and option number 5, and the 3 Commission's preferred or preliminary option was option 3, ,
l i 4 maintain NRC's existing high-level waste repository l 5 program. And why don't we go to the agreement states, or ,
l i 6 are you going to be a private citizen?
l e
j~ 7 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins ~ representing the 8 Organization of Agreement States. ,
9 Each state that did comment on these through l 10 the organization of Agreement States does currently have 11 operating power "sactors within its boundaries, and the 12 states that provided comments were split between 13 options 2, 3, and 5, and we have heard about 2 and 5 14 already from the other people here.
15 For option 2, as the courts have already 16 decided, DOE is' legally obligated to take the spent fuel.
17 The NRC should presume on the assumption that DOE will and 18 resources should be dedicated accordingly. NRC should 19 assume that the important elements of the national high-20 level waste program include not only a repository and 21 centralized interim storage, but also on-site dry cask 22 storage. ' Simplification of the hearing process, pursuing 23 binding resolution, and early-negotiation of issues are 24 all worthwhile for NRC to explore.
l l 25 For' option 3, NRC should maintain its existing NEAL- R. GROSS COU,iT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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82 1 high-level waste repository program, and for option 5 2 something must be done soon to address the storage of 3 spent fuel in the near term before a repository opens.
4 Option 5 offers the clearest option for this to occur.
5 The interim storage of spent fuel should be i l- 6 the preferred option. Options that short circuit the 7 characterization process should not be accepted. The 8 repository itself has become very politicized. Whatever 9 is done with high-level waste and spent fuel must be safe.
10 Full licensing of the repository is preferred. No 11 shortcuts should be allowed.
12 If Yucca Mountain proves to be unsui~able, it 13 should not be used. If that occurs, a fallback such as 14 interim dry cask storage should already be in place to ;
I 15 avoid a crisis. In the event Yucca Mountain is l
4 16 unsuitable, other long-term solutions should be in place.
17 The most cost effective option is to allow dry storage at 18 this point.
19 The NRC should encourage Congress to move i s
i 20 towards dry storage and using DOE sites.for MRS l 1
21 facilities. DOE owes the electric utility.something for j
- 22 all of the wasted time and utility's money on this issue. ;
23 DOE should be a part of the interim solution.
l
- 24. Look at how long'it has taken for DOE to get 25 the WIPP started. At-DOE's current pace, the process of j l
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83 1 finally siting a repository will outlast the lifetime of i
i 2 all of our reactors.
l l 3 MR. CAMERON: thank you, Steve, and again, 4 thank the agreement states.
q
! 5 Mal?
l 6 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Steve, I had a couple 7 of questions on that you may or may not be in a position 8 to clarify. I think you said that interim storage is the 9 preferred option. Just to be clear, I infer you mean 10 centralized interim storage as opposed to at reactor 11 storage? Or is an intent available from what you have in 12 front of you?
l t
i 13 MR. COLLINS: The statement doesn't qualify 14 which. It is basically indicating that every one of those 15 options -- the interim storage at a site is something that 16 is needed right now in the current, but that's not a 17 desirable long-term -- you know, that's why we --
18 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: All right.
19 MR. COLLINS: -- are in favor also of MRS.
20 Don't leave it at the reactor sites long term but have an l
21 MRS until you do get a disposal facility, because we do 22 agree that something deep underground and retrievable 23 would be the long-term permanent solution.
! 24 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: All right.
i 25 MR CAMERON: So you would essentially -- you r
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i 84 1 and Jim Riccio are on the same page on that in terms of 2 long-term monitored storage.
3 MR. COLLINS: Yes.
4 MR. CAMERON: Do you want to put that on the 5 record or --
6 MR. COLLINS: Yes.
7 MR. CAMERON: Yes.
8 (Laughter.)
9 And, Mal, do you have other clarifications at 10 all?
11 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: There was a comment I 12 think about shortcutting the process. If you could read 13 that again, I think that may lead to a question.
j 14 MR. COLLINS: Yes. The statement is just "No ;
15 shortcuts should be allowed." A full licensing process, j- 16. with no shortcuts, should be --
17 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Okay. I could --
18 MR. COLLINS: -- by an independent regulator 19 is what we're talking about.
20 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Okay. I could infer I
.21 several things from that, possibly including a comment on ;
22 DOE's viability assessment. When you provide your final 23 written comments, if that were to include that that would
!, 24 be helpful to us.
25 MR. COLLINS: We'll try to do that.
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n . .' . .
I 85
! 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. )
2 Do we have some other comments? I think we
. j f 3 have gone through most of the options.
i ,
5 I
4 MS. FLEMING: Can I ask one question on l 5 option 1?
6 MR. CAMERON: Sure. And let's go back to Jane I
7 Fleming and Jim Riccio, if you want to comment to on 1
8 anything.that --
( 9 MS. FLEMING: Under option 1, there is a
- . 10 discussion in the paper of a quasi-government agency. I l 11 was hoping that I would hear some discussion on that to r
i 12 get a position one way or another on that. Right now, 13 knowing little about that, I don't think I'd be in favor l 14 of that suggestion, but I was hoping to hear from some of j 15 you people as to what you think. Now I want to be i 16 facilitated, too.
17 MR. AUSTIN: Actually, that is not an original
{'
i j . 18 idea. Back in 1983 when Congress passed the Nuclear Waste 19 Policy Act it mandated such a study. Should the program 1
20 be moved out of the extremely large Department of Energy 21 complex, separated into an organization dedicated to a 22 solution.for'the high-level waste problem?
23 That study was carried out by a blue ribbon 24 panel. In I think it was 1984 they submitted their report 25 to Congress, and the response back.was: it would delay NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ;
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86 1 the program if you did this. .
2 (Laughter.)
3 So the thought is to have dedicated people l- 4 focused solely on the solution to the high-level waste i-l 5 program -- no other interest, but a safe solution, perhaps 6 a restructuring of the salary levels that these people i
7 would be paid -- so that type of -- have I clarified it 8 enough?
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, John. And that ,
10 suggestion in the paper is in the context of things the 11 Commission might advocate as part of their stronger 12 leadership role in terms of refocusing the program.
13 Jim, do you have anything to say? Okay.
14 Anybody have any final words on this before we j 15 take a break? Sure.
i 16 MR. CRAWFORD: Sid Crawford with SAIC. -l l
17 One of the problems I see here right now is 18 that we don't appear to have all of the interested parties involved to discuss this particular part. In particular, 19 20 is there anyone here from DOE RW7 Okay. I haven't heard 21 much comment on what DOE's position is with respect to 1
(
these.particular items. I know I haven't heard anything 22
'23 from-DOE EM on the high-level waste program that is going
-24 on.
}
I 25 I think that these all need to be brought into i
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87 1 the record before the NRC makes final decision on these, f 2 I think that the Senate certainly expressed its sense in -
1 3 the Senate 1936 debate concerning on-site storage versus 4 centralized storage, and I think that ought to be 5 considered as well. In other words, I think there's a lot 6 of opportunity for additional viewpoints still to be s 7 raised.
e 8 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Sid. -I think we would 1
e 9 agree with you on that, and we would hope to hear from l-e
. 10 DOE, not necessarily now if you don't want to say
} 11 anything, but at least in prepared comments. And I take I l 12 it you'd like to comment.
i l 13 MR. EINEERG: Chris Einberg, DOE.
1 #
14 Presently, we are reviewing the issue paper, 7 -
1 1
j 15 but preliminarily I have to say we're probably going to i
16 support option 3. This will give the revised program plan l
1 l
17 the opportunity to go to fruition and support the 18 viability assessment that we're working on currently. And 19 so our preliminary ~ views are option 3, and we're going to 20 submit detailed comments before November 15th.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks. It's Chris?
J l
22 Thank you.
23 Do we have any other silent stakeholders out i
24 there, so to speak, who might want to put something on the 25 record at this point?
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>, o' o ,
88 ,
t 1 Yes,.Lynne?
f1 2 MS. FAIROBENT: Lynne Fairobent. !
i l- 3 Just to follow up with what Mr. Crawford said, !
4 I believe it was, from SAIC, when I read the paper it's
.\
5 heavily focused on high-level waste. program as it relates j i
l 6 to the issues of spent nuclear fuel. He brought up the j
! i 7 issue of DOE's high-level waste program that is not the RW i 8 activity but is the defense high-level waste program that l 9 EM is currently working on the processing, treatment, ,
10 whatever you want to call it, storage aspects of it. f 11 I continue to be perplexed in that every time 12 the high-level waste topic is brough*. up -hat amount of :
l 13 material sae.ns to be conspicuous by its absence. And if ,
14 you take a look at volumewise and curie content and' stuff, _ f 15 there's a lot of real issues that are associated with 16 that, especially in light of t' - fact that the ;
17 demonstration project for the defense high-level waste 18 tanks at Hanford, the TOURS project, is getting underway, ;
19 and NRC's role now in being prepared to regulate the 20 privatization aspects under that program coming up. I was ;
I 21 a little bit concerned that I didn't see discussions in 22 that vein in this option paper.
f.
1 23 The DOE PEIS for waste management does have a i 1
24 high-level waste chapter, and that chapter is focused on
- 25 the defense high-level waste and not DOE spent fuel. They NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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89 I l
j, 1 are currently in the process of manufacturing processing ;
i l 2 the high-level waste canisters, both at Savannah River and i 3 at West Valley. So I think the. perhaps as you go back in ,
i .4 and look at this issue paper it may be helpful to also l; i
5 take a look at the considerations on the defense high- ;
l l 6 level waste side and not simply the spent fuel issues. .
. ~7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you again, Lynne. l
'{
8 Let's take a break until 25 to. !
9 Okay. Dennis, one last comment, j i
10 MR. BECHTEL: One last --
I'd like to make 11 just a continued pitch for your licensing support system I i
12 advisory review panel. I was kind of sorry I didn't see
- 13 that in the paper. !
l 14 For those of you who aren't aware of that, !
)
15 it's a multi-jurisdictional group who -- the first work 1 l
! i l 16 done in negotiated rulemaking -- I.think it was Part 2 --
(- 17 and in the course of our work have discussed a lot of
- la other' issues as well, and I think it has been an l
29 ' opportunity for involvement by all of the affected l 20 counties, the State of Nevada, Department of Energy site.
l l 21 I think that's -- I would hope that that support will 22 continue. l j 23 I know you've had some funding problems with L
- 24 that for the last couple of years, but I would hope that
! 25 more funds would.be put to that, because I think it's a I:
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90 1 good group to discuss issues like this.
2 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Dennis. I think that's 3 probably an important point in terms of, for example, 4 icption 2 perhaps, reducing uncertainty.
5 But thank you all for that great discussion on 6 low level and high level. Let's take a break and be back 7 at say 25 to. That's a short break. But we have a 8 scheduled 4:00 wrap-up. I don't think we're going to need 9 4:00 to 4:30 for a wrap-up. So if we go to 10 after or so 10 on the very important subject of decommissioning, we can l
11 do that. But let's try to get back in about 12 minutes or I
12 so.
13 (Whereupon, the proceedings in the foregoing 14 matter went off the record at 3:26 p.n,. and went back on 15 the record at 3:42 p.m.) l 16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, everybody. We're going to 1 1
17 get rolling now for the last paper in this arena -- a very 18 important issue, obviously, the decommissioning of non-19 reactor facilities. And we've already seen the potential 20 efficacy or transferability of some of the options from 21 this paper to perhaps the reactor decommissioning area.
22 And we're going to take this as far as it 1
23 goes, but I think at around 10 after 4 we're going to have 24 to wrap it up so that we can have a final brief closing 25 session, and I'll get one idea out right now. Just NEAL R. GROSS l COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE . N W (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON. D C 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 l
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!..-_ . . 1
! 1 i !
91 l I
1 remember there are other ways to comment --
Internet, hard t
2 copy.. There is comment forms here if you want to jot a I 3 short comment down. There is obviously this form. And i l
4 dcn't forget the video cam. And that guy is going to be '
5 there for, what, th. next month so that people can come i
6 in? I think he'll know, okay.
7 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Okay. The last issue !
8 paper. Reminds me of the way that Johnny Carson used to j 9 open the last envelope.
10 This one is on decommissioning, non-reactor (
11 facilities. And the specific issue is: what should the .
l 12 NRC's strategy to take advantage of new and different .
5 13 approaches to optimize site remediation of the site l
?
l i
l 14 decommissioning management plan and other problem sites? !
l I
15 Our real focus here is on decommissioning of problem i-l ~6 sites. l l
t l
17 We have had many licensees over the years. We
! 18 have decommissioned many of them. Almost without I
i 19 excepcion this goes smoothly, but there have been !
20 exceptions. There are sites out there -- right now I :
i i
21 think they number about in the forties -- where there are i 22 simply problems. In a number of cases, we have licensees l 23 who do not have the financial ability to decommission, i
j 24 decontaminate, remediate as needed. )
l 25 In some cases we do not have licensees. We NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N W.
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92 !
I have responsible parties, but the licensees may no longer 2 exist as an organization, and sometimes we have trouble 3 finding responsible parties and convincing them that they
(
r 4 are responsible parties. I 5 These sites take a great deal of time and 6 energy to remediate. They require a great deal of staff I 7 time. They require a great dec1 of management attention.
(
l
- 8 The process takes longer than we would like; it takes l
I 9 longer than the public and Congress would like.
10 What we were looking at in this paper were i
11 ways that we could make this work better. We think that >
1 12 we could do this more effectively. We think . would 13 benefit the public, it would benefit us, and in some cases
]
1 14 we think it would benefit the licensees or responsible i
15 parties.
16 One of the concerns we have -- as I look at 17 the key factors, you can see I've already spoken briefly 18 to the first one, where we have people who are l
19 responsible, who are unable or unwilling for various l
l 20 reasons to decommission. Unwilling could be, among other l
21 things, that they do not wish to spend their company's 22 resources in that direction, or they are concerned that if
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93 1 that could be promulgated.
i 2 There are limited NRC resources available to i
l 3 address all sites within the timeframes desired by the f
1 4 Congress and the public. We would like to move faster, 9
but these are time-consuming projects.
5 Our legal 6 authority is limited at most of.the sites because of the i .7 relatively low levels of contamination and risk.
1 8 We also have a concern that as we proceed 9 towards remediation the proposed groundwater requirements 10 by EPA -- that is to say, four millirem -- we could find J 11 rather difficult to have the licensees implement at some 12 of these sites within the financial capabilities that they l 13 have.
14 With these key factors we developed a set of 115 nine options. I'd like to note that these options were 16 developed by Tim Johnson, the author that sits with me.
17 Tim is principally responsible for our site
, 18 decommissioning management program. And among the 19 alternatives that we offer here are. continue the existing 20 program. We could change the decommissioning review 21 process.
22 The process currently involves our, in some 23 cases, reviewing site characterization plans. Once they 24 have been approved we review decommissioning plans, and 25 then finally we approve the completion of the -l NEAL R. GROSS !
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94 1 decommissioning and surve'/ to certify decommission has 2 been properly carried out. We might change that process 3 to reduce or eliminate some of the early reviews by the 4 NRC and have the licensee proceed directly to 5 decommissioning without our review of characterization and 6 planning processes, at least in the detail that we now do.
7 The third option would be we could change the 8 residual contamination criteria and review standards. We 9 could increase the amount of contamination that would be 10 permitted to remain at a site, particularly in the case of 11 a site where there would be some sort of institutional 12 controls, or we could look at the stands. There are those 13 that argue that our present method of applying our 14 decontamination :riteria is extremely conservative, and 15 perhaps less conservative methodologies could be used.
16 We could adopt the U.S. EPA Superfund 17 approach. Those of you who are familiar with that know l
18 that EPA has the power to tackle responsible parties.
19 Whether they are licensees or not, if they have been 20 contributors to the site, EPA has the power to assess 21 triple damages. This can tend to make it much easier to l l 22 convince responsible parties to do the right thing in a l
23 timely way.
24 We could regulate some of the material in 25 these sites, source material, consistently with what is I NEAL R. GROSS l l COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR BERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W l
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1
/, w , .
95 1 now being done on naturally-occurring and accelerator-2 produced materials, NARM. In a number of areas there are 3_ tailings piles out there which very much resemble the ones l
4 that NRC regulates, but because they are not source l 5 material they are not regulated..
l l 6 It might be worthwhile to consider whether if 7 they do not need to be regulated to that extent, if i 8 they're outside the NRC's purview, is it a good use of i
- 9 resources to regulate them as carefully as we do simply ]
10 because they're within NRC's purview?
11 The next. option is to focus on decommissioning q l
12 where progress can be made. That is, if we have a willing )
i 13 licensee, a financially capable licensee, we proceed. In 14 the event that we get stalled, we would transfer these to 15 the EPA's Superfund program, giving them an opportunity to 16 use the legal tools at their disposal, recognizing as 17 well, however, that the priorities assigned by EPA might l
18 not be as high as they would be by the NRC simply as a 19 result of the large number of sites EPA has on its plate.
20 We could take an aggressive position to ,
i l 21 develop a regulatory framework for lower cost options.
'l 22 For example, if we have material that very much resembles 23 uranium mill tailings, perhaps it could be disposed of at
! 24 uranium mill tailings sites at an advantage -- financial I i
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96 i i responsible for-the SDMP site.
2 We could develop a strong litigative strategy.
l .3 As I mentioned earlier, because of the low risk associated l
l- 4 with a number of these sites, the NRC's legal ability to 5 move rapidly can be limited. Perhaps we should reexamine 1 6 our regulations to give us the tools that we need to move j 7 rapidly to do such things as impound funds of responsible ,
' i l 8 parties so that we can assure they are available for site 9 decommissioning and not available for something else.
10 Finally, we could seek Superfund authority. ,
c 11 The Commission's preliminary views. They had l 12 quite a few.
l 13 The overall sense of the paper and the sense ,
l a f
I 14 of the commission's views -- this provides some additional L
15 flexibility that the staff can use, and some additional J l
16 power that the staff can use, to get these sites 17 remediated in a more cost-effective way.
I 18 Among the things that the Commission endorses i
V 19 in a preliminary view would be to change the review j 20 process, to focus on sites where we can make progress and 21 transfer stalled sites to EPA, take an aggressive position i
22 to come up with lower cost options, and to develop a l
f 23 strong litigation strategy.
24 They did have a couple of thoughts. We are 25 concerned that if we were to reduce the amount of I
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97 1 preliminary review work we do on decommissioning that some 2 of the licensees and responsible parties may not be !
3 technically competent to do the job properly. -In fact, 4 they might attempt to decommission, do it poorly, and. ,
1-5 result in higher costs to the NRC and to the responsible 6 party.
r 7 So it-would make a great deal of sense in the ;
8 Commission's preliminary view to test this on a pilot 9 scale and determine whether or not this would, in fact, be -
i 10 successful on a broad scale. We should seek volunteers to j 11 participate in this process, and we should seek comment --
l 12 we do seek comment -- as to whether we should hold l
l 13 workshops or seminars for licensees and responsible i
14 parties to help them better understand what they would ,
15 need to do.
16 The last one, with regard to option 6, I
17 transferring sites to EPA Superfund, the Commission should la look at transferring sites where we have -- where the risk-19 is low. We also might want to consider stalled high-risk l
1.
! 20 sites or low-risk sites where progress is being made. You 21 can sort of have a box -- stalled high risk, stalled low i
22- risk, progress being made in low risk, progress being made
, 23 in high risk. And they would have us look at both risk j
, 24 and progress on site remediation when considering whether i 1
25 to transfer a site to EPA.
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98 1 The Commission would not like to have us just 2 do this. We should not preclude the Commission itself l
l 3 from reviewing a site where conditions warrant. So this 4 is what we're thinking about. Again, to state it very 5 simply: the commission's preliminary views would give the 6 staff additional tools in a variety of areas to move more l 7 efficiently and more aggressively to get these sites 8 cleaned up.
9 And with that, I'd like to turn it over to 10 Chip for your comments.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Mal.
12 There is a lot of options that were under 13 consideration here, and I guess I would just start off 14 with, does anybody want to make any general observations 15 about this issue, the factors which I think were well l
16 stated by Mal and some of the -- I think that Terry was 17 pretty creative in coming up with some of these -- a lot 18 of these options. But do we have some general 19 observations? Steve, do you want to start off?
20 MR. COLLINS: Steve Collins, Organization of 21 Agreement States.
22 The first sentence of the summary comments for l
l 23 the States was basically what I read as an agreement with 24 the commission's views. It says, "The agreement states 25 believe that adequate flexibility should be available in i NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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99 :
1 both policy and regulations to allow unique approaches to l 2 decommissioning and the funding of decommissioning."
i 3- MR. CAMERON; Is that clear, Mal, what that ';
i 4 comment is?
l i
1 5 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Think -- again, I ;
6' would interpret that as Steve has, that that's pretty much
- 7 consistent with the Commission's preliminary views.
! l 8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good. So that's 9 consistent with the preliminary option.
10 Do we have some other comments on the l 11 Commission's preliminary option, or any of the options l
12 here?
13 Lynnette?
I I
14 Tom, go ahead. We'll let the States finish, 15 and then let's go to Lynnette.
l l 16 MR. HILL: In looking at what the Conference
- 17 of Radiation Control -- Board of Directors of the 18 Conference state, I think it is fair to state that'their 19 discussion of the options is they're in agreement with the 20 Commission's preliminary views as well.
21 MR. CAMERON: Really? Okay.
l
{ 22 MR. HILL: I think so.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Lynnette is going to l
24 defer to Henry.
- 25 MR. MORTON: Henry Morton.
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- 100 i
l l
1 I think that there are a number of good l
l 2 thoughts among the options. And I think also, in the 3 interest of looking through these to try to find ways 4 where progress can be made that would help the agency to l
5 set its direction, there are a number to choose from and a 6 number of things to consider in here.
7 With respect to decommissioning non-reactor 8 sites or materials sites, one of the factors is large 9 volumes of very low activity soil and debris, and what can 10 we do with those, and what affects the volumes of those, 1
11 and what affects the ability of the licensee to make 12 progress in decommissioning. There are a number of things 13 I think to consider.
14 One of the things that I mentioned this 15 morning, that I'm generally in favor of the risk-based 16 performance-oriented regulation, and in this regard there 17 is an item to consider. While favoring that in general, I 18 would suggest that you should not adopt performance- )
l l
19 oriented regulations without knowing whether or not they I l
20 are implementable.
21 And in that regard, we have seen, I think, an 22 example of this already in that in looking through the l
23 proposed EPA and NRC guidance or regulations that we find 24 essentially a 15 millirem per year limit is not :
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101 1 the rule. Mainly these 30 or 40 sites are the sites that i 2 have large volumes, low activity thorium and radium-226 on !
3 them.
4 For these sites,'for instance, to put it in !
5 some perspective, 15 millirem per year is about one-third f
i 6 of the background dose rate that occurs from the same 7 radionuclide series typically in nature. That is, if we !
8 see typically 40 or 50 millirem a year from such -- from !
9 soil, so we begin to see the difficulty of having chosen a l
l 10 risk level translated to dose without really knowing i
11 whether it's implementable or not. And so I think there l
l 12 needs to be some deliberation in the choice of l
l 13 performance-based rules. !
l 14 .I think that from among these options there 15 are ways to make progress for the agency to set near-term 16 directions, goals,'and intermediate and longer term ones 17 to go ahead and make progress without putting all of the j
18 choice into one of these long-term options.
19 For example, early on some ways that you could l 20 evolve in a sensible fashion I think were mentioned --
l 21 allow the intruder dose to go up to 500 millirem per year.
22 The 100 value we've seen is not a particularly useful
- 23. increment over the unrestricted release level that has i
24 been proposed. !
I 25 Allow more realistic dose assessment i
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102 1 scenarios. Allow for a probability of intrusion, and i I 2 incorporate or allow for the probability of occurrence in ,
3 some of the scenarios. Allow restrictive use scenarios I
- . 4 without having to do an EIS every time one of these is '
l l
l 5 proposed' or approved. '
[ 6 Another item -- I would encourage you to work l l 7 with EPA to select a dose limit above 15 millirem that
- j. 8' allocates more than one-seventh of the 100 millirem to l l
! 9 decommission sites, because when we look at the choices or 10 the bases on which the 15 millirem was chosen, one was 11 allocation, and for these -- many of these sites you could 12 allocate much more than the one-seventh. And there have 13 been others who have recommended a third, a fourth.
14 And the ALAM as a basis, we have submitted 15 comments ' showing that ALARA analysis and.the GEIS was j
16 basically without basis and principle. It should be l
l 17 reconsidered. ]
l !
, 1 18 On a risk level,-100 millirem is closer to the i i~ j l 19 zone between tolerable and unacceptable risk than )
' l 20 certainly the 15. So I think there is room to work with I' 21 EPA in a more aggressive fashion to try to get something-l.
-22 that is realistic and implementable for those sites that 23 need implementation the most.
i i 24 I think in the near term, on a decisionmaking
, 25- basis, you could focus more on performance end points than NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR!BERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE.. N W.
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103 1 on the process by which you achieve that. And I think we t
i 2 are seeing progress with respect to things, for example, l t
3 in' diminishing -he importance of the characterization 4 report and things of that kind.
5 And I think that some other points in that :
6 regard to consider -- in applying focus, where you can do i 7 that in the near term in a more performance-oriented l 8 basis, a licensee, for example, in this viewpoint really 9 ought to be allowed if he is -- if he is technically 10 capable to do so, to dismantle more of his facility, ,
11 remove contaminated material more than he is able to now,
~
12 and dispose of that at an authorized disposal site without -
l 13 having necessarily to have a full-fledged approval for his !
- 14. decommissioning plan.
15 The agency in the near term could focus on '
16 that licensee and.the contractor's ability to perform this
. 17 kind of: interim work on his quality assurance, and 18 particularly on the health and safety plans to protect the i
l 19 public while this is occurring, on residual criteria and a
20 on the final status survey i
21 So the focus then would be less on how things 22 were done and more on how -- on the performance end point.
23 I think also that the -- in the intermediate 1
i L .24 term, the agency ought to and could make progress with
, 25- respect to disposal by reviewing the safety of the
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m . . _ . - _ - . _. _ . _ ..
l . . . . ;
L l 104 1 disposal of the uranium- and thorium-contaminated soil at l 2 mill tailings sites. And should those be found 3 acceptable, go ahead and make a policy decision that it's i
l 4 acceptable to do so. If an EIS is needed, go ahead and l-5 get with that, so that the licensees can have some more 6- assurance of economical and assured disposal.
7 In the intermediate term, I think that, again, ,
l 8 reconsider whether an environmental impact statement is ,
9 needed for each restricted release. This is the kind of 10 thing that can really slow down a decommissioning project.
- 11 If it is, go ahead, proceed to do a GEIS for-sites l L ;
12 requiring restricted releases, where you can, so that you ,
t-
' 13 don't have to go through this process every time there is l
14 a restricted release. ;
15 With respect to probabilistic type approach, I 16 think in the near term on a decision basis the agency 17 should consider accepting the use of, for example, DOE 18 Argonne's probabilistic version of RESRAD for evaluating 19 these types of sites, or Battelle Northwest equivalent i
20 pathway dose calculation, a program of this kind.
21 This would be an incremental step that would 22 help the materials licensees in their evaluations to move 1 23 toward some kind of probabilistic assessment in a more 24 expeditious fashion than some long study. And then I i
25 think perhaps in the longer term, as I mentioned this l
i
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105 1 morning,'giving greater attention to fundamental 2 radiobiology studies to resolve the DNA repair threshold 3 viewpoint versus the linear no threshold viewpoint.
4 And I think -- overall, I think that with l
3 5 respect-to the choice of the option, some of which seem to ]
I 6 suggest-downsizing, that to make progress in the near
]
7 term, and to consider these kinds of things, it appears to
]
8 me not to suggest downsizing.
5 9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Henry, for ,
l 10 that detailed list of suggestions. I heard some things in )
11 there that.I don't think-we covered in the paper, so that
! 12 should be useful now or -- -
i L
! ~
13 Tim, do you have any comments?
l
[ 14 . DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Tim may have a !
l .
. i
- i. 15 comment. It's a broad and detailed list and things that 16- -- as I look at my watch, I want to think about a number ;
l j 17 of those carefully as we provide the final comments to the
! ?
18 Commission.
19 MR. CAMERON: Tony?
1 l
20 MR. THOMPSON: Yes. I had a couple of !
21 questions and some thoughts on behalf of the uranium f
[ 22 producers.
l- ~
l 23 The idea of not staying involved in getting 24 approved site characterization, particularly where we're 5 25 dealing with. naturally-occurring radionuclides, seems to NEAL R. GROSS
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106 1 me to be a very bad idea. As perhaps you suggested in 2 your comment, Mal, that it may well lead to a problem
- 3 later when you go for your final verification' study, and 4 it's bound to lead to reopeners at some sites.
5 So.I think the idea of not staying involved at
[
6 the site characterization -- at the beginning of the 7 process, which I think is one of the most important parts 8 of the whole process of decommissioning, it's a bad idea 9 for the reasons that you suggest. So I think reopeners 10 would be bound to happen if there aren't guidance, and if' 11 there isn't approval and agreement on site 12 characterization right up front.
13 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: Recognizi'ng that that 14 is contrary to the Commission's preliminary view, 15 presuming that you folks will be providing us written I 16 comment, if you can elaborate on that in the written 17 comments, the Commission would be quite interested.
18 MR. THOMPSON: Yes.
- 19 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP
- Thanks.
20 MR. THOMPSON: Secondly, I'm not sure I
- 21. understand -- I thought when you said " develop a strong 22 litigation strategy" there was perhaps the suggestion of I
l 23 changing the regulatory basis on which NRC can take sort ]
L j
! 24' of what~ we might call affirmative action, say to issue an !
I
, i 25 order. Was that the intent? i i
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.o e o c:
107 ,
1 In other words, right now if we are dealing 2 with a licensed site, unless there is some sort of 3 imminent hazard, NRC does not --
its policy is not to go !
4_ and -- is to rely on the licensee, to work with the a 5 licensee, then have the licensee propose, NRC dispose of 6 the licensee's proposal. Was there a thought that you !
7 would change that and make -- change your_ regulatory j 8 approach so that you.could be more aggressive in not j
-9 waiting for proposals but ordering?
10 DEPUTY DIRECTOR KNAPP: No, it was not -- let ,
11 me give you a possible example. We are concerned about i
I l 12 remediation of a site. We have a licensee who we have i
13' reason to believe is rapidly funneling money into another
- I 14 company so that they can create a bankrupt company that is i a
15' responsible for the site and all of the funds can go l 16 somewhere else.
17' What action we might take under those !
18 circumstances at this point could be very limited, because 19 arguably that is not a serious and immediate threat to 20 public health and safety. It's a financial threat. And l
21 I'm speaking here with great confidence because I have an l 22 attorney who is probably going to correct me to no end in i 23 a couple of minutes.
24 But the concern, at least'in my mind, is: do t
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l 'o ' e o l- 108 '
l- ,
1 to take some of the actions that we think we need when 2 things are happening fast and the going gets rough? It's ,
3 not. clear to me that we do have that -- we do have things {
t L 4 that our attorneys can work with. ;
l l
5 Larry, would you care to add to that or ;
6- clarify?
7 MR. CHANDLER: Just to observe that I don't 8 think we are disagreeing with one another. I think we are
{
9- fundamentally saying the same thing, and that is what i 10 basis we would have for taking immediately effective type i
11 of action. And that has been an issue that we have ,
12 confronted on a number of occasions.
l !
13 MR. THOMPSON: I can give you one example that j 14 makes me nervous, and that is that there are people that !
15 may want:to have a site moved. And the NRC's position is:
l 16 the option on the table right now is not to move the site r
17 but to reclaim it in place. And the reason that option is 18 the option on the table is that's the licensee's proposal, [
'l 19 and based on the fact that we don't have an imminent !
l 20 hazard here, we don't have any basis for going forward. I 21 would hate to see that changed.
22 MR. CHANDLER: And completely understanding
.23 the context of this particular --
l
.i 24 MR -. CAMERON: I think you'd better use this. j l I f- '5 MR. CHANDLER: The context for this option was ')
l l
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, e
. o 109 i 1 more along the lines of I think the way Mal was describing i
! 2 it. That is, that the agency has identified a need for it 3 to act on'a prompt basis, as opposed to the situation in 4 which there is a proposal sitting before it, and it's a L 5 question of whether the staff would support or not support 6 a particular option at that point.
I P
7 MR. THOMPSCN: Okay. That clarifies it.
8 I guess another question I have is: why on l 9 earth would you want to involve your licensees with what's ;
I 10 going to be the most screwed up program that has ever 11 been --
l 12 (Laughter.)
l 13 -- put on the books? So why would you want to i 14 set precedent for moving things to Superfund? I can't l
l 15 imagine why. ,
16 (Laughter.)
17 Because if you set that precedent up, who is 18 to say that they are not going to come and be very j 19 aggressive. Right now there is a policy not to put NRC-
]
L 20 regulated sites on the ETL. That's an EPA policy. But 21 you start' moving sites over to EPA, and the next thing you 22 know you're going to find people that want to push reactor 23 site closings over to EPA. And I think it's a bad idea.
-24 It's not a very good program, and I think our people would 25 be very much opposed to that concept as a general approach 4
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, * . a 110 i~
1 to things.
2 Finally, as sort of a placeholder, because we 4
k 1- 3 haven't had the time to do it, based on the sort of 4 strategic look here, the uranium producers are going to '
5 present -- and they're going to make a note of this in 4
6 their comments -- a series of issues that are interrelated i
7 that address'the regulatory program for those facilities, 8 including such things as the use of mill tailings for -
9 other types of disposal. l 10 And there are a series of decisions that have j 11 been made by the agency over time which have led to some 12 serious conflicts in the interpretation of authority, and !
t 13 what does'it mean. And so just to tell you now that we 14 intend to make a note that we're going to propose a sort 15 of strategic look at some of these decisions that have ;
16 been made, and it-goes directly to the one question about 17 using existing sites, for, example, or for other kinds of 18 disposal. So I just' note that for the. record, and we will 19 put a placeholder in our comments.
20 And finally, I agree with Henry. On the 15 21 millirem standard, the issue of dividing up the dose is
+
22 certainly in keeping with the recommendations'of ICRP and 23 other bodies. But at least in the proposed record-there 24 was no demonstration or there was no analysis by NRC of 25 the likelihood of anybody being exposed to seven of these NEAL R. GROSS !
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l 111 1 disposal facilities, or even of some disposal facilities 2 and other nuclear fuel cycle facilities such that there 3 would be a likelihood of exceeding the 100 millirem dose 4 to the public.
5 And if you're going to go forward with l
6 something like that, it seems to me you owe it to the l
7 public and to the licensees to do some sort of analysis on 8 that particular issue.
9 MR. CAMERON: And did you make that point in 10 the comments on the proposed rule?
11 MR. THOMPSON: We did.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good, because that's 13 where it will be considered.
14 Tom Hill, did you have any further comments, 15 brief comments, from --
16 MR. HILL: In the interest of time, suffice it 17 to say that in general the Board of Directors agrees with 18 the Commission's preliminary views.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
20 MR. HILL: We will put the rest of them in 21 writing in detail.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
23 Does anybody out there violently disagree with l
24 some of the options? What was it, 2, 3A, 16? What were 25 they? You know, with any of the options that were in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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112 l
1 preliminary option?
l 2 I'm just trying to see if anybody has any ;
3 ccmments on the preliminary options that would indicate 4 that they may not -- that they might not be a feasible 1
[ 5 choice from the standpoint of effectively cleaning up 6 decommissioned sites. ;
7 Lynnette? <
G MS. FAIROBENT: Uh-oh, I have to get violent.
9 Oh, no.
10 I guess I like a lot of the options, and I >
11 like some of them a lot better than others. And I' guess 12 what I want to comment on is the Commission didn't seem to i 13 like some of the ones that would be my favorite. And one 14 of those might be to address the standards and review 15 standards that are placing some of these facilities in.
16 such distress in the first place, and that perhaps you 17 could solve the problem if it wasn't -- not in all cases.
18 I realize some of these sites, your SDMP
'19 sites, are going to pose problems probably regardless.
20 But it would occur to me that a lot of them wouldn't if 21 the ante wasn't so high to carry out this function of 22 dispositioning the site in a way that protects public 23 health and safety.
24 So.I guess my only comment would be to,.you
- 25 know, wonder why that particular option wasn't favored by
(
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113 1 the Commission, and to suggest that certainly if it's not 2 advantageous to go back and change the basic criteria that 3 the review standards should be scrutinized very carefully,
'4 and many of the suggestions that Henry had made would help j 5 a lot of these facilities be able to implement the
}
p 6 standards. And that could also be more in keeping with f 7 the processes that EPA uses, so it could even be an issue
!r 8 of better consistency with another federal agency.
4 j 9 Some of these issues about considering actual !
j 10 reuse of the site, I think some of those things are going 11 to, you know, find favor and in the process you can find a 12 standard that can be used more effectively to do what we 13 really want to do here, which is disposition these sites 14 and get on with it. l 15 Thank you.
1
- 16. MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Lynnette. )
)
17 Lynnette.gave us some of her favorite options, 18 I guess. And would anybody else like to express-any 19 opinions along those lines, or say anything else about any 20 of the options?
21 I know it's the end of a long day, and I would 22 just encourage everybody to send us their written comments 23 either through the_Internet or hard copy on these 24 particular issues. We don't mean to try to give this 25 particular issue short shrift in any way.
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114 1 Does anybody have any further comments?
2 Okay. Well, why don't we switch gears and 3 wrap up here. Personally, I think this was -- both days 4 were very, very. effective days, and I think we got a lot 5 of -- NRC got a lot of really productive information out 6 of these sessions.
7 Now, I guess one thing that I'd want to do, i
8 and I'm going to turn this over to Jim in a minute --
9 before I forget, we have four people from the NRC staff 10 that are out working the desk outside and.did an 11 incredible job in terms of the administrative 12 arrangements, not only-for this meeting but the other 1
13 meetings. And I just wanted to recognize'them on the I 14 record, and perhaps when you go.out and leave today you ;
15 could give them a personal thank you. But Anna May- .
1 16 Holcraft, Libby Crossland, Anne Hoyle, and Barbara 17 Johnson, I'd just like to -- we'd all like to thank them.
18 Are there any last thoughts about our two days 19 of interaction here? Does anybody have any thoughts on 20 the process after we have, you know, been through the two 21 days? Any last comments before Jim says some final words
- 22. to us?
23 Okay. Jim, do you want to close out for us?
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11s 1 I characteristics.
l- 2 But I would like to note that we had a very l 1
3 wide range of attendance from different organizations, !
l i
4 both individuals and other groups, in attendance today. I 5 know it has been two very long days, and we have discussed
't 6 a wide variety of issues.
7 I would note that I think the quality of the 8 comments has been outstanding. I think the participants i 9 have provided their comments in a very professional 10 manner. I think it is a manner in which we have been 11 here; we have listened to the comments. We have a very 12 important job -- the Steering Committee and the writers 13 have a very important job before us to take both the l 4
14 comments we have heard at this meeting and the written 15 comments and to provide our stakeholder interaction report 16 to the Commission so that we can summarize and i 17 characterize the comments that.we have heard, so that the 18' Commission can then make a well-reasoned decision,-affinal 19 decision on the issue papers that will be before them, and 20 which would then be reflected -- their final decisions
. 21 - would then be reflected into the agency's strategic plan.
22 I would like to ask your assistance in one matter, in addition to requesting your comments. We have 23 l
l 24 two additional public meetings -- one in-Colorado Springs next week and one in Chicago the following week. The 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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O O e o i 116 1 value of those meetings, and the value to the NRC, anct '
! 2 really to you, is through participation at those etings. .
3 So I would request that if you are not going to retend l
4 those meetings that you call your friends, let them know 5 of the meetings, and encourage others to attend those 6 meetings.
7 We have made wide announcements of those l
l 8 meetings, bu*. I would also request you to contact othr.rs
[
9 to encoura. heir participation at those additional ;
10 meetings, be.ause the value of those meetings is really up 11 to you. And the importance of those meetings, and the ,
12 value we get, and the comments, and the interactions that
( 13 we have are really important to us.
14 One last thing in closing -- as you've 15 noticed, we have requested Chip Cameron and Doug Brockman j 16 to facili9 ate our sessions. We wanted to do that to be
! t 17 able to provide the widest possible approach to 18 interactions with you, and-we thought a facilitated l
19 session would accomplish that function. I think it has to 20 a very large extent, and I do want to express my gratitude ;
! 21 to our two facilitators in facilitating the sessions to l
22 obtain the comments that we did receive.
I 23 Does anyone else have anything that they want I
29 to say before we end the session?
25 If not, thank you very much for.your I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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l . ., _. . - _ - - . . . -
. o . , ;
117 l l
1 attendance. I know it's late Friday afternoon.
2 Congratulations to those who stayed throughout the end of i
3 it.
4 4 (Whereupon, at 4:25 p.m., the proceedings in 5 the foregoing matter went off the record.)
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 13 I
, 14
)
l 15 l 16 17 I
18 19 20 21 22 l
23 l
24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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._ ._.= . .. . . . _ . _ . _ _ _ , _ _ _ , _ _ _ . _ . . . _ . . _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . , _ . . _. . ___ _ _ _
CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
Name of Proceeding: STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETINGS ;
ASSURING SAFE MANAGEMENT OF NUCLEAR WASTE '
j Docket Number: N/A i Place of Proceeding: WASHINGTON, DC were held as herein appears, and that this is the original l transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to j l
l~ typewriting by me or under the direction of the court i reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and j 1
l l l accurate record of the foregoing pr eedings. l t
f Dt5rbett Riner i r'e ~
Official Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
I i j l 1
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i w!
, -l i
l I,
7,,. Direction Setting Issue No. 5
?? Low-Level Waste October 24-25,1996 Sponsor: Malcolm R. Knapp, NMSS Writer: James E. Kennedy, NMSS
.i
-l DSI5
- What Should be the Role anc Scope of the
" NRC's Low-Level Radioactive Waste Program?
aa-
..=.
aj
Key Factors
- Most New LLW Disposal Facilities Are Expected to Be Located in Agreement States
- NRC Does Not Expect to Receive an Application
!:f from a Non-Agreement State Within the Next Five Years
- y..
' "' s *
- The Lack of Broadly Based Public Acceptance Has Significantly AITected the Development of New Sites
- LLW Disposal and Management Options Arc Available Today for Waste Generators
- LLW Program Has Been Reduced in Response to Government-Wide EITorts to Streamline and Reduce Costs
- - _ _ _ - - . _ - _ _ - - _ _ - - _ - - - - - - - _ _ - - - - - - - - - - - - ____---________._____________.__a
.I Options I
g
- Assume a Greater Leadership Role in the 3 National LLW Program e .. ..
- M
- Assume a Strong Regulatory Role in the ,
l i
l National LLW Program ,
- Retain Currenc Program l
- Recognize Progress and Reduce Program
.
- Accept Assured Long-Term Storage h
t
- I, Commission's Preliminary Views !
- Assume a Strong Regulatory Role in the National Program (Option 2). This Option y Would Encompass All of the Activities That 9 Were Performed Before the Recent Reductions
- .
- in the Low-Level Waste Program.
.: [ f
~
- The Commission Seeks Public Comment On: t
- Whether NRC Should Involve Itself to a Greater Degree in Implementing this Option in Such a Way as to Encourage an Integrated Approach to the Regulation of LLW Handling, Processing, Recycle, and Disposal.
- How Should NRC Address Unauthorized k Disposal?
- m. :
-I l
I i
Direction Setting Issue No. 6 High-Level Waste and Spent l
., . a e Fuel October 24-25,1996 Sponsor: Malcolm R. Knapp, NMSS Writer: John H. Austin, NMSS k
DSI 6
- In Recognition of Current L neertainties,
- How Shou d NRC Approach the Present High-Level Waste Situation?
u 9
Key Factors (According to DOE)
- The Lack of Consensus Among the Scientific and Technical Community and the Major Interested
, and Affected Parties on Fundamental Elements of 1
the Program pg [hij
- The Unprecedented Nature of Geologic Disposa
- The Linkages in the Law Between the Siting and l Construction of a Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) Facility and the Licensing and l Construction of the Repository i
- Strong Public Resistance to Waste Management and Other Undesirable Facilities p
- General Program and Budgetary Constraints i
-l
.1 Options l1d
- Approach Congress and the Administration ITl to Refocus the Nationa Program
- Reduce L neertainty by Modifying NRC's Program f wi
- Maintain N RC's Existing HLW Repository Program
- Take a Minimal Approach to NRC's HLW i
Repository Program l
- Take a Position on the Storage of Spent l p Fuel
- - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ - _ _ .L
- y Commission's Preliminary Views
- Maintain NRC's Existing HLW Program
- (Option 3).
.1 i
- The Commission Would like to Explore
?, ' 4 Taking a More Active Role in Resolving Issues in the National HLW Program, Consistent with NRC's Mission.
- The Commission Particularay Seeks Public Comment on What Additional Activi:ies the NRC Might Reasonably Undertake.
7
a '.
=
,'oQt
_ Direction Setting Issue No. 9
" I
. Decommissioning Non-Reactor a
>x ;Ai Facilities Octo acr 2'-25, I 996 i Sponsor: Malcolm R. Knapp, NMSS Writer: Terry L. Johnson, NMSS l
V
/ .!i f
DSI9
- What Should Be NRC's Strategy to Take t;.. .
Advantage of New and Different "9 Approaches to Optimize Site Remediation of the Site Decommissioning Management Plan and Other Problem Sites?
i
e Key Factors
- Some Licensees or Responsible Parties May Be Unable or Unwilling to Decommission
<4 s..
- There Are Limited NRC Resources Available to Address All Sites Within the Timeframes Desired
~
q'i ; 3;e:
by Congress and the Public .
l
,: rj - . . . -
i "
l
- Legal Authority is Limited for Most Decommissioning Cases Since Contamination Is l
at Relatively Low Levels.
i
- EPA's Proposed Groundwater Requirements j
(4 mrem / year) May Be Difficult to Implement
- Options
- Continue Existing Program ,
- Change the Decommissioning Review
't Process y <.,
cv
- Change Residual Contamination Criteria 3
and Review Standards
- Adopt the L .S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Approach
- Regulate Source Materia Consistently with Naturally Occurring and Accelerator-Produced Radioactive Materials l
ki l
l
-1
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.l Options (cont)
- Focus on Decommissioning Cases in Which
=e Progress Can Be Made; Transfer Stalled n%,.. , .
Sites to the Environmental Protection
~
Agency's Superfunc Program
- Take an Aggressive Position to Develop Regulatory Frameworks for Lower Cost Decommissioning Waste Disposal Options i
- Develop a Strong Litigative Strategy l / .
- Seek Superfund Authority h .
-i
.l l
i l
Commission's Preliminary Views i l
- A Combination of Options Were Selected That l Would Place Appropriate Responsibility on 4
~
Licensees to Remediate Their Sites While Giving NRC Appropriate Tools to Deal with Problem gi;, '. ... Sites and Licensees.
- Change the Decommissioning Review Process (Option 2);
- Focus on Decommissioning Cases in Which Progress Can Be Made and Transfer Stalled Sites to EPA (Option 6);
- Take an Aggressive Position to Develop Regulatory Frameworks for Lower Cost Decommissioning Waste Disposal (Option 7) And,
- Develop a Strong Litigation Strategy (Option 8) h
e Commission's Preliminary Views (Contj
- Option 2 Should Be Tested on a Pilot Scale for a Few Selected Materials Licensees to Determine the Potential Success and Effectiveness of this Option if it Were to Be Adopted on a Broader Scale.
g% "' 4
- The Pilot Program Participants Should Be Volunteers That Are Found to Be Suitable for Participating in the Pilot Program by the NRC.
- With Regard to Option 2, the NRC Specifically Seeks Comment on Whether NRC Should Hold Seminars or Workshops for Licensees to Make Sure That They Understand What NRC Expects of Them and What They, in Turn, Should Expect of Their p Contractors.
l Commission's Preliminary Views (Cont) l
- With Regard to Option 6, the Staff Should Also, i Consistent with DSI 12, Examine the Level of Risk
- Associated with Each Site. Staff Should Consider the Feasibility of Transferring the Low Risk, Stalled Sites to the EPA's Superfund Program.
p.. . . y
- Determinauons on Whether to Send to EPA's
- Superfund Program a Stalled, High-Risk Site or a Low-Risk Site Where Progress Is Being Made, Should Be Made on a Case-By-Case Basis.
!
- The Implementation Process for Option 6 Should j Not Preclude the Commission from Reviewing a Low-Risk, Stalled Site If Conditions Warrant, Nor t
Should the Process Automatically Send the Site to
~
i k EPA's Superfund Program.
'l Commission's Preliminary Views (Cont)
- With Regard to Option 6, the Sta:"Should Also, Consistent with DSI 12, Examine the Level of Risk Associated with Each Site. Staff Should Consider the Feasibility of Transferring the Low Risk, Stalled N- ..
Sites to the EPA's Superfund Program.
y g.. r .
1
- Determinations on Whether to Send to EPA's Superfund Program a Stalled, High-Risk Site or a Low-Risk Site Where Progress Is Being Made, Should Be Made on a Case-By-Case Basis.
- The Implementation Process for Option 6 Should Not Preclude the Commission from Reviewing a Low-Risk, Stalled Site If Conditions Warrant, Nor
~
Should the Process Automatically Send the Site to k EPA's Superfund Program.
. cm3, o
Registered Attendees for the Washington, DC Meeting ,
234h t-96 ,
Mecting I.ast Name First Name Affiliation Titic Washington, DC Alkema Ken Envirocare of Utah Director of Gosermuent AITairs f
Anderson Roger Nor1hern States Power Co Director Licensing Ankrum Al Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Sr Program Manager L Bechtel Dennis '
Clark County, Nevada Manager Beedle Ralph NEI Sr. VP ,
Bell Russ Nuclear Energy Institute Project Manager Borsum Robert Framatome Technologics, Inc. Manager, Rockville Ollice Boss Gary Government Accounting Office ,
Bradbury Judith Battelle Pacific N.W Laboratory Semor Researcher Branch Kristi Battelle Scattic Research Center ;
Brown Roy Council on Radionuclides & Radiopharmace Chairman i Bubbosh Paul EPA Burnfield Dan USDNFSB Sr. Manager Burtschi Mark IBEX Engmecring, Inc. Manager, Ilusiness Development !
Carter Jon Carter and Hinman Chan Elaine Federal Emergency Management Agency Attorney. OGC 1
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Meeting Last Name First Naine Affiliation Title Chapman Nancy Bechtel Power Corporation Serch Maruger Chapple Alan Nuclear Energy Institute Sr. Writer Ciampoli Paul Dow Jones News Senicc/ Daily Press Editor Collins Steven OAS (IL) Chief, Div. of Radioacine Materials Colhns Leslie AliB Combustion Engineering Cotton Virgill Washington Post Crawford Sidney SAIC (DOE) Waste Management Specialist Crites Thomas LLNL Cross William STS Consuhant Ceyscinski Kenneth Sanford Cohen & Associates Associate Danicis Raphael Defense Nuclear Facihtics Safety Board Senior Staff Fairobent Lynne ATL International, Inc. Senior Pohcy Analyst Farber Darr31 Penn State University - Research Assistant -
Fitzgerald Duane Government Accounting Office l Fleming Jane NNSN D.N.A.C.
j Floyd Stephen Nuclear Energy Institute Director, Regulatory Reform
) Foin cilla ll rbert Virginia Power Frantz Steven Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP Attorney l
i I
Fulton Fay American College of Cardiology Assistant Director Gamble Robert I Woodward-Clyde Federal Senices, Inc. Consultant 2
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4 Meeting Last Name First Name Affiliation Title Genoa Paul Nuclear Energy institute Project hianager !
Gilbert hhchact Government Accounting Olrice Scmor Evaluator
- Golf Robert IBEX Engincenng, Inc. Manager. State Senices Grace Mark Winston & Strau n Attornet Grant Jane Yankee Atonuc Electric Company hianager, Regulatory & Industry Aff ;
Green Kimberly Scientech, Inc. ' Engineer j Gurican Gregory GPM Nuclear, Inc. Sr.11 Nuc. Safety & Lac Engineer llarns Ann We The Peopic Director ,
tiendrichs Lynette Nuclear Energy Institute Director Ilill Thomas Gemgia Natural Resources /OAS Program Manager Ilinnant Clayton Carolma Power & Light - Robinson Nuclear Vice President llosford Anne McDermott incorporated, Babcock & Wilcox Manager, Government Programs :
Iturt Davis Defense NucIcar Facilitics Safety Board Senior Systems Engineer liuston Roger Nuclear Energy Institute Senior Project Manager Jacobson Alan State of Maryland Lead llcalth Physicist Jarriel Lisa U S. Enrichment Corporation Sr. Regulatory Engineer Johnsrud Judith ECNP (PA) Director Kimball Karen American College of Nuclear Physicians Executive Director Kokolakis Pcic New York Power Authority Manager, General Licensing Krich Rod Carolina Power & Light - Robinson Nuclear Manager, Regulatory AITairs A t i
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Meeting 1.ast Namie First Nanie Affiliation Title Leroy Daniel , France Counsclor for Nuclear Energy lahbaum . Dasid Union of Concerned Scientists Nuclear Safety Engmeer McBurney Ruth Texas Department ofIlcalth Director, Diusion of 1.icensing McCartney Shawna Edlow International Company International Alfairs Speciahst McDonough Coleman Comed Strategic Services Financial & Planning Manager McDougall Robert SAIC (DOE /EM Contractor Sr. Policy Analyst McIndoc Darrell ACNP/SNM M D. FACNP McInt3 re flrian Westinghouse Electric Corporation Manager, Advanced Plant Safety and Murray Peter Westinghouse Electnc Corporation Sr. Consultant, Nuclear Programs Nelson Alan Nuclear Energy Institute Senior Project Manager Nichols David ACNP/SNM Government Relations Office Associate Director O'Mara Robert Univ. of Rochester /ACNP/SNM M D.
Olson Phil- Government AccountmgOITice Pauagos Alex Comed Strategic Services Project Engineer Peterson Scott Nuclear Energy lastitute Director, External Communications Peveler Kenneth IES Utilities Inc. Manager, Nuc. Lic. and Emergency PfeitTer John Energy and Science Division. OMB Program Exminer 4
Potter Thomas Consultant
. Quint Matthew Embassy of Australia ' Assistant to the Counselor (Nuclear)
Ratliff Richard Organization of Agreement States Past Clair J
.._____m_ .___ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ . . _ _ __m___.__ __ _ . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ . _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ ._ , __ __ . + - - - - - .
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Meeting Last Name First Name ANiliation Title l
- a . _ _ _ _ _ . _ _
j i
Reed Kathic Oak Ridge Associated Universitics Sr. Technical Spectahst Regnier Eduard USDOE Sr. Ph3 sical Scientist I
Riccio- James - Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project StalT Attorne)
. Rogers A. Carter Arizona Public Senice Company ;
Rucscli John CNWRA Director, Washington CHice t
Schlump Wolfgang Germany Schoppman Michael Florida Power & Light Company . Manager, Bethesda Office j Shicids William Defense Nuclear Facihtics Safety Board Associate General Counsel I
Shriver Bryce Virginia Power Assistant Station Manager NS&L l Smith David I Stamos John Senator Faircloth Staff Stevens Janice ~ Technical Con *ultant Sweeney Robert IBEX Engineering, Inc. Principal I I
Sweeney Katic National Mining Association Associate General Counsci f Thomas-Cooper Vanessa USDOE Env. Protection Specialist Thompson Anthony Shaw-Pattman l Tipton Tom Nuclear Energy Institute 'Vice President, Operations Vine Gary Electric Power Research Institute Senici Washington Representative Vogel Waync Westinghouse Elecinc Corporation itadiation Sarciy Ollicer i
Walker Roger Texas Utilitics Eicctric Company Rcgulatory AITairs Manager l i
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Meeting Last Name Fint Name Affiliation Title Wascom Ronald Louisiana DEQ Deputy Assistant Secretary Weigel Du a> ne Government Accounting Omcc Wiblin Claude ATL International Inc Young Melame American College of Radiology Asst Director, Gosernment Relation Meeting Total: 100 6
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