ML20195J231
| ML20195J231 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 01/21/1988 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1636, NUDOCS 8801270048 | |
| Download: ML20195J231 (169) | |
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O U NITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
WASTE MANAGEMENT MEETING 1
I I O s LOCATION: WA3HINGTON DC PAGES: 1 - 138
- ) ATE: JANUARY 21, 1988
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I PUBLIC NOTICE BY Tile 2
(q/ UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATOR COMMISSION'S 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4 l 5
6 l
7 The contents of this stenographic transcript of 8 the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 9- Commission's Advisory Committee on Peactor Safeguards (ACRS),
10 as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the 11 discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
12 No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at 13 this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or 9 14 inaccuracies of statement or data contained in thic 15 transcript.
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
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1 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION i
2 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 3
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5 WASTE HANAGEMENT )
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8 Thursday, January 21, 1988 9
Roor 1046 10 1717 H Street Washington, D.C. 20555 11 12 The above-entitled matte r came on for hearing, 13 pursuant to notice, at 8:30 a.m.
14 ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT:
15 DR. DADE W. MOELLER 16 Professor of Engineering in Environmental Health Associate dean for Continuing Education 17 School of Public Health Harvard University 18 Boston, Massachusetts 10 DR. MARTIN J. STEINDLER Director, Chemical Technology Division 20 Argonne National Laboratory Argonne, Illinois 21 ACRS COGNIZANT STAFF MEMBER:
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() Owen C. Merrill 23 ACRS CONSULTANTS:
r~~N 21 (s Donald Orth 25 K. B. Krauskoff Acme Reporting Company
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1 ALSO PRESENT:
O 2 Sidney J. S. Parry 3 NRC STAFF PRESENTERS:
Bob Browning O' 4 John Surmeier Mike Tokar 5 Joe Kane John Greeve 6 Paul Lohaus l Giorgior. Gnugnohi 7
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3 1 DR. MOELLER: The meeting will come to order.
2 This is a meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on 3 Waste Management. I am Dave Moeller, Chairman of the Sub-(j .i committee. The other ACRS member in attendance is Dr.
5 Martin Steindler.
6 We have with us two consultants at the moment.
7 Donald Orth and Connie Krauskoff and we anticipate that Frank 8 Parker will join us shortly and then tomorrow we anticipate 9 having John Till also present as a consultant.
10 The purpose for this meeting is to review and dis-il cuss several topics on high-level waster, low-level waste 12 and radioactive waste management research.
The meeting is largely informational. This morning lllh 13 14 we will begin by reviewing the impacts and effects of the New i
15 Waste Policy Act amendments on operations of the High-Level 16 Waste Management Division within the NRC, and then we plan g7 to discuss the Standard Review Plan for Shower Land Burial 18 as well as a status report--receive a status report on the ig rupture of the RAD waste liners at TMI II.
20 Then we'll close out with a review of the Uranium 21 Recovery Program this morning, e- 22 This afternoon we'll review the NRC and DOE Title I 23 Programs as well as the discussion of Title II Program.
21 These pertain to uranium tailings at operating facilities as 7
LJ 25 well as those facilities which are no longer in operation.
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1 And then we'll go into an Executive Session to wrap up today. I
-' 2 Tomorrow we will be devoting our time to review of 3 the Research Program within both high-level waste and low- !
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sU 4 level waste. Obviously with the recent changes as indicated 5 by the Waste Policy Act Amendments, there will be correspond-6 ing impacts and changes within the Research Program and we 7 want to hear about those.
8 And then in the low-level waste area we'll be 9 brought up to date on the work that's underway in Canada on 10 modeling of the movement of radionuclides near surface low-11 level waste burial sites.
12 At its February meeting in a couple of weeks, the llll 13 ACRS will be wrapping up a report on waste management research 14 which they are preparing to send to the Congress and I hopt 15 that we will, af ter having heard the reports tomorrow morning, 16 be able to offer some significant comments perhaps as input 17 to the ACRS report.
18 We'll wrap it up then tomorrow with an Executive 19 Session which again will be devoted to summarizing what the 20 Subcommittee and its consultants believe are the salient 21 points that we've heard.
<m 22 Owen Merrill is the Cognizant ACRS staff member
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23 for today's meeting. He's seated on my right.
73 21 The rules for participution in the meeting have
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25 been announced as part of the notice that was published in Acme Reporting Company
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, ,. ;5 the Federal' Register on' January 13, 1988.
I This meeting is 2 being-conducted in accordance with the provisions of the-
- 3. . Federal-Advisory Committee Act and the Government in the l 4 Sunshine Act.
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5' We've received on written statements or reques s ,
6 from members of the public to make oral statements at today's 7 session. However, if there'is someone in attendance,_a member 8 of the public, or from elsewhere, who after hearing.a certain 9 ' portion of the discussion has some remarks they would like to 10 make, or some input that they think is important, simply let 11 Mr. Merrill know and we'll give you an opportunity to make 12 your comments.
'g 13 It is requested that each speaker first identify _
14 himself or herself and speak with sufficient clarity-and ;
15 volume so that he or she can be readily heard.
16 Before we call on our first presenter, let me ask i
17 Dr. Steindler. Marty, do you have any comments or--
18 DR. STEINDLER: No, gg DR. MOELLER: And Don or Connie--
20 MR. ORTH: No.
I 21 MR. KRAUSKOFF: No.
1 22 DR. MOELLER: Okay. There being no comments, then 23 we'll proceed with the presentations and we'll begin then 24 with the Effects of the Recent Legislation on NRC's High-l O Level Waste Program. And that will be followed by NRC's 25 Acme Reporting Company ao,. .,.....
6 1 Reviaw Plan for the Yucca Mountain Consultation Draft, a
> 2 site characterization plan. And the status of NRC's review 3 of that.
4 And for that presentation, we have with us Robert 5 Browning, the Director of the Division of High-Level Waste.
G Bob, it's a pleasure to have you and the floor is yours.
7 MR. BROWNING: Thank you. I'll limit my comments 8 on the legislation that was passed and signed by the President 9 in December to the high-level waste repository aspects.
10 There are aspects in the Act related to air transportation of 11 plutonium and some of the MRS provisions.
12 I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have llll 13 in those areas if I can, but since that's not in my area of 14 responsibility I'll focus on the high-level waste repository 15 provisions.
10 As you probably know--
17 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me. High-level waste does not 18 cover MRS?
19 MR. BROWNING: My particular program does not. No, 20 I only have the high-level waste repository. The monitored 21 retrieveable storage facility is under Dick Cunningham's 3 22 division and the transportation is under Bob Burnett's divi-t 23 sion.
rs 24 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Thank you. I knew that trans-i !
w-25 portation was elsewhere, but I guess it had slipped me that Acme Reporting Company m n o..
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7 1 the MRS was elsewhere. Okay.
-/ 2 MR. BROWNING: With regard to the impacts of the 3 Act on the repository, the most obvious and most impacting J 4 provision in the Act with regard to NRC's program is the !
1 5 provision in the legislation to focus the site selection pro-6 cess upon the Nevada site and stop work on the Hanford and 7 Texas sites.
8 There is also some potential impact on the provi-9 sions in the Act to stop all research on granite disposal and 10 the deferral of any consideration for a second repository 11 until after the turn of the century.
12 So focus on the more immediate impact because that llh 13 is where we've been spending our time and attention on how we 14 have to refocus and redirect our NRC program to correspond to 15 the direction in the recent legislation.
16 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me, Bob. Another comment.
17 The Act does provide for an examination of sub seabed dispo-18 sal. Are you going to comment on that or what you will be 19 doing?
20 MR. BROWNING: Not really because sea disposal is 21 under the cognizance of the Environmental Protection Agency.
,x-22 We would not have a role in that particular effort. The im-( )
v 23 pact on our resources would be zero, fs 31 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
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v 25 MR. BROWNING: Or at least very small. EPA asked Acme Reporting Company
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3 DR. MOELLER: Okay, thank you, g,
(_) 4 DR. STEINDLER: I'm sorry. Can we elaborate just 5 a second on that?
6 MR. BROWNING: Sure.
7 DR. STEINDLER: Are you saying that the sea disposal 8 of high-level waste and spent fuel would be outside the li-9 censing activity of the NRC?
10 MR. BROWNING: That's right. EPA has the regula-11 tory authority for that method of disposal.
12 DR. STEINDLER: And this would pertain to cannis-ters and movement through the ocean water and everything?
ll 13 14 MR. BROWNING: Right.
15 DR. MOELLER: That's news to me.
16 DR. STEINDLER: I knew basically what you are l'7 saying, but I never even put it together. So MRS, plutonium 18 transport and sub seabed disposal are not within high-level 19 waste and one of the three is not even within NRC?
20 MR. BROWNING: Right. High-level waste--my piece ,
21 of the NRC's regulatory pregram only has to do with the re-22 pository, deep geologic disposal of high-level waste.
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23 Now, with regard to the focusing of the program to one site rather than three, the impact on NRC's program as
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25 a result of that change is not, as you might expect, an Acme Reporting Company Jolt 6/9 4 k e ti
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9 1 automatic reduction by two-thirds of the staff effort and the
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'/ 2 dollar effort, although that's a popular perception and one 3 of which I have been trying to counteract to the best of my 4
i 4 ability over the last few weeks.
5 You have to go back to understand how we budgeted 6 our resources. We have never budgeted to handle three para-7 llel full-scale reviews of three efforts in parallel. We had 8 as a matter of fact in fiscal year 88, when we first laid out 9 the budget, we had attempted within the of fice of which I am a 10 part, to try to reorient some of the resources from the High-11 level Waste Repository Program to some of the other programs, 12 such as the medical programs within the NRC total area of llll 13 responsibility were perceived to require some additional re-14 sources. Then the Department of Energy announced that they 15 were going to submit three draft consultative site charac-16 terization plans in parallel which was not consistent with 17 the way we had been planning and budgeting. So we had to 18 redirect some resources back into my program to be able to I
19 react to that particular situation.
20 Then when the legislation turned that around again 21 180 degrees we had to reorient, but the impact of the resource ,
r3 22 on my resources, both people and technical assistance dollars,
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-1 generically as a; reactive part and a' proactive part. The re-s- -
-2 active part-is basically to--when we get a' document or a sub-3 mittal from DOE which we are-required to review ~and comment
'4 The.proactive piece is the piece
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5- where we're.getting our own regulatory program in order to be 6 able to' deal with the license application within the three-7 ^ year time frame that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires us
-8 to deal with a construction authorization application.
9 Those of you that might be familiar with the re-10 actor licensing arena, a three-year-licensing turnaround 11 time would be rather unique precedent and we've attempting 12 to use the time available in the prelicensing area to identify i
llll 13 issues and resolve them before the licensing hearing to the 14 extent that that's practicable and to lay out sufficient 15 guidance so that the Department of Energy people who are pre-16 senting the case will have an understanding of how we're go-17 ing to review the case and what criteria or approach we will 18 use to judge its acceptability.
19 The regulations that we have in place leave a lot 20 of room for judgement. And the intent is to try to narrow 21 down that judgement and build whatever technical consensus 22 is practicable during the remaining period of time before we 23 get the license application to see if those areas of judge-24 ment can be narrowed down and focused to a workable amount 25 so that when we do get the license application we will be Acme Reporting Company
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able to review it and have the various hearings and reach a J 2 conclusion within the three-year time frame.
3 Now, the proactive piece itself has two parts. One
,) 4 I would refer to as a procedural part. That is, the proces-5 ses and procedures with which NRC does its licensing business 6 has been the subject of a review to determine where we can 7
implement efficiencies in that process. The one specific 8 case example that's being worked right now is what we refer 9 to as the licensing support system effort. This is the effort to ensure that all the data and information being generated 10 11 by the parties to this particular license proceeding will be 12 developing and producing their information in electronic for-llll 13 mat so that it will be--and inputted into a system so every-body has access to it on an ongoing basis. The goal of 34 15 which is reduce the time required normally for what the law-16 yers refer to as discovery in the adjudicatory process, g That process, if it just goes the normal way where you have 18 a big library of documents and then everybody comes in and looks at the documents and asks for the documents, the law-39 20 yers have analyzed that and there's a tremendous amount of 21 time lost just in asking for documents and sending documents.
And the conclusion has been that this process can be made 22
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-1 everybody has the'same data base and information base that ,
2 we do and if we get the system in place early enough they 3 have that information on an ongoing basis.
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4 That's what's being pursued as a part of a nego-5 .tiated rulemaking which again is an. innovative, first-of-a-6 kind operation.for the NRC where rather than the staff think-7 ing about what needs to be done, proposing something, sub-8 jecting that to public comment and scrutiny and then reacting 9 to that, we actually have a negotiated rulemaking which in-10 volves the affected parties and trying to reach a consensus ,
11 so when the rule is prolmugated all the affected parties
- 12. agree with it and you reduce the likelihood of delays at the llll 13 end of the process due to legal challenges to your rule-
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14 making. That's what I would refer to as the process piece 15 of our proactive effort.
16 DR. STEINDLER: Excuse me. The electronic data 17 base that you're talking about is limited to the Department 18 of Energy's generation of data or are you going to put into 19 that electronic base the world-wide data base that is 20 generated and topics of various kinds?
21 MR. BROWNING: No. That's one of the subjects 22 that's being considered in the negotiated rulemaking. It 23 hasn't decided yet. But clearly if there's a glossary i
21 of definicions, I don't think anybody intends to put, for 25 example, Webster's Dictionary into the system. But, for .
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13 i example, this stuff that's here is the draft consultative g
i, 2 site characterization plan for the Nevada site. Just to give 3 you an idea of the sheer volume of one report in the system.
4 The beauty of the licensing support system as it 5 is current envisioned and currently being considered in the 6 negotiated rulemaking is that all of this material would be 7
in an electronic format. You could draw it up on a screen 8 and read it and you could do word searches on it. And the 9 lawyers informed me that the only way you can expedite and 10 really have a fast adjudicatory hearing that satisfies all 33 the lawyers and judges, if they are getting access to all 12 the information and quickly using it, is to have that kind g 13 f appr ach.
34 It's not just a system to be able to withdraw docu-15 ments and get documents. If that was all it is, you could 16 just use microfiche or have the hard copies. It's an ad-37 vanced capability of reviewing that document and deciding of gg all that stuff, do you want to focus in on one piece and then look at that piece. It's that kind of an approach.
39 20 But that's all part of the negotiated rulemaking 21 so it really is not firmly established exactly what will go
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An ther advantage of the system is that all the 23
_ parties would be contributing to it so we would not have a 93
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14 1 arenas where somebody hoards some bad news until late in the 2 process and then plunks it in the middle of the hearing board 3 and then everybody scrambles to react to that. Everybody 73, '
4 who is going to participate in the process would be contri-5 buting their information on an ongoing basis.
6 DR. STEINDLER: A couple of questions. One, are 7 you going to require--are you going to disallow the introduc-8 tion of what you call surprise data if it isn't in the elec-9 tronic data base?
10 MR. BROWNING: That's another thing that being--
11 I can't really answer specific questions about what is going 12 to happen beca.use that's all part of a negotiated rulemaking.
lllg 13 If you are interested in that arena, it would pro-14 bably be worth a subject of a special meeting all of its 15 own where we have the lawyers who are the prime users of that.
16 It has a technical advantage, but it also has a legal advan-17 tage in the hearing process.
18 DR. STEINDLER: My concern is that the system is 19 set up to facilitate the legal aspects of the process, but in 20 that advantage there may not be sufficient attention paid to 21 the technical aspects of the process. Because in theory it
,, 22 seems to me that the issues before the IIouse are to be tech-m) 23 nical in the sense of--
,s 21 MR. BROWNING: No, don't get me wrong. It's got t )
\.J 25 both the technical advantage and a legal advantage. The Acme Reporting Company
15 1 technical advantage is that we'll be much better able to p,
k/ 2 manage the tracking and monitoring of how issues are getting 3 resolved. And that's another pilot program we have going (b
- ' 4 within NRC to try to make sure that we have a common list--
5 you know, here's our issues. DOE would also be interested in G issues that the state or affected Indian tribe would have.
7 And all that would be in a computerized system also so you 8 don't end up with the situation where you are in the middle 9 of a hearing and somebody says, "Well, what did you do to 10 resolve this issue in this volume that you issued ten years 11 ago?" You should be able to more readily track that than 12 you can today using a manual search process. So there's llll 13 multiple aspects to it, advantage to the system.
14 MR. PARRY: I have asked Stanley Shofer of the ACRS 15 staff to follow this negotiated rulemaking and to plan for 16 us to have a terminal and be able to access the information 17 when the system is finally set up.
18 MR. BROWNING: Yes. I would presume that--the de-19 tails about the system are beyond my technical ken. All I 20 know is that we've had a little pilot project going on in our 21 office and to me it's miraculous. We can get a letter with
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23 the system and then later on draw it out. It's at the fore-
> 21 front I think of the technical capability of the computer
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16 1 buffs, but the advantages are there in terms of cost savings x- 2 ultimately and time savings in the process.
3 And I think, as you pointed out, in making sure
~j 4 that the technical content doesn't get ignored or lost in the 5 sheer volume of this material.
6 DR. MOELLER: We had a briefing on that a year or 7 so ago and we did go out and see it demonstrated. The ques-8 tions I have--you pointed out that it might help eliminate 9 surprises, but what guarantees that a person or a group, an 10 organization--what determines when, at what point do you put 11 your data in?
12 MR. BROWNING: That's part of the rulemaking pro-llll 13 cess. The rulemaking will define that particular aspect of 14 it.
15 DR. MOELLER: Okay. And in that regard, I had 16 brought down with me and I'm sure you are f amiliar with it--
17 you know, DOE puts out this semi-monthly abstracts of all 18 radioactive waste management literature and it's calle' the 19 Current Awareness Bulletin. I wondered how a document such 20 as thic would be blended into the licensing support system.
21 MR. BROWNING: I don't believe but I think it would
-m 22 just be those documents that are going to be relevant to the l
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17 1 peripheral material would be included. But again, that's
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- 2 all part of the negotiated rulemaking is exactly what goes 3 into it.
g 4 They are at a critical stage right now because of 5 the narrowing down from three sites to one site. The number of 6 participants in that negotiating rulemaking is currently be-7 ing reevaluated. So there's going to be some sorting out 8 period of time to decide who the participants in that nego-9 tiated rulemaking are as a result of this legislative action.
10 That hasn't been decided yet.
11 DR. STEINDLER: I would just comment that the con-12 fidence rulemaking document file put together in part by DOE llll 13 had associated with it a bibliography of pertinent documents 14 and references dealing with high-level waste. I think the 15 bibliography was put together by Oak Ridge. I would guess 16 it covered three of those volumes that you have in front of 17 you. I would easily imagine that was a solid six-inch stack 18 of nothing but references and abstracts I believe.
IP MR. BROWNING: Right. You can get pyramiding of 20 documents. This particular document has 2,000 references.
21 DR. MOELLER: Well, then, would all the 2,000
. 22 references--they would have to be in the system, wouldn't (v) 23 they?
(~ 21 MR. BROWNING: I don't know how to answer that U
25 question right now. I don't believe so. Some of those Acme Reporting Company
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18 1 2,000 documents are more important to the consideration of 15 2 this document than others. There's a document, for example, 3 that's called "The Conceptual Design Report," which is crucial f i
\ s' 4 to understanding this. And then there are other things that 5 may be basic textbooks and things which are of interest but 6 are not the kind of thing that you would particular want to 7 put in there. They are not that controversial or key to 8 understanding the overall site characterization test program.
9 But again, it's an innovative first-of-a-kind 10 thing. It's drawing on the experience coming out of the le-11 gal arena as to what it takes in a very complicated, extreme-12 ly well documented and lots of document, a kind of legal pro-llll 13 ceeding. And on the NRC eide, I think everybody's converted.
14 It's not clear everybody is converted to the wisdom and the 15 cost effectiveness of doing this, you know, on the other par-16 ticipants. I think the utility side who is footing the bill for 17 most of this thing has been still skeptical as to whether 18 that kind of ef fort is required. And that is all part of the 19 negotiated rulemaking process, i 20 The content piece, which I'm personally more in-1 21 terested and my staff is more interested in, with regard to
,s 22 the proactive piece of our program is the looking at what
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19 1 And what guidance is necessary both to my own 2 staff in terms of how they are going to do their review when 3 DOE makes an application or makes a case on a particular 4 submittal.
5 Let me just use a case example to try to illustrate 6 it. NR Regulation and in other documents, EPA Standard and 7 the Site Selection Guidelines, there are words to the effect 8 that to be acceptable, a site should not have valuable 9 natural resources that are going to draw attention to that 10 site and exploration of that site because of the natural 11 value of the materials there.
12 The methodology for dealing with that and the llll 13 criteria of what you say this is acceptable or it is not 14 acceptable is open to a lot of judgement right now. And we 15 think it would highly desirable, both from our own standpoint, 16 to be able to when they submit a case to us, however we are 17 going to deal with that case, there's a tremendous advantage 18 to a dialectic to go on and say, "What are they proposing 10 and how are we going to deal with it?" Ideally, we ought to 20 have that done right now. But we haven't because all our 21 resources have typically been diverted to reacting to things r3 22 rather than doing the proactive work. And that's a function t
's 23 of not having budgeted--never having budgeted to be able to
-s # do both in parallel. And the reactive piece always seems--
Y) 25 the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I've got to maintain my Acme Reporting Company
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20 1 resources to be able to keep off, to the extent I can, con-m
/ 2 sistent with the health aspects, I have to keep off the 3 limiting path of DOE's production schedule to the extent that
- 1 I can and still do our technical regulatory job.
5 So that's the piece with which a lot of my techni-O cal resources are intended to work on. This narrowing down 7 from three sites to one site is a tremendous boon to our g ability to keep some of our technical resources focused on 9 this proactive piece of the effort which is absolutely 10 essential to be able to have an efficient and technicaly 11 rigorous licensing process. If we keep putting this off to 12 the time to get a license application, there is no hope of llll 13 doing this thing in three years.
14 People don't care about time and cost. Just tell 15 me the problem. But to the degree we can, we should be work-16 ing on that proactive piece and that's what I hope to be 17 able to divert some of my resources to.
18 DR. MOELLER: Do you have a plan or a schedule or 39 a wish list or something that identifies what you think--
20 first off, that the topics that you think need to be handled 21 and what order in terms of priority you think--
22 MR. BROWNING: Yes, but not quite as well oriented 7-
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t t-what the priorities of those are. And this is one of the key 25 Acme Reporting Company
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21 1 efforts that the center that we are moving our technical
') 2 assistance work to is also looking at and attempting to help 3 us make sure our perceptions of what the priorities are are 7-
'- 4 really on the mark.
5 And to a large extent, it may be driven by DOE's 6 production schedule. In that regard, there's a couple of 7 key dates that I think are--near-term dates that I think are 8 significant for you folks to focus in on. The Department of 9 Energy is still planning, to our understanding, to submit 10 the construction authorization application in the year 1995.
11 Backing up from that, they intend to issue the final SCP late 12 in calendar year 1988. This is just a draft to get input llll 13 from the interested parties to finalize the draft. And then 14 a key production piece of DOE's program is that they are 15 scheduling to sink the exploratory shaft at the site in mid 1H 1989.
17 DR. MOELLER: And to repeat that now, the final 18 SCP is going to be late this year?
19 MR. BROWNING: Right. But probably into fiscal 20 year 89 not '88, so for budgeting purposes it's in the next 21 year.
m 22 DR. MOELLER: And the exploratory shaft is in 1989?
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23 MR. BROWNING: Right. The middle of 1989. June 7 s, 21 or July time frame.
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25 DR. STEINDLER: Let's see. You will be looking Acme Reporting Company
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22 1 at the process of getting comments back and forth between i a K- 2 yourselves and DOE on the Site Characterization Plan so that 3 they can issue that final version late this year.
_ 4 MR. BROWNING: Right.
5 DR. STEINDLER: That implies that the--at least it 6 implies to me that the documentation and its adequacy will 7 have to be subjected to some kind of a review in that time 8 frame. But I gather that your electronic data base will that 9 be settled and the issue won't in fact be functional?
10 MR. BROWNING: That's right, at this stage.
11 DR. STEINDLER: So the existing 2,000 to 10,000 12 documents that back up things like that series of volumes llll 13 in front of you--
14 MR. BROWNING: It's all hard copy.
15 DR. STEINDLER: It's going to be all hard copy and 16 they are going to be read by 40,000 people trying to keep 17 track of what's going on.
18 MR. BROWNING: No, at least not on my staff it's 19 not 40,000. Across the country it may be greater than than--
20 DR. STEINDLER: Is that a doable schedule as far 21 as you're concerned?
7, 22 MR. BROWNING: Yes, yes.
' ]
23 DR. STEINDLER: If that's doable, then why do you rw 21 need the electronic data base?
)
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25 MR. BROWNING: In terms of reviewness, it's doable.
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23 1 In terms of when we get to the licensing application in 1995,
> 2 and we have this plus all the other documentation, six-month 3 updates, technical reports, all that documentation that's been
- \
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4 generated over that time, that's what we'll have to be dealing 5 with. Not just this document. This thing will be multiplied 6 by seven to eight years worth of document generation capa- i 7 bility of which you are well aware the Federal government has 8 a great capacity to do it.
9 DR. STEINDLER: I guess what I'm saying is that I 10 think a fair fraction of the technical work on which things 11 are based may very well have already been injected into the 12 literature. The ad6itional increment between now and the time you get around to a license application may be modest llh 13 14 in comparison to what's already in existence. And what's 15 already in existence is presumably what you are going to be 16 using to evaluate the adequacy of the Site Characterization 17 Plan. So isn't the major portion of the technical literature 18 in front of you something that you have to deal with?
That may not be correct perception either. You 19 20 can always argue that--
21 MR. BROWNING: I'm not sure I'm really the right cs 22 one by myself to be making the argument for the licensing L] It's a combination of my argument and the 23 support system.
et lawyers, okay. I really don't think this is the right place fm t i w'
25 to start debating that particular issue. I would like to l Acme Reporting Company n .,.....
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24 1 defer it to a separate session if you are interested in pur-I '
K- 2 suing that particular approach.
3 DR. STEINDLER: Fine.
4 MR. PARRY: Let me just mention though, Marty, that 5 a lot of the concern was not just the NRC staff being aware 6 of data, but what was expected to be a large number of in-7 terveners probably still will be a large number of interested 8 parties and provide them with a practical ongoing way where 9 a limited staff that they would have available to them could 10 be made aware of key items and they could follow those key 11 items without holding up the licensing process or the hearing 12 board for getting information. That's I think in part--
llll 13 MR. BROWNING: Well, if it's acceptable, I would 14 like to note that you folks are interested in that and we 15 would be glad to schedule a more in-depth session on the ad-16 vantages of that. Particularly after the negotiated rule-17 making thing gets sorted out and moving again.
18 DR. MOELLER: Well, one other comment, not to pro-19 long it, but just for Marty and me. The ACRS has essentially 20 a mandate to comment on all rulemaking. Now, if that carries 21 over to the Waste Management Committee, then we may not be s 22 a participant but we will certainly have to review this en-(
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23 tire thing and offer detailed comments.
,s 2: DR. STEINDLER: I would expect to do that.
l]
25 MR. BROWNING: So the point I was trying to make Acme Reporting Company n . .....
25 1 is the impact of narrowing from three sites to one site is
- 2 not a reduction of two-thirds of my resources. However, we 3 have been taking steps to comply with the focusing down and 4 there clearly are some resource impacts.
5 For exmaple, we had a site representative located 6 at the Hanford site. The functions of that office are no 7 longer required so that particular job is no longer available 8 and that particular person has been redirected to work on the 9 low-level waste program.
10 The Project Manager--by three teams that were set 11 up and part of the review plan for this document identifies 12 who the technical people are that are on the three teams.
llll 13 The Project Managers for the Salt Team and the Hanford Team 14 have also been redirected to work on the Low-Level Waste 15 Program.
16 In total, about nine people have been either trans-17 ferred or detailed from my group to low-level or the other 18 two divisions within the of fice of which I'm a part to work 19 on the safeguards piece and the fuel cycle piece of the work.
20 MR. ORTH: I have a question. Before these people 21 got reassigned from Hanford and Salt and one thing and another, cm 22 was there time for any compilation and close-outs so that we
\vl 23 don't lose all the work that's been done?
g,. 21 MR. BROWNING: Yes. As a matter of fact, all the b records that they have in their office are all duplicated 25 Acme Reporting Company
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26 1 here. So from the standpoint of the records, we have all
. 2 t h e r e c o r d s h e r e a n d t h e y a r e g o i n g t o b e p u t t '. n g t h e m i n a 3 form and if there's ever any need we can draw them back out x 4 again.
5 MR. ORTH: For more than just the records, usually 6 if somebody's been assigned to it, they have a fair amount 7 of insight and things that they've learned that really should 8 be documented in addition.
9 MR. BROWNING: Most of the observations that the 10 site representatives made are documented in letters to me 11 that are a part of the public record. I don't think there is 12 any other insight other than what they've been giving me on lll) 13 a periodic basis that would now have to be documented.
34 MR. PARRY: bob, will Mr. Cook then be returning 15 here or will he be staying at Hanford?
Ig MR. BROWNING: Well, he's currently considering 17 what he wants to do. As an individual, he is available or 18 I think there's a potential he may want to retire. But ne 39 clearly has--we have an obligation to bring him back here and 20 we've made him an offer to have him come back and work in the 21 Low-Level Waste Program.
, - 22 MR. PARRY: I didn't want to get into personnel
( '
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23 matters, but Hanford is a low-le"el burial site and there
__ .y might be some application or some reason to consider having
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25 him there.
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27 l
l 1 MR. BROWNING: Right.
K- 2 MR. PARRY: That's why I asked.
l 3 MR. BROWNING: Clearly the impact on our people,
'd 4 hecause we have a much smaller staff, is a lot less than the l l
5 impact on the DOE program and all the af fected state and l
l 6 tribes that had developed programs to be able to follow the 7 DOE program, f 8 Just as a matter of perspective, my nine people 1
9 that have been reassigned so far I think compares to the Han-l 10 ford site. I've seen news articles that said there's over 11 1,000 people who are uffected on the DOE side and I've seen 12 articles saying up to thirty people are affected at the state llll 13 site and, you know, it does have a large human impact on the
! 14 labor pool that was oriented to try to make sure this thing 15 was being done right.
16 So that clearly is the biggest impact on our ef-17 forts.
18 The other thing that might be worth highlighting 19 is that one of the provisions of the bill is what they refer 20 to as a nuclear waste negotiator which is an individual nomi-21 nated by the President and subject to concurrence by the e-S 22 Senate I believe to act as a person that trould go around try-L.__)
23 ing to find a site, state, or Indian tribe that would be
,, 24 willing to host either a repository or monitored retrieveable
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l 25 storage facility. This would be done in parallel to the Acme Reporting Company
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, ~ 28 1 1 ongoing effort:to characterize the Nevada site as to its
- 2 . acceptability for a repository.
3 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me. I don't really under-IN kI 4 . stand that:as we sit and talk about it. If Yucca Mountain 5 'n_
i Nevada is the selected site, _and if no other repository 6 can be considered for twenty years and so forth, and if the 7 MRS cannot be considered until the repository construction 8 actually begins, what is this negotiator going to do?
'9 MR. BROWNING: I presume--I haven't been'able to 10 have the time to read, if it exists, all the background be-11 hind the intent of the Act. But I presume it's a backup 12 effort in the event that the Nevada site proves to be techni-Or for some other reason,'the Nevada llll 13 cally unacceptable.
14 site approach is not pursued, whatever that might be. It's 15 the only backup in terms of a geologic repository that's 16 built into the Act.
17 I think it's to try a slightly different approach
-18 to try to see if there's a politically acceptable site and 19 then go take a look at whether it's technically acceptable.
20 DR. STEINDLER: Are there any requirements on the 21 NRC to begin an examination of the technical suitability of 22 the site in the event that the negotiator finds an area or 23 a group willing to house a repository? Are there any words 24 in the bill that would put you people into action in the
_O 25 event that--
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. . 29 1- MR. BROWNING: Yes, the negotiator would--under lq.
v- 2 the terms of the Act,.a negotiator can come to any agency 3 that he~wants to for advice..and information, so I presume
'4- that if the negotiator were'to find:a state that thought
.5 a they h'd a particular location that they thought might be
- 6. technically acceptable, I presume that he would come to us-7 and ask us what our opinion was and if that happened, we 8 would have to divert some technical resources to deal with 9 that aspect. We don't have any such resources specifically 10 budgeted. That's another potential impact on why we don't--
11 why we have to be careful about reacting too.quickly to di-12 vert the technical resources I built up and developed to be llll 13 able to deal with the repository to other things.
l 14 An ideal place to move them is to move them into 15 the low-level area so they can help out in the low-level 16 area and then if I ever needed them, the same kind of techni-17 cal skills and disciplines could potentially be brought back
- 18. to bear on the repository situation.
19 The kind of skills we need within the agency to 20 deal witit the repository or disposal thing are not necessarily 21 the right kind of disciplines to deal with medical licensing 22 or licensing of other facilities, so we don't have a lot of 23 built in flexibility to do that other than the repository 24 area. But even in the low-level area, they are not completely 25 budgeted to handle every conceiveable thing either, so we use Acme Reporting Company s202s 628 4868
r 1 30 t
l 1 that to cover the peaks and valleys and be able to move the I
) 2 technical disciplines into working on similar kinds of pro- !
3 jects. l x/ 4 DR. MOELLER: Is the negotiator a single person?
)
MR. BROWNING:
5 Yes.
6 DR. MOELLER: I mean it's not like a panel or a 7 committee, it's an individual.
8 MR. BROWNING: It's an individual.
9 DR. MOELLER: And where is he or she located?
10 MR. BROWNING: It doesn't say. I presume they will it be moving around quite a few states.
12 MR. PARRY: I had read it before and I have it in 13 front of me now. It's actually in the Executive Office of h
g4 the President. And--
15 MR. BROWNING: It doesn't speak to where they 16 would be physically located. I presume they'd operate out g7 of Washington, but I don't know.
18 DR. MOELLER: So it's in the Executive Office of 19 the President and this is a single individual--
20 MR. PARRY: With some staff that's provided. There 21 is a five-year limitation on the term of the office. Not the individual,
,, 22
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i 8 DR. MOELLER: Well, does that make sense in terms 23 21 f the timing?
-uJ The intent I believe 25 MR. PARRY: I think it does.
Acme Reporting Company 42OJi 629 4 6MR
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I here:was to take into account some of the presentations that 1
2 were made unofficially by other states who were interested 3 in being considered. And--
4 DR. MOELLER: To follow through on'those.
5 MR. PARRY: Right. To give them a. chance, because 6 there was apparently some discussion between'one level of s
7 the state government and the Federal representation from a 8 specific state. And it would make sense on the lines that 9 Bob was pointing out if we had a problem in the near terms 10 with Nevada and we'd be able to turn to another site.
11 DR. MOELLER: Thank you.
12 MR. BROWNING: Basically if Nevada does not prove to be an acceptable location for the repository, the Depart-lllh 13 14 ment of Energy has to go back to--stop all work there and go 15 back to Congress in any event, and nothing a negotiator works 16 out would have any effect until Congress specifically acted 17 on it. So basically both the negotiator and DOE would have 18 to go back to Congress if the present plan of focusing on the 19 Nevada thing does not technically work out.
20 Another aspect that might be of interest and have 21 some potential impact on our program is the provision to 99 establish what they refer to as a Technical Review Board.
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23 The Act provides for an establishing of an eleven-member 24 Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board that reports to the 25 secretary of the Department of Energy and directly to Congress .
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3 1 The membership of that board is to be nominated by
} 2 the National Academy of Science to the President, I believe, 3 and the Act lays.out specitic criteria for if those folks-4 should' meet, one of which' is that DOE employees, employees e
5 of National Laboratories under contract to' DOE, and employees 6 .of organizations performing high-level waste or spent fuel 7 activities under contract to DOE are not eligible to be mem-8 bers of that group. So that eliminates an awful lot of peo-9 ple that knows something about the subject.
10 DR. MOELLER: And there also, as I recall, to 11 nominate twenty-two people for the eleven positions.
12 MR. BROWNING: That's right.
13 DR. MOELLER: I had the same questions you have.
h 14 MR. BROWNING: So that that particular board will 15 have a staff, a fairly limited staff. I think ten profes-16 sional staff, and I presume there may be some impact on our 17 program if that board wanta to have us come give presenta-18 tions about what our issues are. I think it remains to be 19 seen exactly how that board would operate or function with 20 respect to NRC's program.
21 The primary intent, according to the Act, is to 22 do a technical oversight of the DOE program. And to have a direct entree to the Congress.
23 24 DR. STEINDLER: Technical oversight appears to be 25 based on what I thought I read, one or two meetings a year.
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-1 MR. BROWNING: No, I believe--if I recall'cor-
) 2 rectly, they"have to submit certain reports to Congress.
3 DR. MOELLER: It's semi-annual.
L 4' MR. BROWNING: It doesn't limit the number of 5 meetings: they have. In fact, it's not even clear whether 6 it's a full-time or part-time. job, although I presume that 7 the people of the stature they are looking for would not be 8 available for a full-time job. I just don't know.
0- DR. MOELLER: Well, and there's also a question 10 in terms of this subcommittee and the future committees, how 11 we would interact with this group.
12 DR. STEINDLER: We're going to compete for talent.
MR. BROWNING: Well, I think you have a rather ll 13 14 large pool of people potentially.
15 DR. STEINDLER: We have a larger pool than they 16 do.
g7 MR. BRONNING: Correct.
ig DR. STEINDLER: The elimination of that group of ig people that you indicated does I think give them some pro-20 blems.
21 MR. BROWNING: Unless there's specific questions, 2~9 I thihk those are the key things in the Act that have an
.(:) impact on our! program. We've looked at all our technical 23 assistance work and we've been working with the research 21
(
25 folks'to look at their technical programs to see how the Acme Reporting Company
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34 1 elimination of the Hanford site and the Texas site impact our 2 programs and I would'have been surprised-if they-had a major 3 impact, because we've been trying to keep our programs as 4 generic and as.proactive as we can.
5 One casualty of'that program was a program that the
.6 Research people had been working on to do some corrosion work 7 of materials in a salt environment. Obviously we can't sup-8 port that anymore so that effort will not be--it hadn't been 9 placed, so it's just a matter of not doing something we were 10 planning on doing.
11 The technical assistance work that I have under my 12 cognizance, each of our technical assistance contracts have g 13 pieces written into them to allow the technical resources 14 within the contractor to be diverted from the proactive work 15 to the reactive work when the reactive work comes. And 16 'they are not' working on both at the same time typically.
17 So we.just won't exercise those pieces of the contracts for 18 the Hanford and the Texas site. We are in the process of 19 exercising it with regard to the review of this document 20 right now.
21 Which leads me into the draft Site Characterization 22 Plan unless you have any specific questions about the Act O -and its impact on our program.
23 q~ DR. MOELLERi I have a few. Now, there's a MRS O 25 Review Commission, but as we've already heard, then that Acme Reporting Company
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35 1 would interact with Dick Cunningham's group.
__) 2 There's a Review Panel. Maybe--
3 MR. BROWNING: That's at the state level. If the J
4 host state enters into a benefit agreement which would be an 5 agreement that they would not--I'm not sure I'm saying this 6 thing right, but I think the intent is that the state does 7 not fight the process but cooperates with the process. Then 8 they can enter into an agreement where they get what's re-9 ferred to as the benefit, which is a payment of I believe 10 $10 million up into the point in time that the repository it starts receiving spent fuel or waste and then $20 million a 12 year subsequent to that.
You may recall an earlier version of the proposed l 13 g4 legislation that was $100 million a year. That got reduced 15 in the final Act.
16 DR. MOELLER: But in addition--
17 MR. BROWNING: If they go into that kind of an 1g arrangement, then there's a provision for state representa-39 tives and local people I think, and Indian tribe representa-20 tives to serve on a board to help advise DOE and comment to 21 DOE. I think the analogy to that, if I'm not mistaken, may-
^
22 be Dr. Krauskoff could help me out here--I think there's a
( .)
23 similar kind of an arrangement at the New Mexico site for 24 the Whip facility, where the state has a particular group Y.] that looks at the site and DOE has to pay attention to their 25 Acme Reporting Company 42026 628 4896
36 1 comments and deal with their comments. And they are a duly s 2 constituted group. It's not like a member of the public 3 trying to get somebody's attention.
I 4 DR. MOELLER: Well, with regard to that state 5 group in New Mexico, which Bob Neal directs, we've interacted 6 and in fact they've appeared here and we've heard from them 7 when we were out there. One item which they just recently 8 reported on and where they were challenging DCE was on pro-9 blems of the design of the exhaust air monitors for the Whip 10 site, and they apparently had some real good information and 11 are now bringing about some changes.
12 But back in terms now of that $10 or $20 million llll 13 a year. As I read this, the state that hosts the site will 14 also receive I guess additional funds for schools and for 15 highways and for all types of impacts that the facility has 10 on that area.
17 Now, in transportation, they said that they would 18 provide trains in emergency response for state and local 19 people for transportation accidents. Is that just for the 20 state in which the repository is located or for every highway 21 that those move along anywhere in the United States?
c3 22 MR. BROWNING: I'm not that familiar with that
'A 23 provision. Clearly if it's in there I think it would be
,- 21 primarily for the state, but I know anybody along the trans- t U
25 portation corridor would also be interested in that I presume.
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37 1 That kind of training could be made available to them too, K ,1 2 whether it's required by law or not.
3 DR. MOELLER: I forget whether you call this your Ac .-
( ).
_. _ 4 ministrative Technical Review Plan or just Technical Review 5 Plan for the SCPs. Will it be revised now to focus only on 6 Yucca Mountain? Or will you just use it?
7 MR. BROWNING: We have issued a review plan. That 8 is this document right here.
9 DR. MOELLER: Right.
10 MR. BROWNING: And it is a technical piece. It 11 was done with the assumption that we'd be reviewing all three, 12 We are not changing that. We don't have time to go back and lllg 13 change that. We're busy exercising this, but only focusing 14 in on Nevada. Just like Nevada doesn't have a chance to 15 change these documente to delete any reference to Hanford.
10 DR. MOELLER: Right.
17 MR. BROWNING: Or the Texas site.
18 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
19 MR. BROWNING: We will be using this and then 20 based on the experience we get in implementing this review 21 plan, we probably will end up modifying it to reflect the
,, 22 experience we get on using it, and it's not clear it's going i s L
23 to work exactly the way we laid it out. So as we go through 24 the process, we have people watching where we deviate from J
25 this process and that will be reflected in a revision to it Acme Reporting Company d202) 625 4889
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i ic - 38 1 by the time we get the final SCP Review Plan out.
\- 2 DR. STEINDLER: But in part, didn't DOE write 3' that document from Nevada to be in.conformance with your
. in L.' '4 Review Plan?- So if you are' deviating from that procedure--
5 MR. BROWNING: ' No. They did it in conformance with 6 all'the agreements we had reached in terms of the content of 7 the document, the format, the content of the document. They 8 didn't have this review plan. I mean we just finished it in-9 December. So they really didn't have this review plan at the 10 time they were generating this. But this really I don't 11 think would have been necessary for them to develop this 12 document. We had been interfacing with them enough that we llll 13 knew what they were doing here. We had a lot of workshops 14 and technical exchanges where-they laid out the content and 15 format of how they were going to do it.
16 DR.-MOELLER: Now, the Waste Policy Act Amendments 17 talks about dry cast storage at the nuclear power plant 18 sites. Who handles that? NRR?
19 MR. BROWNING: No. That would be Dick Cunningham's 20 group.
21 DR. MOELLER: That's Cunningham.
22 MR. BROWNING: Anything connected with storage of m the spent fuel is dry cast. That's all licensed under Dick 24 Cunningham's group.
25 DR. MOELLER: Now, will DOE go ahead and issue the Acme Reporting Company n,......
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, 39 1= consultative draft SCPs.for B. Whip.and Deaf Smith?
D *
\s 2 MR.' BROWNING: ' I don',t' bel'ieve so. My understand-3 ing.is they are just going to.put them on_the shelf. We are 5
4 not even going to get them. We don'tchave room in'our new 5 office space for this much less documents that we're not go-JG ing to review.
7 DR. MOELLER: Let me ask one final question. And 8 I don't know the right words to chose, but in essence, were 9 you happy with the selection of Yucca Mountain?
10 MR. BROWNING: I'm not sure happy is the right word.
1 11 I think it does allow both us and DOE to focus in on one site 12 and I think the net result is the disadvantages of not having llll 13 some backups in case one works is one disadvantage. But the 14 advantage is you can really focus all your attention on one-15- site and'I think the net result is a better technical job 16 will result from it.
~
17 And I think what is an advantage to us is that for 18 years we've living off DOE's slippages and delays. I don't 19 see that happening anymore so whatever benefit we got out of i
20 promising something with the expectation that DOE would not 21 be able to produce and we'd be able to still look good in the 22 process in terms of being able to react to their--my reactive O-23 piece of the thing being able to react to their products.
, 24 I think the days when we can benefit from any slippages is 25 gone. I don't think--we sometimes refer that to the l
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1 possibil'ity--as.the possibility that DOE will accelerate n ~
their Nevada program as a- result of only working on one.
\_/ .2-3 In reality you can't move any faster than a cer-f)'
\, 4 tain amount.and do the job right, .but I think'the pctential 5 for slippages-has been reduced unless the state and[other 6 People can' find other ways.to stop the process.
7 I "ould like to comment that the Act has these 8 things about reaching benefits agreements. We see no sign 9 from what we can see that the state has any intention at all 10 to stop fighting and resisting the repositories, so_I.think 11 they've made.it quite clear to us. Governor's Sawyer's group 12 was in town when they were working on the legislation, talk-llll 13 ing with various Congressional representatives and they g,r asked to meet with the various Federal agencies and we went' 15 down to meet with them. They made it quite clear that from 16 a standpoint of the political structure in Nevada, they were 17 going to fight it' tooth and nail.
18 DR. MOELLER: Well, then, where does that leave 19 that portion of the plan?
20 MR. BROWNING: Right where we are right now. And 21 they are playing adversarial--you know, "I don't believe 22 it's going to work," kind of attitude, which is not neces-
.O v
23 sarily unhealthy.
21 DR. MOELLER: No, that's helpful, but if they f-V 25 really--you know, we talked earlier about this negotiator.
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l 41 1 Will one of his first jobs be to go out and try to negotiate
/ 2 with Nevada to get them to accept it?
3 MR. BROWNING: I don't know how to speculate on j
4 what the negotiator is going to be able to do or how he's 5 going to go about doing it.
6 DR. MOELLER: No, I agree with you completely that 7 it's very healthy to have the devil's advocates in the oppo-8 sition because they keep you on your toes and they may bring 9 up a key technical issue, j l
I 10 MR. BROWNING: I've found that some of the--for 11 example, there's a woman in Indiana who reviews our techni-12 cal literature with a fine tooth comb and carries on an in-And back when lllh 13 depth discussion with a university professor.
14 we were working on some low-level waste thing which she hap- ,
1 15 pened to be particular interested in, I personally considered IG her an unpaid member of my staff because she came up with so 17 many good ideas worth our while pursuing. So it can be very 18 beneficial.
19 I think the dilemma is if the political side of 20 the house keeps fighting it and the technical side does a 21 devil's advocate. I mean our job is basically to play the cs 22 part of the devil's advocate. You know, "We don't believe L) 23 it will work. Prove it to me." And "Prove it to me some
,x 24 more," ~ kind of approach.
L) 25 If that's turned around and people really try that Acme Reporting Company L2GJ1 htts 4996
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- ( 2 the question one way or the other, the political side picks 3 up something and says, "See, here's a' report from NRC-that
[( .
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says this is a concern. That shows the site isn't any good."
5 It really isn't going to be very helpful 'in terms of getting 6 a good technical dialectic and dialogue going. 'Poople are 7 going to be potentially afraid to raise a negative word in 8 the technical arena because they are afraid it's going to be 9 misused. And then the next thing you know you find your-
- 10. .selves dealing with newspaper articles and you are starting 11 to dance to somebody else's schedule and tune instead of do-12 ing a real thorough well-thought out technical job.
lllh - 13 Anybody who can figure out how to avoid that situa-14 tion should deserve a Nobel prize.
15 DR. STEINDLER: Well, that situation exists al-16 ready and has for years. I don't think there's anything new 17 that the Act has brought in that regard.
18 One of the questions that arises is having focused 19 on the Nevada site and as you indicate Nevada will continue 20 to oppose it. Are those provisions of the original Act still.
- s. 21 valid that if the governor elects to oppose it, it takes an 22 override by both houses of Congress in order to approve it?
23 MR. BROWNING: No. I think--my impression is and 24 I'm not a lawyer, so that is primarily a legal question. My 25 impression from reading the Act 's that Congress has already Acme Reporting Company
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4 43 s
.1 decided that. They've already overridden any veto. The-
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1 2 on1y thing-that would kill it now is a technical flaw at the 3 site.
\- 4 DR. STENDLER: I see. But the formalized process 5 'of an actual override which may not come until Congress has 6 changed-~the make up of the Congress could very well be im-7 portant to-this area.
8 MR. BROWNING: I believe that's correct but the 9 detailed legal analysis of the bill is still under way and
~
10 I'd be conjecturing. I shouldn't do that.
11 DR. MOELLER: I' guess back on my earlier question, 12 and I don't want to be unfair to you and so just_say you llll 13 don't want to answer. But what I was saying was NRC happy
- 14 with the selection, I meant it more in a sense, do you be-15 lieve they chose the best of the three sites? Or is your 16 answer, "Well , we didn't have enough information really to 17 say."
18 MR. BROWNING: You know, at this stage of the data 19 collection and information about the site--in fact I'm not 20 sure you could ever, even after all the data is collected, 21 say which one was best. Each one had concerns that needed 22 to be addressed and it wasn't clear whether you could over-23 come the concerns at any of them. So I think the jury is 24 still out until the data is collected.
25 And if the process works properly, one of the thingo Acme Reporting Company
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44 1 we'll be~ focusing in on'is based oniour-understanding of the
( 2 site and our' technical concerns is the program oriented to--
3 "ward getting.the facts about those concerns as early as pos-
. () ~ .1 sible becauseithere is zero incentive to prolong this pro-5 cess any longer than possible, if in fact there are fatal 6 flaws at the' site. And human nature being what it is, now 7 that they focus in on this one, and all the folks working on 8 this site have seen what happens to the employment situation, 9 theoretically people will be less inclined to try to look for 4
10 the fatal flaws. So the whole program has got to be- "Let's 11 go look for the fatal flow and find it as quickly as possible 12 or show that's it not there and move on with the site."
DR. STEINDLER: There are using hierachy documents lllh 13 14 that DOE has turned up which were put together prior to the 15 Congressional decision to focus in on a single site. Which 16 Presumably were put together and reviewed by you folks in a 17 perfectly reasonable technical basis'. I assume those things
~18 are still valid and the implication of a hierarchy is that 39 you have identified those things which could represent fatal 20 flaws.
21 So isn't the plan to solve that kind of a problem 22 fairly well in hand and on track?
O MR. BROWNING: I believe so. I think that the 23 24 question probably is not so much what the investigations are.
' It's what schedule and time frame they are on.
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3 MR. ORTH: Marty.just asked the fatal' flaw' question'.
1:)
1 4.
If there is no fatal flaws, go.
~
But the important. thing is 5 to establish very early what are the hierarchy-of fatal
.6 flaws, the most important and knock them out one by one.
7 MR. BROWNING: We had done some work about the same 8 time that the Act was being considered and tried to take'a 9 look at our technical concerns with regard--you know, the 10 site specific technical concerns and which ones in our judge-11 ment could be done by doing surface-related inspections versus 12 sinking the shaft, and as I recal1 at the Nevada site quite llll 13 a few of them required sinking the shaf t in order to really 14 deal with the issue.
15 -DR. STEINDLER: Now, sinking a large shaft--
i 16 MR. BROWNING: Sinking a large shaft and getting 17 people down at depth and'doing horizontal drifting at the 18 . site. Now, a lot of people don't like to hear that kind of 19 argument because they equate sinking an exploratory shaft 20 with starting to build the repository when in fact that is 21 not the case. It 's necessary--not necessary , suf fici'ent- -
22 but a necessary piece to thoroughly investigating that site.
23 Any site.
21 DR. STEINDLER: Let me ask a hypothetical question-25 which you can obviously refuse to answer. If Congress were Acme Reporting Company a m ,s,. ....
46 l' 'not'to act on repository-related issues for three years,
} 2 . would'you be able with a different schedule and a different 3 allocation.or priorities and resources to do your job? The
! 57 '4 ~ converse of that is, to what. extent are you structuring your 5 current activities and to what extent do you see DOE, and 6 I don't want you. speaking for DOE unless you want to, to 7 what extent are those two bodies structuring their activities
~
8 because t.ere is always the potential that the next Congress 9 is g'oing to undo what the last Congress did. Or do something 10 else. Is'that a consideration in your activities--
11 MR. BROWNING: It's something that you have in the d
12 back of your mind, but we can't be planning based on what we lllll 13 think Congress is going to do. We have to--in fact, the ,
14 whole process was proceeding on a particular course until 15 we actually saw what the legislation said and then you stop 16 and react to that.
17 DR. STEINDLER: So you're saying that your efforts 18 are in effect politically neutral?
19 MR. BROWNING: That's our intent. I'm not sure 20 how it's perceived, but I'm trying to keep our particular 21 program on a technical plane and try to keep out of the poli-22 tics of the situation to the extent they will allow you not 23 to be drawn into the process.
24 Are there any questions? Did you want to ask if 25 the public had any questions?
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47 1 DR. MOELLER: Does anyone in the audience have a kJ 2 burning question? ,
3 (No response.)
's 4 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Let's go ahead.
5 DR. STEINDLER: Are you going to attack the next G topic?
7 MR. BROWNING: I thought I just did. What's the 8 next topic?
9 MR. STEINDLER: Well, the Technical Review Plan.
10 MR. BROWNING: I thought I just did.
I il MR. MOELLER: That's basically done.
12 MR. BROWNING: I thought I'd done it. My intent Do you have any questions?
llh 13 was to do it.
14 DR. STEINDLER: I have a couple of questions.
15 MR. BROWNING: Sure.
1G DR. STEINDLER: Both the Technical Review Plan and 17 the, what is it you call it? The Administrative--I'll get 18 the title yet. The Administrative Plan are I assume docu-19 ments that are written internally and for your own use?
20 MR. BROWNING: Right. But they are made publically 21 available, so that people can see them.
,r- 22 DR. STEINDLER: Yes, I understand that.
m.
23 What prompted you to go through this what has to be a considerable effort to put these together?
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'o 25 MR. BROWNING: It's standard agency practice when Acme Reporting Company (202 624 4486
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1 you have.a key document to come in and review to develop a I 2 review plan. Ifwas just following standard practice. The 3 particular impetus in this thing.is we were trying to review
( 4' three in parallel and we needed to make'sure it was being done consis'tently by all the teams.
~
5 The need for when you 6- go to one site probably is not as great. But the intent is 7 to lay out what the process is so that everybody on the tech-8 nical staff is doing it consistently. We've thought it 9 through as best we can before we get it. We've trained the 10 staf f on how to do it ' to try to make sure that the time for 11 doing it is not an iterative process while we have the docu-12 ment in-house. We try to do all the iterative stuff, think-llll 13 ing about how we've going to do it, how the various technical 14 disciplines are going to interrelate. How we've taken into 15 account the performance assessment piece as well as the hy-16 drology piece and the geochemistry piece. It was to think 17 out in advance how we were going to do the job so when we get 18 it everybody is marching to the same tune and you've elimi-19 nated all the dialectic that could draw out the review pro-20 cess if you are going through that process while you are re-21 viewing the document.
22 When I looked back and see how we dealt with the 23 draft EA and the final EA, we had review plans there too 24 but there was a lot of internal agony in arriving at the 25 final' product. The staf f would go review and generate Acme Reporting Company
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49 1 something and then it would be. reviewed. And say, "Well,
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2f that's not what we want. Go back and'do'it again." And'it 3 was very, very inefficient. This.was an'attemp.t to try to 4 make this process a lot ~more efficient.
5 MR. ORTH: In that review plan.you had designated-6 which one of the offices would be in effect in charge of one-7 given activity.
8 MR. BROWNING: Have the lead for a particular area.
9 MR.. ORTH: The ones and twos assignments. And you 10 had named a bunch of organizations--
11 MR. BROWNING: And individuals.
12 MR. ORTH: And in fact people at the tail end.
13 .There were a lot of people involved.as you filled all'of 14 those positions for all three sites.
15 MR. BROWNING: 'Right.
16 MR. ORTH: Now, granted that you can't eliminate
-17 everybody just because you're going to one site. But if you 18 had enough people to do that first plan for all three sites,.
- 19 do you have enough people then to shift some over and get 20 through that effort for one site better?
21 MR. BROWNING: I believe so. Yes, sir. Because 22 if you look at the names of the individuials, sometimes you'll 23 find--for example, I only have one seismologist. I can't t 24 afford to have three. So one guy was actually reviewing all 25 three of those documents. Now he can conce: trate on one and Acme Reporting Company
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5 0 -l 1- one thing'we've never been able to do is we haven't'been L( 2 able to be in a reactive and a proactive mood. . Conversely _
3 DOE can't be.in a reactive and proactive mood. So while 4 they are' generating.a document, they can't meet with me.
5 Then they generate a document, hand it to me, and say, "We're 6 ready to meet with'you." And I say, "I can't meet with you.
7 I'm reviewing your document." Now I potentially have the 8 possibility and we're going to see how it works--is'in addi-9 tion to reviewing the document during this period of time, -
10 I'd like to have that seismologist go out to the site, look 11 at the static array that they currently have in place, and
~
12 see if we can do what I'd call a technical readiness review.
llll 13 I wish Dr- Remick was here because he's an advocate of the .
14 readiness review.
15 They currently have a static array of devices 16 sitting there' listening to what's going on at the site. We 17 haven't really done a thorough on-site technical look to see 18 whether we would buy in on that. In terms of taking a look 10 at what's going on, see if we see any issues. Raise them 20 early. What I'd like to do in addition to having them re-21 view that document and prepare comments, get out there, look ,
22 at what is going on, go to the place where they are evaluat-23 ing the data and then when we finish, we'll say, "Hey, we've 24 looked at what's going on. We can record that. And if you 25 keep doing it that way, we don't have any problem with it."
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51 1 So that won't be an issue five years from now when I send him i' -- '
2 out and he says, "Gee, you've got the thing in the wrong 3 place." Or "You know, I see some problem with this."
( '
4 MR. ORTH: Okay. But now, so the three different 5 seismology efforts and the three different review plans were 6 one person?
7 MR. BROWNING: Right.
J 8 MR. ORTH: How many other of the overall assign-9 ments that you had were really one person?
10 MR. BROWNING: I think there are like three, okay.
11 And you have to be a little careful because there's a lead 12 person, but one person doesn't necessarily have all the lllh 13 knowledge to deal with a particular subject, so they would 14 go back within the technical group of hydrologist and 15 kibbitz and talk and get input. okay, so it's a synergistic l 16 kind of thing. The lead names are a litle misleading in 17 that they would go back within the group where I have a 18 nucleus of technical experts, a lot of them complement each 10 other.
20 For example, I have yet to be able to find a hy-21 drology person who is both a field-oriented guy and a real-
,3 22 world guy and a modeler. I haven't been able to find one 1
nj 23 guy that can do that. You need two guys and keep bumping
~x 24 them together so you've got some predicted capability and (V
25 in-house capability.
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li So I think we have more than enough-to do to keep
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2 these people' productively and usefully occupied;if~thistfull
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i 3 concept of prelicensing, identification of issues,.and reso-
, 4 lution of issues is workable. _There are indications that 5 the state, for example, doesn't like that' idea one bit. And 6 from their perspective, it looks like we're leading the way--
7 you know, we're telling DOE how to do their jobs so when 8 they submit it,~you know, we'll automatically agree with it.
9- That is a way to look at it and that's inherent in the pre-10 licensing iterative process. When you get through, you 11 shouldn't have any residual disagreement.
12 DR. MOELLER: Well, in this technical review plan llll 13 _ you state that these activities you have underway constitute 14 informal conference between a prospective applicant and the 15- staff. That's in quotes. But then you go on and say, "And 16 is not_part of a licensing proceeding." Now, again, that's 17 . simply the legal statement, is it not?
18 MR. BROWNING: Right. It's not the adjudicatory l 10 kind of process at this point.
20 DR. STEINDLER: I had some problems with that par-21 ticular concept. And I would assume that somewhere early on o 22 .you need to get a final determination as to whether that's 23 allowed by the general rules of the game or not.
24 MR. BROWNING: One thing we've got going for us is 25 we have both a technically integrated team and we have a Acme Reporting Company e
q 53 L , ,
-1 legal. integration. We have lawyers that are working with us,
'O 2 lock. step in1this whole process, and there are people that 3 are u' sed to the licensing-process. So it's not like we're
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4 off doing one? thing and lat'er on the lawyers will catch up.
^
5 D R ~. STEINDLER: All right. But I guess what I am 6 saying is that I think it's probably worthwhile to have not 7 only'the lawyers involved, but also get--you'll pardon the 8 expression--the judges to agree.
9 MR. BROWNING: Well, there is--as part of the pro-10 cessing, there is a look to see whether it would be advisable 11 to convene a licensing board kind of arrangement early.
12 For example, in the negotiating rulemaking, I understand that g 13 some of the parties want to have a licensing board to imple-14 ment whatever the rule ends up being. And the distrust of 15 DOE and if the truth be told of us too is so great that they 16 want to have both ar, applicant and a reviewer and then some-17 body else oversighting that process in case there is a' dis-18 agreement on what kind of thing should go into the licensing 19 support system.
20 So that is something that is currently under con-21 sideration as a procedural deficiency.
22 DR. STEINDLE: In your iechnical Review Plan and 23 you use two terms that I see no place defined in sufficiently 24 precise terms that I'm happy that they are constantly used.
25 They are used in a constant way. One is the term "performance
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- 1- allocation," which I think means different things to maybe A
kA 2 DOE and perhaps the writer.or the~auth'or of this document.
3 And:the other is what is_the' difference between the draft 4 and the consultation draft?
5 MR. BROWNING: I don't think' there is a difference-6 between a draft and--that's probably an editorial problem 7 if we're using two different terms.
8 DR. STEINDLER: Okay. Well, they seem to be used 9 interchangeably'and--
10 MR. BROWNING: In terms of the DOE's document, the 11 only document we've got is a draft consultative document.
12 They may be using the word--in terms of our generating our lllll 13 review product, they may be using the word "draft comments."
14 I'm not sure.
15 And with regard to the "performance allocation,"
10 I don't think there's a disagreement between us. There is 17 a reference document which has yet to be produced which 18 describes--as I understand it, it's yet to be produced--
19 which describes DOE's plan for allocating the overall per-20 formance of the site to particular barriers or components.
21 And how they are going to do that. We don't have that docu-22 ment yet. It's one of the referenced documents here and it 23 again is a critical document I think.
24 DR. STEINDLER: But you t.re using the tena the 25 same way DOE does.
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55 1 MR. BROWNING: That's my understanding, yes. I
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' - 2 don't think there's any disagreement.
3 DR. STEINDLER: In the scope of your Technical Re-4 view Plan document, you indicate you are going to focus on 5 two things. One is Part 60 and the other one is DOE's Part l l
6 960. My question i s why is it that you are excluding almost 7 explicitly things like Part 20?
8 MR. BROWNING: I think they are covererd--these 9 documents refer back to that would be my--
10 DR. STEINDLER: I've got a couple of other ques-11 tions. Oh, in your Administrative Plan Procedures document 12 I think I walked ny way through this whole thing without llll 13 ever finding out precisely what your product is. Until I 14 finally got to the point where I reali2ed that there is a 15 thing called a point paper--
f 16 MR. BROWNING: Point paper.
l 17 D R ., STEINDLER: And the English language doesn't l
18 do much for me to identify just what is a point paper.
19 ME. BROWNING: If I recall correctly, they were 20 supposed to have developed an example which should be in that 21 document. I'm not familiar with the document that I can point
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- 22 you to the exact place. But one of the concerns we were 23 trying to work out in preparing this document is to give the r3 24 staff enough guidance so that they would know what the pro-t a
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56 1 actually had tha technical staff take a crack at what the 2 format of a point paper would look like and I believe that's 3 one of the attachments in that document. That may help you
) 4 understand that.
5 I'm sorry I can't give you the exact reference now.
6 If you don't mind. I could give you a call later this after-7 noon and point you to the exact place.
8 DR. STEINDLER: That would be good.
9 DR. MOELLER: Well, one thing that would definitely 10 help particularly like in this Administrative Plan and Pro-11 cedures is a key. Like here it refers to the BC review of 12 DOE letter. Well, BC means "Branch Chief" if you can hunt And then CDS CB--well, we know what that means, but lllh 13 it up.
14 "Each PM will notify the respective states."
15 MR. BROWNING: Project Managers.
16 DR. MOELLER: Well, see, that to me is prime minis-17 ter. I found that when I was reading it I was having to go 18 back--
19 MR. BROWNING: We have the usual government problem 20 of our alphabet soup that only we can understand. For the 21 benefit--and that's a good point because that document is not 22 just for our benefit. It's for the benefit of other people
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J 23 that want to understand our process, so we'll try to make rs 24 sure that's covered in the final SCP document.
() And we should have covered it 25 DR. MOELLER:
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1- Tearlier and'you hinted a little bit and I don't remember the
.55sp/. 2) new name of the FFRDC, but what are thelimpacts of all of I- .;
3~ this now on the FFRDC?
b32 45 MR. BROWNING: The first. year.which is under con-5~ tract right now, nothing, because they weren't doing any 6 ' site specific work for us. It was'all. gearing up to under-7 stand th$ regulations. Deciding what--it's primarily in the 8 proactive work area. All the reactive technical assistance 9 is focused in on our existing contractor technical base
~
10 because they've been building up knowledge of this and can 11 react instantaneously. To try to have the Center review this 12 there would be an awful lot of--particularly if they looked llll 13 at all.three, it would have been a tremendous amount of dupli-14 cation of effort that we already have in our existing techni-15 cal assistance base.
16 All this stuff couldn't come at a worse time. If 17 I had to design it for not working well--Congress changed 18 the rules on us. We weren't geared up to handle it anyway.
19 We just moved from Silver Spring to White Flint and all our 20 computers are down. And then they delivered the document to 21- us while we were in the process of moving. There was a big
- . 22 snowfall and I'm converting my technical assistance base 23 from a tried-and-true thing to a new thing. But we'll manage 24 somehow.
25 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Any other questions for Bob?
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1 MR. PARRYi 7 Bob', are you planning perhaps to in-2 crease the number ~of' people. assigned at Nevada?
3 MR.. . BROWNING : :Not right now. We are trying to 4 sort out whether we need to do that. But I think we need to 5 .get a b'etter handle on what DOE's reaction to this thing is.-
6 Until we'get an idea'of how they're reacting--at some point 7 in time I.think we clearly need to get some additional tech-8 nical support out there, but the exact time I don't know.
9 QA would lx3 another good resource to have on site on a more 10 permanent basis.
11 Right now my plan is to try to take advantage of 12 this, focusing in on one site and freeing some folks up from llll 13. being reactive to being totally proactive, to have a higher
~
14 total integrated staff presence on the site. Not necessarily 15 resident, but if you kept track of how many staff hours I~
16 had with people actually on the site looking at what was go-17 ing on, conducting both a technically integrated QA kind of 18 look at key technical programs that are going to be conten-19 tious in the licensing arena or have a lot of technical
.20 uncertainty associated with it, I think you'll see a higher 21 integrated staff effort there. Presuming my travel budget 22 will support it.
-m MR. PARRY: Dade, as you'll remember that and re-24 spond to one of Paul's comments to us during our visit out 25 there.
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59 1 On this matter, the question that was raised about 2 the state having the right to complain. My understanding and 3 I've reread this and I've had unofficial comments from the
-' 4 audience, but I will check it. My understanding is the 5 state can still complain and reject--
6 DR. STEINDLER: You mean they can veto it and have 7 to go back to Congress.
8 MR. PARRY: That's still my understanding.
9 MR. BROWNING: I shouldn't have commented one way 10 or the other because I'm not really the right person--
11 MR. PARRY: But I will check that in detail and 12 let you know.
Okay.
lllh 13 DR. MOELLER: Any other questions or com-14 ments?
15 (No response.)
16 DR. MOELLER: I see no response.
17 (Whereupon, there was a short recess at 10:00.)
18 DR. MOELLER: The meeting will resume. We're going 19 to pick up now with the topics of the Revision I of the 20 Standard Review Plan for Shallow Land Burial and then follow 21 that with a quickie report on the status of the rupture of
- 22 the Radway slyners at TMI II.
N5 23 John surmeier will be introducing the speakers
.cs 21 and he's with the Division of Low-Level Waste, Decommission-U 25 ing and Uranium--
1 Acme Reporting Company
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60 1 MR. SURMEIER: It's the Division of Low-Level Waste
.) 2 Management and Decommissioning, but uranium miltailings is 3 involved in it but tnat's not part of the title. It would get
- 4 even longer.
1 5 I'm the Technical Branch Chief in the Division of G Low-Level Waste Management and this morning we are going to 7 be talking about the Revision 1 to tho Standard Review Plan 4 I
8 but especially on the alternative methods for disposal which 9 we have a requirement to fulfill by January 30th of this year 10 under the Amendments Act, 11 And the person who is going to start this discus-12 sion is Dr. Michael Tokar, who is the Section Leader for the llll 13 Engineering Section within my branch. And to Mr. Kane, who 14 is a Senior Civil Engineer, who has been responsible to the 15 Project Manager for this activity, will also give a prc;en-16 tation. I 17 After we get through with that discussion on the 18 alternative methods of disposal, we will spend maybe five or 19 ten minutes giving you a status report on the TMI waste and 20 we had a problem on it, and tell you what we propose to brief 21 you on later on in that area.
22 Michael.
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23 MR. TOKAR: Thank you, John.
73 2: Last August we appeared before this subcommittee
( .)
25 and gave you a brief accounting of the status of our efforts Acme Reporting Company n u. m.
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61 1 on'the development of technical guidance and licensing capa-2 bility for alternative methods of disposal of-low-level-3 radioactive waste.
4 And at.that time we discussed briefly some of the 5 chronology of events over the past few years. We discussed 6~ the impact of-the Amendments Act of 1985 and we told you how-7 we were attempting to meet the milestones and objectives that 8 were established for us by that Amendments Act and meet 9 those by the time that we were required to complete the job.
10 As an introduction to the main topic of discussion 11 -today, which is, as John Surmeier said, Revision 1 of the 12 Standard Review Plan, I would like to briefly over the next llll 13 five or six minutes recap some of the po'ints that we covered 14 - last August, and in so doing I think you will gain a better 15 perspective and improved understanding of what we've done, 16 why we did it, and how in particular the activity on the 17 Review Plan revisions and additions is tied to the Amendments 18 Act and the requirements that were established in that docu-19 ment.
20 As we did in August, I have provided you, to start 21 off with, a definition of the term "alternatives or alterna-22 tive methods of disposal." It's on page 2 of your handout.
23 As you can see, it's relatively concise and simply states 24 that "alternative methods of disposal of low-level waste are 25 those that would utilize engineered barriers or structures or Acme Reporting Company
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1: wh'ich otherwise would be a significant departure from tra-2 ditional shallow' land burial."
3 The main focus here, of course, is on the engineered
- 4 barriers or structures. But the definition is structured in-5 such a~way that it includes or allows the inclusion of im-6 Proved shallow land burial--that is,-trench-type burial, that 7 meet's Part 61 performance objectives and technical require -
8 ments.
9 It's important to remember I think that the NRC 10 staff believes that adequate protection of public health and 11 safety is in fact provided by trench-type shallow land burial 12 that meets Part 61. We are not requiring in this Agency 13 these engineered barriers or structures or,other alcernativ s, 14 We are simply meeting the mandate of Congress and the desire 15 expressed by the public through their representatives.on 16 state organizations and regional contacts by providing the 17 technical guidance and licensing. capability that people wish 18 us to provide.
.10 The thing that's been driving.us over the past 20 couple of years, of course, is the Amendments Act of 1985.
21 On page 3 of your handout you can see the milestones and on
~~
objectives that were established by that Act.
O. DR. STEINDLER: Excuse me. Now, this new Amend-23 og
~
ments Act of '87 for the High-Level Waste had no impact O 25 whatsoever?
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63 1 MR. TOKAR: None. The Amendments Act of '85 es-m
' 2 tablished certain milestones and objectives of the NRC, the 3 first of which was to identify alternative methods of dis-
, )
4 posal and to provide some technical information on those 5 methods of disposal.by January of 1987 and at that time also 6 to have established procedures and to have developed a tech-7 nical capability to process a license application within 8 fifteen months after receipt of the application. And then D by thia January 1988 we had to meet the final milestone of 10 the Act which was to identify technical information that a 11 license applicant must provide with his application. In 12 order to persue such r.ethods, together with the technical llll 13 requirements needed for licensing.
14 We have now met each of these milestones and ob-15 jectives. We have met the first milestone by virtue of a 16 study that we conducted with the Corps of Engineers which 17 resulted in the publishing cif a multi-bind report and a 18 technical position which was put out in final form in Decem-19 ber of 1986, 20 As you can see on page 4 of your handout, that 21 particular study resulted in the identification of five
,r y 22 major alternative technologies. They included above-ground l) 23 vaults, below-ground vaults, earth-mounted concrete bunkers, g- 21 shaft disposal, and mined cavaties.
U 25 DR. STEINDLER: Excuse me. None of those l
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64 1 alternatives or options addressed issues that arise when a
w/ 2 the question of graded and Class C wastes are brought up.
3 Is that correct?
4 MR. TOKAR: We did not address Class C waste as 5 part of this effort.
6 DR. STEINDLER: Greater than Class C.
7 MR. TOKAR: Greater than Class C. I misspoke my-8 self, yes.
9 DR. STEINDLER: Is there anything in the Act, the 10 Amendments Act, that either requires or suggests that the 11 greater than Class C issue should be addressed by you folks?
12 MR. TOKAR: Dr. Greeve is the Deputy Division 13 Director.
14 DR. GREEVE: There are a couple of other provisions 15 in the Act that address greater than Class C. If my memory 16 is correct, one of them asks DOD to develop a paper to de-17 liver that to--
18 MR. TOKAR: We're not hearing you.
19 DR. GREEVE: The Act had provisions for many 20 agencies. One of the provisions had DOE submitting a report 21 to Congress making recommendations on the greater than Class
-3 22 C. Which they've done.
?
J 23 Another provision in the Act gave the responsibi-21 lity for greater than Class C to the federal government. So
- )
,- 3 25 those are the two key features. And I thought we had been Acme Reporting Company
65 1 down here once to talk to you about greater than Class C.
_) 2 But effectively the Department submitted this report to Con-3 gress saying that they effectively needed some time to study 4 the issue.
5 DR. MOELLER: Well, I thought we heard that DOE G had made the decision that greater than Class C would go in 7 a repository.
8 MR. SURMEIER: We had recommended to DOE that it 9 could go into a repository.
10 DR. MOELLER: And they had not concurred?
11 DR. GREEVE: What would happen was the Act called 12 for the DOE to submit a report to Congress which they did.
llll 13 We had a schedule to comment on that report. We did. And 14 our comments went back to the Department of Energy. It's 15 a letter from the Office Director to Rossen and in that let-16 ter the staff suggested that DOE consider putting it into a 17 repository. Those are the actions that took place to date.
18 DR. MOELLER: Well, I guess I was confused, be-19 cause I recall the study and we heard the report on it, what 20 were the volumes of the waste and they were minimal, and--
21 DR. GREEVE: That's the DOE report. The DOE report
, m, 22 does include all that.
%_J 23 MR. SURMEIER: About 2,000 cubic feet.
,~ 21 DR. MOELLER: But what you are saying to us is that Q) 25 the final decision has not been made, at least not from DOE's Acme Reporting Company m .a ....
66 1 point of view?
._j 2 DR. GREEVE: The latest official piece is our letter 3 back to DOE.
) 4 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Thank you.
5 MR. TOKAR: Shall we proceed?
G DR. MOELLER: Yes, continue. Excuse us.
7 MR. TOKAR: As we proceeded then in our efforts 8 to identify viable alternative methods of disposal to develop 9 the technical information on those alternatives, we came to 10 realize that we didn't have sufficient resources to address 11 every possible option in a comprehensive manner. That is, 12 we couldn't attempt to address every option in the level of lllg 13 detail necessary to license it and still meet the milestones 14 and dates and so forth that were established by the Amend-15 ments Act.
16 So we developed a strategy, the main elements of 17 which are shown on page 5 of your handout. We decided to 18 focus our resources on a limited number of these alternatives, 19 those that were the most promising ones. And the ones that 20 appeared to be most promising from a technological standpoint 21 to us were those that would be soil covered and that would 22 use sematitious materials like reinforced concrete.
)
23 The two options that we decided to focus on for
,_s 33 the most part were below-ground vaults and earth-mounted l \
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25 concrete bunkers.
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67 1 The technological reason for that, for the most 2 part, has to do with the fact that the main concern here is 3 with the fact that these structures have to perform for hun-
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4 dreds of years as a materials durability concerns associated 5 with that and by placing the concrete structure below the 6 ground sufficient to be below the free stall line, you 7 eliminate one of the major degradation modes for concrete, 8 or at least reduce it very significantly.
9 So that's one reason that we went forward with the 10 emphasis on below-ground vaults and earth-mounted concrete 11 bunkers.
12 By focusing on only two of these options, by the llll 13 way, we also were consistent with the desire to encourage 14 standardization.
15 DR. MOELLER: we received as a way of background for 16 this subcommittee meeting, the Corps of Engineers,I think it 17 was, report on below-ground vaults, NUREG CR-5041--yes, U.S.
18 Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Stations' recommendation 19 to the NRC for criteria. I found it overwhelming, but maybe 20 I'm in the minority and maybe it is required, but I found it 21 so much more complex than 10 CFR 61, for example. And I s 22 guess that's what you are saying to us.
~-
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23 MR. TOKAR: Well, we'll be talking specifically 7s gg to that.
)
25 DR. MOELLER: Oh, okay.
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. 68 l' " MR. - TOKAR: I don't want to steal Joe Kane's--
2 'DR. MOELLER: , Let's wait to hear that. >
3 .MR. TOKAR: But you are quite correct. Part 61 ss 4L is in fact a rather generally worded regulation without~a 5 great deal of specificity in it. It's intended tx) be that 6 way to provide flexibility. And more specificity is what 7 we are trying to provide with the Review Plan, with the 8 other guidance documents that we've been preparing and puttinc 9 out which in part this NUREG document is a piece.
10_ DR. MOELLER: Okay.
11 MR. TOKAR: Okay. On meeting the final, that is, 12 January '88 milestone of the Amendment Acts, we decided to llll 13 develop technical guidance in the form of technical' criteria 14 that could be factored into the Standard Review Plans and 15 that would assure that the Part 61 performance objectives
, 16 would be met for these two options, the below-ground vaults i-17 and the earth-mounted concrete bunkers.
i 18 You may recall that Revision Zero of the Standard i
l 19 Review Plan, which was the January '87 version, focused pri-20 marily on improved--that is, trench-type shallow land burial.
i
!' 21 It did not have anything in it that was directed to the de-l 22 sign, for example, at a construction or operation or enclo- ,
!' -( t t *>3 sure of these engineered structures that we're talking about i
! 24 now.
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25 What we've done with Revision 1 to the Review Plan l Acme Reporting Company
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69 1 is to add the information and the technical criteria that K/ 2 would be needed by an NRC technical reviewer to enable him 3 to review a license application for these two types of alter-i 4 native technologies.
5 It's important to note that in this effort our 6 primary concern has been to provide guidance that would en-7 sure that the structure, as I mentioned earlier, would not 8 degrade prematurely in a way that would create the so-called 9 bathtub effect. That is in fact the major concern or ob-10 jective that's addressed by Part 61 from the start. That is 11 that the primary objective or a primary objective of Part 61 12 is to prevent contact of the waste with water, because once lllh 13 you have contact of the waste with water you have an extrac-14 tion pathway for extracting the radionuclides from the 15 waste and a pathway then for migration of the radionuclides 16 through the ground water to the environment. So that's the 17 one major concern that everything in Part 61 is intended to 18 preclude, and that is the underlying thread, I should say, 19 or theme behind what you have seen in the Corps of Engineers 20 recommendations and as you will hear from Joe Kane in a few 21 minutes that runs through the Standard Review Plan Revision.
-m 22 ThEt's about all I wanted to say in the way of an i_#
23 introduction to sort of set the groundwork here for Joe's
, ,3 21 discussion.
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25 I just want to say a few words before Joe starts Acme Reporting Company
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70 1 in the way of introduction in terms of his background and
- 2 qualifications. Joe is a civil engineer in my section who 3 has been the Program Manager now for the past couple of years t
,J 4 or so for the work that we've been undertaking and developing 5 these alternative methods of disposal.
6 Prior to coming to the NRC he spent about a dozen 7 years with the Corps of Engineers working on the design of 8 large civil works including dams and other engineering 9 structures. He came to NRC and worked for about ten years 10 in NRR in the Structural and Geotechnical Engineering Branch 11 in which he was a technical reviewer of foundation designs 12 for reactor buildings, so he's got quite an extensive back-llll 13 ground in this area of structural design and analysis.
14 So with that, I'll turn the floor over to Joe.
15 MR. KANE: Thank you, Mike.
16 The task that we're going to talk about is the 17 one that faced NRC in taking Part 61 regulations and develop-18 ing them into the technical guidance and information that 19 both a reviewer would need to look at were he to review a 20 license application, and the guidance that would be very 21 helpful to a potential license applicant.
, 22 What information is important in the design of i \/
23 these structures? Well, as a aid in developing the SRP,
<- 21 the staff turned to a portion of the Code of Federal Regula-L) tions that had been developed for nuclear reactors. Namely, 25 Acme Reporting Company
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71 1 Appendix A to 10CFR Part 50.
, \
_,/ 2 We turn to it to get the format of the general 3 design criteria. And on Sheet 7 of the handouts we attempt r+
mi . to recall what the general design criteria does. It esta-5 blishes the minimum requirements for the principal design 6 criteria. And in Appendix A, the principal design criteria 7 is defined as that which is to establish the necessary de-8 sign, fabrication, construction, testing and performance 9 requirements for important structures, systems and components 10 that provide reasonable assurance that the facility can be gi operated without undo risk to the health and safety of the 12 Public.
llll 13 We recognize that the general design criteria in g .; Appendix A are regulations and you will see the terminology 15 will be "the design shall be this way." We recognize in 16 low-level waste we are not developing regulations. We have g7 Part 61. What we are attempting to develop though is the 18 technical information that would be needed to make the de-gg sign. So ours are not regulations. They are technical 20 guidance.
3 ,, DR. MOELLER: I hear you. How does that work then f r a nuclear power plant? This same information is a regu-
,- 22
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25 MR. SURMEIER: They ca:' come in and go along with what Acme Reporting Company
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72 1 we have in the guidance document which will be in the Stan-
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i 2 dard Review Plan and come in and provide differences and say 3 that "Based on our analysis, we believe it should be a devia-
- 4 tion from there." The burden of proof would, of course, be 5 on the license applicant as far as moving ahead. Whereas 6 being part of Appendix A, they could not do it. It says, 7 "You shall do it according to this specifically." So this 8 one provides the direction. It gives guidance. But it does 9 give flexibility.
10 MR. TOKAR: That is, in fact, going back to the 11 point you raised earlier about the comprehensiveness of this 12 report. That is one reason why the title of the report says, lllg 13 "Recommendations to the NRC." These are not requirements.
14 These are not mandatory. These are simply recommended 15 methods of practice, if you will. Good methods of practice, 16 which in the opinion of the Corps, which has a lot of ex-17 perience in a large concrete structure design in construc-18 tion, is an appropriate way to go to get a good quality 19 product. And which we endorse also.
20 However, as John Surmeier just said, an applicant 21 has the option of deviating from these recommendations, try-
,3 22 ing another approach. All he has to do is provide us some 1
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23 reasonable rationale for why his approach is viable and
,s 21 workable one.
v) 25 DR. STEINDLER: Can you clarify for me the Acme Reporting Company ns,.u..
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s 4' 73 i L differenc between incorporating these things into a Standard 2 Review Pldn and making-a regulatory guide?
3 ~MR. TOKAR: Well, maybe and maybe not. Both the 4 Standard Review Plan and regulatory guides are in' fact 5 _
guidance dbcument's. 'Iheyl are not regulations. They don't 6 .have the -enforcement power of a regulation. And the way that 7_ they are developed simply happens to be different in respect 8 to what peer review process, et cetera, these different 9 documents go through.
10 .DR. STEINDLER: Yes, and I guess that's really what 11 I'm after. I gather the reg guide peer review process is a 12 bit more rigorous.than that would be found in the case of h 13 Standard Review Plan. Why is it that you've elected not to 14 go through--
15 MR. SURMEIER: I think time, and again, I can't say 16 specifically because I came in after the decision was made, 17 but I think without any question we were given a very, very_
18 short period of time to do this by law.
19 DR. STEINDLER: Oh, I understand that.
20 MR. SURMEIER: And I'm just saying that it could 21 turn out that we may end up looking at it and getting com-
. 22 ments and may go with the Reg Guide. It could even be that 23 if people such as yourself said, "Hey, you really uhould go 2g and put it in as general guidance as part of a regulation 25 to Part 61, like it is in Appendix 50 with modifications."
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74 1 We might even do that. But to try to get something out and
() 2 meet the deadline is I think the main reason.
3 MR. TOKAR: There are other reasons I think also i i i/ 4 and they include the fact that with a Reg Guide, the process 5 one goes through actually is that the user or developer 6 office submits the document to the Research office and they 7 handle it from then on out through the promulgation of the 8 document, send it out for comment, et cetera, et cetera.
9 But the Review Plans, at least my experience with them in 10 both NRR and NMSS is a document that is generally developed 11 by the licensing office itself, in part, I suspect, because 12 the licensing office, after all, is the one that is respon-lllg 13 sible for doing the licensing technical review. It has the 14 most experience with the ways that the review need to be 15 carried out.
16 And again, the case of NRR in particular, they 17 had in fact several years of experience with actually re-18 viewing and approving power plants before they actually 19 developed the first review plan. So I think that's the 20 general background about one of the main reasons why things 21 are handled in that fashion.
22 And Reg Guides in fact can take a very long--pick-
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23 ing up on John Surmeier's point--they can take quite a long 7 21 time to develop because depending on the particular topic
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1 discrete topic that is usually like rod ejection for PWRs s
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' / 2 or something like that. You are focusing on one very narrow 3 issue. And here we're talking about the entire gamut of
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-' 4 systems and components and methods of analysis, et cetera, 5 that are involved in the licensing of disposal facilities.
6 DR. MOELLER: Marty, I think though that's a very 7 good question because now this morning the first thing on the 8 high-level waste, everything's tied to Reg Guide 4.17. And 9 so some sort of consistency would be helpful.
10 DR. STENDLER: Let me just comment. The issue of 11 internal review regardless of the other concerns that you 12 brought up, and I hear what you are saying, is I think a llll 13 non-trivial one. If there is a significant difference be-14 tween them, it seems to me you have the option of getting the 15 best of both worlds; namely, have knowledgeable NMMSS people 16 put together the document and then go through the kind of 17 review which is at least equivalent to the Reg Guide might 18 be subjected to. Then you solve the problem which you ad-19 dress, which I understand what you are saying. I'm not sure 20 I appreciate the breadth of it because I'm simply not fami-21 liar.
(3 22 MR. TOKAR: Actually that's what we're uoing in a
, )
23 sense. I mean we are getting comments from you and others 21 in the ACRS. The National Academy of Sciences is involved in 25 looking at this area. We've discussed the matter with people Acme Reporting Company l .u.. .a...
76 1 in the industry. We presented the draft of these recommenda-E_/ 2 tions, for example, at a meeting, a special session out in 3 Denver at the Low-level Radioactive Waste meeting in August 7
?
1_ '. 4 of this year. And solicited comments from the public in that 5 regard. So all these things have been done, at least in part, l
6 and will continue to be done.
7 And the other point I'd like to make is, as you 8 know, what we're talking about now is Revision 1 to the 9 Standard Review P]an. We had Revision Zero last year. The 10 implication there obviously is that we will continue to re-11 vise the Review Plan on a periodic basis and upgrade it and 12 improve it as we go along. This is not an emutable document llll 13 that's going to come out in January and never be modified 14 again.
15 MR. KANE: Often the question is asked of the 16 staff if shallow land trench-type burial is acceptable, then 17 why is it necessary to have detailed regulatory guidance on 18 engineered structured that are enhancements to shallow land 19 trench-type burial. And the reason may not be too obvious 20 but it is important.
21 What we're attempting to do is ensure that an 22 engineered structure that's now going to be constructed will I, i 23 function properly and still permit the performance objectives
,, 33 to be met. And that is a large part of what we're trying to
)
'q_J 25 do with our SRPs and with the Corps document.
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77 1 Maybe I can give a possible example. If we decide
- 2 to put in a below-ground vault and it's not, for some reason, 3 either properly designed or properly constructed. We could
's 4 go through the period of operation, go through the period of 5 closure, and have it closed and then go into the institu-6 tonal control period.
7 But for some reason because it was not properly 8 constructed, say the vault roof were to collapse. That 9 could actually worsen condition that you would possible have 10 in the trench-type burial. You could then have large sub-11 sidence. You could have water collecting on top of the 12 vault, going into the vault. And emersing the waste and llll 13 liquid, which is what we're trying not to do with our regula-14 tions and criteria.
15 It is these types of situations, those kind of 16 conditions, that have prompted the staff to develop the 17 guidance that we do have in our SRPs.
18 As Mike as indicated--
19 DR. MOELLER: Well, excuse me too. You may have 20 said it and I missed it. I gather one of your primary rea-21 sons or the pressures to evaluate alternatives is the fact 73 22 that several states have passed regulations saying they don't
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23 want shallow land burial.
73 21 MR. SURMEIER: That's why the Amendments Act V
25 explicitly directed NRC to develop alternatives to shallow Acme Reporting Company
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78 1 land burial and have out guidance by January 30th of 1988 i
> 2 which again goes back to the question Dr. Steindler had asked 3 as far as why do we go one way versus another. Time was very 7
% 4 much of the essence.
5 DR. MOELLER: Now, you're going to tell us or 6 remind us again what it is you have to have by next week?
7 MR. TOKAR: I had hoped to--I thought I stated 8 that clearly with my opening remarks.
9 DR. MOELLER: Maybe I missed it. Say it again.
10 MR. TOKAR: If you go back to your handout on page 11 3, I believe it is. You'll find a bullet there. It says 1 12 by January '88 NRC must identify technical information that llll 13 a license applicant must provide and the technical require-14 ments for licensing.
15 Now, the way that we have interpreted that mile-16 stone or objective is to, as I tried to explain further, 17 was to develop these technical criteria and recommendations 18 that are being placed in the Standard Review Plan, the 19 corresponding information that will be provided in the 20 standard format and content guide which is, as you know, 21 tells the applicant the organization of the information
,s 22 that should be submitted and the type of information that (a )
23 should be provided, and that will have as well certain back-em 21 ground documents that will be available to both the technical L] reviewer and the applicant, and the nature of these NUREG 25 Acme Reporting Company
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I reports. That's the way that we have attempted to meet that
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'us' 2 particular milestone, which is the major milestone.
3 DR. STEINDLER: So in eleven days you expect to 7~T
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5 MR. TOKAR: Yes.
G MR. SURMEIEll: We got the printing dona yesterday.
7 It's just off the presa what we have. Unfortunately we don't 8 have it to pass out, but we are working very hard on it.
9 (GO TO NEXT PAGE.)
10 11 12 k!!h 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
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080 1 DR. MOELLER: I must have missed,'it when you said
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> 2 it. In other words, you will reference the Corps of Engineers 3 document in your standard review process?
s' 4 MR. SURMEIER: Yes.
5 DR. MOELLER: And that will meet the need--will 6 l meet the Congressional mandate?
I 7 MR. SURMEIER: Yes.
8 MR. KANE: It will be a lot more than that. Ve 9 will reference it, but we will also, similar to what we do 10 in any SRP, identify the information, identify the inforra-11 tion that an applicant would have to submit in a license 12 application.
llll 13 MR. TOKAR: In fact what Joe will be doing over the 14 remaining period of time he has is to tell you exactly how 1
15 this is to be accomplished. That is, what the parts of the 16 review plan are and how they will be used--
17 DR. MOELLER: That's what I wanted to know.
18 MR. TOKAR: --along with these guidance documents.
19 DR. MOELLER: Thank you.
20 MR. TOKAR: When we--
21 [
I DR. MOELLER: And again, back to what Dr. Steindler e3 22 i said, you could have done this gy Reg Guide or you could have N) i done it by a regulation except the rule making--
23 h{ The Conmission--let me say this.
c 24 "9 St'RMEI ER :
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i 3 MR. MOELLER: You would have done it. !
O 4 MR. SURMEIER: --thought it was that necessary, A
5 then we would have gone to a regulation. If it turns out 6 later on the people'believe that it~would be useful to in-7 corporate it as general guidance, we could certainly do that, j i 8 but staff believes that we do not need to have thpt specificity ,
9 in a regulation at this point in time.
10 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me, but I am now with.you. I ,
11 don't like to but--
12 MR. SURMEIER: Thank you very much for asking i
questions because we are involved in up to our eye brows lllh 13 !
, 14 and as a result we did not communicate and I apologize 15 DR. MOELLER: Well no, you probably did to everyone f 16 else. Go agead.
17 MR. KANE: I am now referring to sheet 9 or our 18 handouts and I am attempting to identify what we actually i 19 asked the Corps to do in the development of their reconmen-
- 20. dations so that we could use this information in the SRPs.
- 21 We asked the Corps to assist in the development of ;
- 22 general design criteria. I will give examples later on of
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I 23 what we mean by "general design criteria" for low level i
24 waste. !
I O We also asked the Corps to provide recommendatins on 25 I
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I specific review criteria and guidance to applicants.
2 You will see later on that general design criteria 3 j does not go into specifics and we try to do that with specific I )
\/ 4 review criteria.
5 One of the earliest efforts that we face in the 6 development of the general desisa criteria was to establish 7 ; the categories rhat would encompass the important structural 8! features that we needed to address for engineer structures.
9 On Page 10, we have lis ted the criteria categories 10 that we feel cover structural design, construction and opera-11 tions.
12 As you can see, they begin with the loads and load combinations that you would use in design; the structural lllg 13 14 design and analysis; construction material cuality and dur-15 bility; very inportant recognizing the time frame that these i
16 structures are to remain and perform i:t safety, retaining I
the waste. Construction and operations; cuality assurance; 17 ',
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structural performance monitoring; filters and drainace 19 h
' systems and waste cover systems, are the maior cateaories 20 that we identify.
21 From this we then develope general design criteria ,
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(_J DR. MOELLER: Now if you were building a shipping 23 f cast, not you, but writing regulations for a shippino cast, 24 c,
U the group who makes them would have to test then and so forth ,
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c 1 does someone have to make,one of these and crush it to.show
- 2. that it meets the criteria.
3 -MR. KANE: As I'understandlyour cuestion, would
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A/ 4 .someone have to make a below ground bullet and demonstrate in 5 .the fihld,thatit would be acceptable?
6 DR. MOELLER: Or demonstrate, take it, you know,.
7 -make one up here on the surface the ground and Lload it and 8 show me that it won't crush.
9 MR. KANE: The answer would be no and the reason
.10 for that is based on the experience of the Corps and our-11 selves.and what is needed for structural design and-knowing-12 what codes are available, you recognize that if you follow' llll 13 these procedures, that you could do it.-
14 DR. MOELLER: That it will do it?
15 MR. KANE: Okay.
16 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Thank.you.
17 DR. STEINDLER: Is that true for aged materials?
18 The lifetime requirement exceeds the existence of concrete 19 as a reasonably well developed' material for construction.
20 Are we smart enough to know what those procedures are acing 21 to do for materials 500 years old or 300 years old?
22 MR. TOKAR: Well, we recognize that, in fact, as 23 being a principal concern, as I mentioned earlier, as you
'1 24 Probably are aware.
0_ I think I mentioned to you also in our last meeting 25 C Heritoge Reporting Corporation (192) 6 4 4800 e
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. 2 only about 160 years of existence. It was intented, as I 3 recall, somewhere around the year 1827'or something like
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4 that andiit was another150 or 60, years.before the first 5 commercial plant in this country was in operation, so we 6 have only.about a.10'0 years or so of real experience with 7 that material and that is the reason why we have attempted, 8 in the way that we have, to provide what are fairly rigorous 9 recommendations on the nature of the concrete, the type of 10 concrete that ought to be used, the type cement,that is hot 11 Type 5 or cordelin, for example, the minimum compressing 12 strength and things like that are the kind of things we are 13 trying to recommend to people because there simply is no way, _
14 at the present time from a mechanistic standpoint, there are 15 no mechanistic models that one can use to predict the crack 16 initiation and growth kinetics and thingn like that in a con-17 crete structure over a period of jundreds of years, taking' 18 into consideration the complexities that you're going to have 19 here with respect to the external environment as well as the 20 internal environment which are, as you know, going to vary.
21 with respect to the types of waste that are placed in the 22 structure and so forth.
O 23 The best that we can do, it seems to me, is to try 24 to follow the philosophy wherein we try to provide recommen-O 25 dations that will ensure cuality construction, quality Heritage Reporting Corporation
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0 085 I materials, quality in design, quality assurance and so forth ii 2 and by that, have a reasonably high confidence level, albeit 3 perhaps unquantifiable, that this stuff, that these struc-4 tures will, in fact, perform for a very long period of time 5 as people wish they would.
6 DR. STEINDLER: All I was trying to bring out is 7 the fact that the statement that the Corps and the NRC know 8 that they don't have to test the structure if, in fact, it l
9 is built a certain way. It's not quite the correct state-10 ment as they hope and believe and I can't tell whether it's 11 more hope than belief, over the long haul, that the structure 12 will, in fact, perform as the criteria you reouire.
Well, remember in licensing, we don't lllh 13 MR. TOKAR:
14 try for absolute assurance. We try for reasonable assurance.
15 There's no way to have absolute confidence that something 16 will or will not work.
17 DR. STEINDLER: Don't misunderstand me. All I"m I
18 saying is that the statement was--I thought I heard you say 19 was that the Corps--the Corps of Engineers and the NRC know 20 ! that if it is built that way, it doesn't have to be tested, 21 this was in response to Dade's cuestion and all I'm saying
,- m 22 l is that that's not true.
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23 MR. SURMEIER: The words which were used were, I
(3 24 ; you caught us.
LJ 25 li l DR. MOELLER: Let's move on.
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i, i' . bWh 1 MR. KANE: Actually, I would"like to add to that, i-N- 2 in that one of'the. reasons in going to the Corps is that they 3 have a concreteLexpert, Brian Mather. He is recognized in the industry and'heLhad input into the Corps recommendation
~
4 5 and those kinds of questions were discussed with the Corps-in'their work and tha't'is the recog'nition that we only-have J6 .
7 a history of a 100 to 150 years of concrete.
8 But, he was confident ~ that if we did these thing 9 and we had the environment that we say we'll have in the 10 regulation, that is the water table below the structure, 11 that there would be no reason, in his estimation, that th'ese 12 structures would not last that time.
DR. STEINDLER: The issue is not isolated for llh 13 14' low level waste, et cetera. I mean it's a significant issue 15 in the case of high level waste--
16 MR. SURMEIER: Absolutely.
17 DR. STEINDLER: --shaft, ceiling and so forth.
18 MR. SURMEIER: Absolutely. ,
19 MR. KANE: The next slide on Page 11 is an attempt 20 to give you an example of a general design criteria for the 21 category loads and load combinations.
22 Structures, structural systems, and structural com-23 ponents essential for safe operation and closure of a below 24 ground vault should be designed to withstand anticipated actt al 25 loads and load combinations. The loads to be considered Heritage Reporting Corporation
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085 I should include dead.and live loads and loads-resulting from
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4- or loss of capability of the structures, systems and structural 5 components to perform.theircre. quired safety function.
6 Everybody, I think, would agree that it is a simple,
? broad and straight forward state' ment laying out the objectives 8 to be achieved. It does not have specifics.
9 As a follow'up to that, the next page, Page 12, 10 attempts to give one of the specific criterions related to 11 loads and load combinations and it's getting into more speci-12 ' fics as to concrete design, as to what load combination should gggg 13 be use and it lists the combinations and it explains what each 14 of those loads are.
15 The next slide on Page 13 has to do with an example 16 for a very important topic that we have been talking about, 17 the construction material cuality and durability in the time 18 frams that we're expecting these to maintain their integrity 19 and again, it is general design criteria that pretty much says 20 we have to use materials that provide reasonable assurance of 21 long term stability and integrity and it talks about the 22 testing methods and procedures that you would use gained from
.O accepted and recognized codes and standards.
23 24 The next sheet, Page 14 gives an example now of l 25 the specifics that we're trying to do for one particular con-l Heritage Reporting Corporation
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struction material, Portland Cement Concrete, and.there 2 was a lot of thought put into what should be used and this is 3 the Corps recommendation..
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() ~4 "Portland cement concrete shojld be air-entrained and 5 composed of Type V Portland cement, water, coarse and find.
6 aggregate, and any admixture that will desirably enhance the-7 quality and durability , such as silica fume and other appropriate
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8 mineral prodcuts. Water reducing adm'ixt ures (WRA) that reduce 9 the water-cement ratio and still. produce a workable slump to shojld be considered. The unconfined compressive strength 11 should be a minimum of 4000 psi at 28 days of age. The mixed 12 concrete should contain 6't0 7 percent air, by volume, and have h 13 a slump range of 3 to 6 inches without water reducing admix-y tures. Concrete mixed with water reducing admixtures should is have aslump or 6 to 9 inches.
16 The purpose of this sheet is to give you an idea of 17 some of the specifics that we're getting into or the different 18 types of construction materials.
39 M.R. ORTH: So what are the kinds of things that will 20 quote, "desirably enhance the quality and durability?"
21 MR. KANE: What are some of the things--it could be poselins, it could be fibers that are commonly used to increase 22 23 the durability and resistence of the concrete. It is that type ad mixture that we are talking about. It could be pose-24 25 lin.
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. :o .a 080 g MR. ORTH: .It will desirably enhance the quality 2 and durability somehow draws the implication that maybe what 3 ' you got,.the. cement isn't good enough and you got to do some-I 4- thing more. That's what was bothering me.
'S MR. KANE: The addition of admixtures, we're pointing 6 'out that hyphy,-which is sulphate resistent cement is the 7 recommendation.
8 If you chose not to use that, and you chose to use 9 Type V, one of the ways you can compensate--excuse me, if you-10 chose to use Type II, one of the ways you could compensate 11 for that is to have an' admixture that would provide you with the 12 sulphate resistence.
g 13 So what we're really saying is there'are certain ad-14 mixtures out there that can enhance the quality and you're 15 encouraged to use them, but if you useLType V, then you would 16 not be required--you would not be look'ed at'as having a need 17 for having sulphate resistent admixture.
18 MR. ORTH: If somebody comes in with some'other 39 mixture then, you or the Corps will be asked to make a cuess 20 as to whether it's as good or better than Type V?
21 MR. KANE: Both the Corps report and the SRPs permit 22 them to propose other mixtures and it states that tb Corps 23 or, as our consultant, or the staff, will look at that, make 24 an evaluation and it points out that you have to provide the technical basis for that being acceptable and the staff will 25 Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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/0 o . 000 I evaluate that.
2 MR. TOKAR: It's a point to remember that the Standard 3 Review Plan and the-Acceptance. Criteria that are provided in 4 Lit simply are one way to try to facilitate the licensing 5 ' process. It helps the technical reviewer and the asture Appli-6- cant'who.is familiar with'it to recognize that this is a 7- Way that staff has,already analyzed or evaluated the situa-8 tion and believes that it can be addressed satisfactorily, 9 but as I mentioned earlier, other options can be pursued, if 10' an applicand wanted to pursue them. They just take more time 11 more resources and be more difficult, in a sense, to get 12 approval for i$ and'because they aren't necessarily one that llll 13 the staff has already spent time and resources in considering.
14 So this is simply one recommended criteria and one 15 approach that we develoepd with the corps and with their 16 recommendatons, their cement specialists having recommended 17 these criteria as way of providing the desired quality of 18 material and other approaches can be possible.
19 MR. ORTH: I'm really agreeing with you, you see, 20 because there have been additives that have been found to 21 decrease the leech rate of various radio active materials 22 from concrete mixes, so I wasn't really disagreeing with
.O 23 you.
p 24 I would hate to have it to a point where desirable
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25 additives weren't allowed because they didn't meet some Heritage Reporting Corporation m n._m
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' set of specified criteria. That was all.
2 DR. STEINDLER:. If'an applicant were to come.in to 3 you with a cement other than Type V,'in the situation--in a
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4 combination, a formula which the applicant claims is at least 5 as good as needed. What, other than situ'p, which is the only 6 numerical--well slump and compression, what other numerical 7 criteria would you lay on~this applicant.in order to have him 8 demonstrate to you that his alternative is at least as good as 9 your proposed recommendations?
10 'MR. KANE: I think first, what we looked, as to what 11 is being;. proposed'and-what has been the experience with that 12 type of material, so we would be looking to the Corps and our-g 13 selves. Do we have experience with what is being proposed 14 and has it performed well?
15 Assuming that it was something unique and there 16 wasn't a lot of experience, I think we would go through the 17 process of asking for a series of tests--trial mixtures, gg and subjecting them to tests like pre-sauls test, that would 19 demonstrate it has the properties that are needed to be 20 stable for the long term.
23 DR. STEINDLER: Okay. Are there somewhere in the 22 review plan revisions, a list of performance, the miracle O 23 performance criteria, which is a new material, whatever it is; 24 would have to satisfy and if it satisfied would meet your O 25 criteria?
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. 00 0I 1 MR. KANE: No. Because one of the things, it could.
2 be'an endless number of proposals and--
3 MR. STEINDLER: That's not true. That's. exactly 4 my' point.
, 5 MR. KANE: What we're saying then is, we can't put 6 out guidance that is going to cover every situatio and what
.7 we do put out guidance on, is our recommendation on something
-8 that we fell confident will work.
9 Now, if you want to propose something else, we will 10 look at that and we will do whatever we feel is necessary to 11 demonstrate that it has the right properties. It would be 12 very difficult and a very expensive. job to try and cover every 13 eventuality.
14 MR. TOKAR: Let me give you a specific example, 15 Let's say we're concerned about sulphate attack. My under-16 standing of why Type V is resistent to sulphate attack is 17 that it is low in aluminum. Cenents that have hight aluminum 18 contents are more susceptible to formation of aluminum sili-19 Cates, I guess aluminum silicate sulphur compounds and they-20 expand and are not chemically long lasting.
21 So if an applicant were to come in and I were 22 reviewing an application that had some other type of cement 23 composition in it, one of the things I would look for would 24 be whether or not it had a high aluminum content in it or 25 what it had in the way of other consitutents, chemically, Heritage Reporting Corporation o.n u.
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093 I that would reduce the susceptibility to sulphate attack as 2 ' Type V does or an equivalent grade to Type V.
3 But as Joe said, you'can't have, in one' document, 14 criteria or recommendations that will address an infinite 5 spectrum of potential cases, so what we have attempted to 6 do is to go with one recommendation that we felt was one that 7 would work. If people follow this, we're confident it-will 8 work. If they want to do something else, as I said before, 9 we will look at it, but it will take further study. That to is the way Standard Review Plans work, whether we're' talking 11 about reactor regulations or anything else.
12 DR. STEINDLER: The implication is that you have no 13 numerical basis for:a set of' criteria $ gainst which you can h
14 judge any product,.any combination of things that have not 15 yet had long experience.
16 MR. TOKAR: 4000 psi isn't a numerical criteria?
17 DR. STEINDLER: Well, I said with the exception of, 18 in one case,-slump and the other one which I am not sure, 19 I'm.certainly not competent enough to determine the role of 20 the slump test in relation to the performance of a box in 21 the ground. I can understand more closely the compression 22 strength. That one, at least, I can relate to the physical
-O 23 realm.
24 But in the absence of criteria, what you're really 25 saying is that well, we've got a rough vague idea as to what Heritage Reporting Corporation m aae.
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.1 this thing ought to do and it looks like you can make decent 2 conctste out of-cement that slump has given and the 4000 psi 3 is related somehow to dead <nr live' load and we have a rough
(- . 4 idee as to what maxhmrn situations we're likely to encounter.
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5' MR. SURMEIER: I'm glad we're having--that's fine 6 for concrete--
7 DR. STEINDLER: But it doesn't do much for'you if 8 somebody comes in with something that you haven't got much 9 experience with, which, I think, and I don't want to prolong-10 this particularly, but which I think simply says if a guy.comes
- 11. in with a new product, he has a dickens of a time getting the 12 thing accepted.'
13 ~ MR'. SURMEIER: D r_.
Steinderl,.I'm very glad'that we 14 have had this dialogue because there have been some people 15 .w ho will argue that we should have had much lower criteria 16 having to do with even concrete. Why worry about 4000 psi 17 when 3000 may be adequate.
18 What I'm just saying is what you're raising is the 19 reason why we went to the Corps of Engineers to experts who 20 worried about this area for a long time, going back to reason-21 able assurance, we believe that what we have here in the 22 Standard Review Plan gives staff reasonable assurance that if
.O 23 they follow what they have here, that we will be able to get 24 it before a licensing board, even though cuestions such as 25 yours may be raised, but still be able to bring in the experts, Heritage Reporting Corporation m mae.
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' O 0,5 I to say,. hey, we think it will go. If-it-gets less than that, dv 2; you're going to get experts, such as the one we have who will 3 hey, we can talk.about 4000 psi, but if you get down to 3000
- 4 psi', we wouldn't have that type of reasonable assurance, so 5 I think that the dialogue has been very good.
6 DR. STEINDLER:. But.I am not making myself clear.
7- I don't quarrle with the 4000 psi.
8 .MR. SURMEIER: I understand.
9 DR. STEINDLER: I certainly don't quarrel with the 10 number of inches in the slump, but..what I am saying is--
11 MR. SURMEIER: It's very difficult.
12 DR. STEINDLER: --to find those two numerically 13 identified criteria--
14 M R '. SURMEIER: We don't have--
15 DR.; STEINDLER:'There are no 6thers.
16 MR. SURMEIER: No, sir.
17 DR. STEINDLER: Therefore, the new applicant that 18 might come rollingin with a product which, in fact, may turn 19 out to be better or worse, has no mechanism in advance of 20 identifying what it is that he ought to do in his own lab' 21 or wherever, to be able to anticipate what it is that you're 22 going to do in terms of asking him to submit test results.
23 MR. TOKAR: What this approach or criteria, the
- 24. standard review plan, is what that will, in general, attempt 25 to do. I will try to articulate it, maybe another way.
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r > 090 1 It provides certain discreet examples of ways: that I 2 we think one can obtain a good product or end result and in 3 this case, with a cement criterion, it talks about strength,
' 4 it talks about amount of air and change in the cement or 5 concrete, the amount of slump and so on.
6 In an analagous fashion though, you have to take 7 your example or your point, I think, a little further. I 8 remember I started off saying that we have not attempted to 9 cover all the potential viable alternative technologies that 10 were identified in the earlier study, we only addressed two 11 and an example of what I am talking about is that suppose 12 somebody comes in with a design for, let's say a shaft or lllh 13 mine cavity or above ground vault, we have not developed
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14 criteria for those and, in a sense =, it's a broader example, !
15 perhaps, of what you're talking about, but I think it's 16 similar t'o what we're' talking'about'here~.
17- We have'a limited number of criteria and a limited 18 number of examples. We have tried to be as quantitative 19 nd numerical as possible because I think that's the desirable .
20 way to go, but at the same time, have to try to provide enougt 21 flexibility to potential applicants that they don't think gs 22 that we're putting them in some kind of a straitjacket.
b One other point along this line. You 23 MR. PARRY:
24 have been specifying or emphasizing engineering sign criteria, 25 What about risk? What about giving the potential state, we j Heritage Reporting Corporation m u..
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. 4 007-g may have to make a choice between one design or another.
( : Some way of discriminating between design based on risk to 3 the public. When 61--Part 61 was generated, some considerable g
(JJ : 4 detail risk analysis were performed.
5 MR. TOKAR: I tried to "ut my earlier remarks 6 short and keep them as concise as possible, but in previous 7 . discussions that we have had before this group and others, 8 we have tried to make the point that first of all we're i 9 addressing Part 61, Part 61 - Performance Objectives and go Technical Requirements only. We have not attempted to develop 11 criteria or recommendations or requirements or whatever that 12 lie outside of Part 61.
lllg 13 As a particular example, Part 61 talks'about 25 ;
14 milirem off site dose. If a given state or compact wants to 15 have 2.5 or .25 or they want to'have something like a re-16 trievability requirement or something like that, which is not
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17 required by Part 61, that is'their prerogative, but we were 18 not attempting to--we didn't see it as our mandate to try to 39 attempt to develope guidance on things that lay outside of 20 Part 61. That is the state prerogative if they want to pursue 21 that option, but that is not something that we felt was our 22 responsibility.
23 MR. SURMEIER: And furthermore, again we have 24 testified that, you know , staff is satisfied with Part 61 as 25 promulgated and, you know, it has been the concern of publics Heritage Reporting Corporation (342) 6M4 Jet
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-' 2 doing it because we vere directed to do it and we are not 3 looking at doing any sort of risk trade-off between what Part
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' ' ' 4 61 may be better or it may be worse, but that's an engineered 5 alternative, we just haven't done anything in that area.
6 MR. KANE: I think you have been provided a copy of I
7 l the full report.
8 DR. MOELLER: Yes.
MR. KANE: There are two lines. Line 1 is for to below ground vaults. Line 2 will be for eogmatic concrete 11 bunkers.
12 Essentially after the Corps reports were near com-lllh 13 pletion, NRC developed 3 new SRP sections. They are SRP, 14 Sections 3.2a; 3.3a and 5.la. If you look on the handout 15 Sheet 16, it shows you, of the categories that we have talked 16 about, how they were combined into these 3 SRP sections.
17 Quality assurance is being separately addressed 18 by the low level waste staff in NUREG 1293, 19 ! The titles of the new SRP sections are presented on 20 Sheet 17. The first one dealing with structural design; the 1
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second one with construction and operation consideration and
(^3 22 the third one having to do with site closure and stabilization V
23 considerations.
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V 24 I'm not sure as to the extent of your familiarity 25 i with the SRPs and I'm not going to go into detail, but Heritage Reporting Corporation cman.m
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. I essentially there are 6 major sections in all SRPs. Review-em (s) 2 responsibility, self explanatory. The areas of. review. In 3 this'section, the staff attempts to describe what is to be 4 reviewed under this:SRP and identify'the information.
5 Section III has to do with the review procedures.
6- In this section we describe the procedures that we will follo, 7 in our safety evaluation report.
8 Our SRPs are not as detailed as the Corps reports.
9 What we have done, essentially, is identify the information 10 that needs to be submitged and how we will use that information 11 in our evaluation.
12 MR. SURMEIER: We will be getting you copies of the llh 13 report next week, we'll get it out--I think we can get it out 14 next week.
15 DR. MOELLER: The review plan?
16 MR. SURMEIER: The review plan.
17 MR. KANE: Section is called Accpetance Criteria 18 and it is the heart of the1SRP.= 'In this'section, we describe 19 what a staff reviewer is looking for to be able to come to 20 the conclusion that the information submitted is adequate 21 and that there is reasonable assurance that there is safety--
22 sufficient safety.
23 An important part of this acceptance criteria is to 24 identify the sections of the regulations which we're attempt-25 ing to address by this SRP. As you will see when you are Heritage Reporting Corporation
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I given.your copies of the SRP, Section 4.1 will identify O,. 2 the specific 10.CFR Part 61. sections that we are attempting 3 to cover.
-4 Section V of the SRP.has to do with evaluation 5 findings and the staff has given the-examples of the conclu-6 sions they would make based on the review they have completed.
7 I can give you zul example, a statement from an 8 evaluation finding.
9 "The applicant has adequately described the con-10 struction. materials to be used with supporting test data and-11 in service performance records to permit the staff to conclude 12 that the engineering structures will accept or reperform for llll 13. the long term in a waste disposal environment that is expected 14 to exist." It's a typical type of finding based on having 15 found sufficient information.
16 The last two sections are common to all SRPs. It 17 is the implementation and the reference section of the SRP.
18 In summary, what we would like to indicate is that 19 we anticipate fulfilling.the milestone that is due January of 20 1988 and that is identified as Technical Information.
21 We are going to issue that out, Revision 1 to the 22 Standard Review Plans and it will contain 3 new sections on
'O- t 23 alternatives.
J 24 That is the extent of my presentation.
25 DR. STEINDLER: The revision will be issued as a Heritage Reporting Corporation 1 i=> m j
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.I' final version, not..a draft? 11'
'v 2 MR. KANE: Correct.
3 DR. STEINDLER: Is.that right?
( 4 MR. KANE: Correct.
5 MR. SURMEIER:- But it could be changed. Comments R
6- could come in with modifications and reservations.
7 DR. STEINDLER: I guess'that's what I am after.
8 Are you publicizing the issuance of this in some fashion ;
9 or another that actually solicits comments or can you tell 10 me what the process is.
11 MR. TOKAR: There will be'a Federal Register notice.
12 DR, STEINDLER: Have you had any conversations llll 13 i'ith any of the compacts on your plans for .this document?
14 MR. TOKAR: Yes. As a matter of fact it has been ,
15 alluded to earlier. First of all, we.had a meeting on the 16 draft documents, the draft Corps report that is, in Denver 17 in August, a special session of that meeting where'we pre -
18 sented the recommendations of the Corps. We had the people i
19 who were working on'this work for us at the Corps there,; .
20 making presentations in their given areas of expertise.
21 We solicited comments'from the audience and engaged--and gave 22 cut copies of the documents and gave them 6 weeks or 8 weeks 23 or something like that to respond and we did receive comments 24 from a number of sources including various states. The States 25 of Texas, Pennsylvania, in particular, and incorporated our Heritage Esporting Corporation (set) est .ess k
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'( 2 needed.
3 DR. STEINDLER: Do you anticipate alternative 4
methods'to be used'by any of the or many of the. contacts?
5- MR. SUREIER: Yes.
6 MR. TOKAR: Yes. Not all of them. The State of 7l ; California, for example, for exa.nple , to my understanding, 8 has gone on record by saying they would go with a trans type 9
disposal facility, but it seems as if most states or many 10 states will go with an alternative approach.
g3 ; DR. MOELLER: And you're saying to us, you're issuing.
12 the SRP, you issued it in draft earlier. You have had lots--
g 13 MR. TOKAR: Not the Standard Review Plan. We issued, 14 in draft, the Corps report earlier--
15 DR. MOELLER: And you have had--
16 MR. TOKER: And that contains the basic backaround 17 material and recommended criteria.
18 DR. MOELLER: Right.
19 MR. STEINDLER: .Both reports?
20 MR. TOKAR: One report--just the one report as I
- 21 recall. The second report, the EMCB is actually very similar 22 to the one'for below ground fault except jn the area having 23 to do with construction, for the most part.
24 MR. KANE: Page 1.1 of the Corp report identifies 25 the groups that have commented.
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103 1 DR. MOELLER: I recall seeing that,.the listing.
( Any.other questions ~on this topic?
2 -
.3 We will look forward to receiving, you know, the 4 SRP when--
1 5 MR. SURMEIR: We'll get out as soon as possible,.
6 maybe even next week.
7 DR. MOELLER: So you wanted to take a few minutes 8 to tell us about TMI 2?
9 MR. SURMEIER: I'll make it very short. I'll try 10 to give you--there's not too much I can tell,-other than some 11 facts. We're having a meeting. TMI is having a meeting with 12 the waste vender today and we have staff from Low Level Waste llll -13 Division up there and hopefully after we've had this meeting, 14 within the next month, we'll have a better understandino of 15 what has happened.
16 NRC received a notice on December 21st of this year 17 from GPU at TMI that there had been some cracks that had been 18 developed in two liners, concrete liners. They are 15 feet by 19 6 feet like cylindrical containers. They are fairly large 20 size which included epicor II resin and--
21 MR. PARRY: John, excuse me. These weren't concrete 22 liners, were they?
23 MR. SURMEIER: No. They were carbon steel liners 24 with concrete inside, I'm sorry..
25 And basically, I'll go back and talk about the Heritage Reporting Corporation (2et) 626-4400
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1 chronology because that was the first time that we, NRC here, 2 staff, knew anydling about it was when we got the notice of it.
3 In September of '85, there was 5 of theseicontainers ,.
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\~) . 4 'as we understand it, and it-could be somewhat not completely 5 correct,-but we understand 5 of these 6 x 6-concrete container s 6 containing epicor resins were solidified and they were mixed 7 with an internal mixing blade and the vender was Westinghouse 8 Shipman. It was Portland Cement, lime and water that was the 9 solidificationaagents, as we understand, there could have b'een 10 some admixtures also, 11 .The waste had a reading of-about 274 curies. Of 12 the 5 containers, two of them are the ones which we can talk (glg 13 about right now. The other 3, I believe, either are still 14 at THI or have gone and been disposed of, but I can't really 15 tell you exactly what that has happened on.
16 In July of '86, we were. going to ship the two 17 liners to Hanfctd, Richland, Washington to be disposed of as 18 low level waste and when they were picking them up on the up crane, to pick them up and put them on the truck, they dis-20 covered a hairline crack in one of the carbon steel liners, 21 along the weld. joint and.they found some circumvential bulging-22 of the carbon steel on'both of them and as a result it may 23 have been only one, but as a resultaof this, they said put it 24 back in the storage module. This is in July of '86, so it's 25 been almost a year it had been at TMI at that time.
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4 it came around to the point where the utility could have been.
S NRC Project Office. I think ne utility said, hey we think 6 you should do more than that, we think you should do some 7 chlorine to see what actually is taking place.
8 So in October of '87, they were going to pull the liners 9 of the concrete out of the storage modules to put it into a 10 place where they could start doing some pouring, 11 At that point in time, they discovered that'.there 12 was a call, at least in the notice, that there was a crack 13 of 18 inches wide in the line, down the seam and that there 14 was concrete on the floor and the cracks were so severe that f
15 freefallkng material was all over the floor. NRC was noti-16 fied--this was in October of '87, NRC, TMI was notified on 17 December 21st. NRC is mheting with the vender, GPU, today 18 to discuss this. I have staff up there participating and 19 we were planning on on having the TMI Project Office come 20 down and give you a little bit more information, but 21 unfortunately they may know more, but I don't think so 22 because we have~had several conversations with them on the 23 telephone.
24 But, we will keep you informed and maybe at the 25 next meeting we will be able to give you an update on it.
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1 They are-going to rewrite it. '
d 2- 'Is there anything, John Greeves, that you think 3 needs to be added or modified?
4 DR. GREEVES: I think they told us that of the 5, 5 4 are still on site.
6 MR. SURMEIER: Four are still on site. 'Okay, fine.
7 DR. MOELLER: And the waste inside is apparently 8 fairly solid, but you say some-is cracked, pieces have'falled 9 down?
10 MR. SURMEIER: That's our understanding. We don't 11 know how much the loading of resins were with the cement.
12 We asked that question, but we do not have the record,-so 13 .they're getting the record for us.
14 DR. STEINDLER: Was that process a licensed pro-15 cess? -,
16 MR. SURMEIER: It should have been a topical report.
17 MR. TOKAR: That's one of the things we don't know.
18 We are reviewing cement solidification processes as part of 19 the topical report review procedure and Westinghouse has 20 one of the topical reports that we are reviewing, but we 21 don't know, at this moment, whether that particular process 22 or their particular formulations covered by that topical 23 report was the one used-up at TNI.
24 DR. GREEVES: The straight answer is yes. The 25 process was licensed and the generator-- -
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.j si7 g DR. MOELLER: Would you.plese'use the microphone.
2 It is hard to hear you.
3 Dh. GREEVES: The generator is responsible for the 4' waste.- He is the licensee and is. responsible for the waste.
5 MR. SURMEIER: This is not waste going to INEL or 6 DOE waste which is of the hotter material?
7 DR. GREEVES: No, definitely not.
8 MR. SURMEIER: Thank you.
9 DR. STEINDLER: The question, I. guess, I have is 10 under the GPU license, presumably there has got to be some 11 kind of specifications for what is to be done or what should 12 be done in order to produce the package that somebody in the g 13 NRC signed off on as being acceptable. Is that right?
14 DR. MOELLER: Well, we heard though, you know, 15 what, 6 months ago, when we were reviewing the research 16 on solidification of resin. .I thought, at that time, we .
17 were pretty much led to believe that the NRC had really not 18 licensed any resin solidification process.
19 MR. TOKAR: That's what I was trying to get at 20 earlier. It's a bit confusing I think now. What we are l
21 trying to say is that we have not reviewed and approved, for 22 commercial use, any cement solidification process.
23 On the other hand, TMI is an NRC licensed facility ,
24 and visa vee the licensee and whatever NRR has done in that 25 respect or the TMI Project Office or whatever, we are not Heritoge Reporting Corporation m wa
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I totally familiar.with because we aren't responsible for-2 .that' particular--
3 MR. SURMEIER: Well, to add one.more piece of
's 4 'information,.in January of 1984,'NRC essentially grand-5 fathered, we to'id you before, grandfathered. waste to get them 6 to go to the waste ~ disposal sites until such time as NRC had 7 reviewed the. topical report.
8 So, as a result, you know, and I do understand that 9 one of their containers may have been shipped out to !!anford.
10 If it had been shipped out to Hanford and received by Hanford, 11 everything that was being done was under the cognizance of 12 this grandfathering in January of '84.
4 lllh 13 DR. MOELLER: But if it arrived in Richland with 14 a crack, they would not have accepted it. >
15 MR. SURMEIER: They would not have accepted it.
16 DR. MOELLER: Well, in terms of licensing again, 17 if you read the record on the clean up of TMI 2, every breath 18 they take is an exchange of mcmos with an NRC approval. Jack?
19 MR. PARRY: As you may be aware, I am preparing a 20 report for the subcommittee, on solidification processes, ,
21 in general and high integirty containers, with the help of 22 Mike Tokar and John and other Low Level Division Staff and I f 23 have had contacts with this vender, Westinghouse Bitman and I 24 saw the report. I inquired of them what they knew about it.
25 I obtained some additional information which indicates, for Heritage Reporting Corporation mm
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I example: that the waste material inside the' low carbon steel O' . 2 - container is part'ially unexpended resins and sand 1that was 3 solidified in place, as has been described.
4 Current activity readings are in the range of 300 5 to 600 MR at contact measured remotely.
6 DR. STEINDERL: MR?
7 MR. PARRY: MR. And they believe that or it is sus-8 pected that the unreacted resin was quite similar to the 9 questions that were raised by the subcommittee, has proceeded 10 to continue to react either with the cement or with the 11 humidity and the air and may be responsible for the continued 12 growth of material.
i lllh 13 It is my understanding that the solidification pro-14 cess was actually done by Westinghouse Bitman personnel under 15 contract to GPU and that is just'an understanding.
16 DR. MOELLER: Well, we certainly understand that 17 this is a progress report and we will hear more about this ,
18 in the future.
19 At this time, I guess we will move from low level 20 waste to geranium mel talings and Paul Lohaus will introduce 21 the people who will be making the presentations.
s 22 Don't be concerned about the time. Any delays were 23 ours, but we learned what we needed to know.
24 Paul, we'll go with you to move ahead.
25 MR. LOHAUS: I'm Paul Lohaus, Chief of the Operations Heritage Reporting Corporation von ma
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2, 0 110 i Branch, the Division of Low Level Waste Management and De-
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.*/ 2 commissioning.
3 I would like to start and introduce the other i
' -- ' 4 staff who have joined John Greeves and John Surmeier today 5 for the remaining portion of the program.
6 First I would like to introduce Mike Fliegel. Mike 7 is a Section Leader for the Uranium Recovery Section in the 8 Operations Branch in the Division of Low Level Waste Manage-9 ment.
10 Georgio Gnugnoli. Georgio is Project Manager in the 11 Uranium and Recovery Section.
12 Dennis Solenberger. Dennis is a Project Manager 13 in the Uranium Recovery Section.
14 Maxine Delphin, Maxine is also in the Uranium Re-15 covery Section.
16 I would like to introduce Dale Smith. Dale is 17 Director of the Region IV, Uranium Pecover,/ Field Of fice in 18 ,
Denver.
l 19 j I would also like to introduce Jim Turi and Tony i
20 Brazle. Jim is Director of the Division of Uranium Mil Taling s l
21 f Project in the office of Nuclear Energy at the Department of
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, 22 Energy. Jim's Division has overall Programatic responsibility
'sm) 23 for the DOE remedial action program.
r- 24 Tony is an Environmental Protection Specialist
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25 on Jim's staff and finally, I would like to recognize John I
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- e ,8 1Kendig. [JohniswithurOfficeofGovernmentalandPublic ls) '2 Affairs. Although we'had not planned to talk ~about the
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3 agreement state' portion of the Uranium Recovery Program today ,
.' 4 if there are questions, John is here and can respond:to those.
5 The Committee--
6 DR. MOELLER: Just a quick question on agreement 7 states.. If you have an agteement. state, do they participate 8 in uranium clean up?
9 MR. LOHAUS: Yes.
10 DR. MOELLER: I didn't realize that, 11 MR. LOHAUS: Under an agreement they would carry out ,
12 a program for relicensing of the mill and reclamation on the 13 talkings.
- 14. DR. MOELLER: Okay. Thank you.
15 MR. LOHAUS: What we prepared today is designed as 16 a broad overall summary briefing of the NRC Uranium Recovery 17 Program. We'll be covering who is involved in the program, 18 what we do, we'll look at the statutory framework for the 19 program, look at the activities that are regulated in the 20 commercial sector and then review the DOE remedial action 21 program and NRCs role and responsibility in that program.
22 Before starting out, one of the charts you were 23 handed shows a breakdown for the Division of Low Level Ivaste 24 Management and Decommissioning.
25 The Division is one of 4 divisions in the Office of Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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' 1 i Nuclear: Material--Safety and Safeguards and has the overall-2 programatic responsibility:for NRC's licensing and inspection 2
. > . t 3 program for= low'leve'1' waste and uranium recovery facilities.
'M \/ The 4 Responsibilities are divided into 3 branches.
5 Regulatory Branch has responsibility for policy and regulatory 6 development coordination. This would involve, for example, ou c 7 interaction with EPA in the area of standards development.
8 They are also responsible for. development of guidance that 9 would be applied in the financial assurance area.
10 The Technical Branch provides the technical staff i
11 and technical specialiste for the program in the various 12 disciplines, surface, water and ground, ground water hydrology, llll 13 engineering design and geo-technical disciplines.
14 The Operations Branch provides the Project Manage-15 ment and licensee and inspection management and licensing and
- 16 inspection management function functions for the program and t
17 also serve as a focal point of contact at headquarters for 18 the regions. .
19 I would also like to point out that the responsibili - ,
20 ties for the licensing and inspection of the active mills has .
21 been delegated by the Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and 22 Safeguards to Region IV, the Uranium Recovery Field Office in 23 Denver.
24 So while we at headquarters will be setting the 25 overall policy and guidance and program implementatica, the i
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[4l$N 3 113 I day to ' day licensing anck inspection decisions and implementa--
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. tion is carried out in the Uranium Recovery Field Office 3' with Dale and his people. 'I think Dale will be talking about
- 4. that in more betail.
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5 With that brief. introduction, I would like'to 6 introduce 'Georgio. Georgio will walk through the regulatory 7 framework and the statutory basis-that we have in the program 8 to try and set a stage for the remaining discussion.
9 MR. GNUGNOLI: That's pretty much what I am going to 10 do. I am going to basically lay out the framework under which 11 both the Title I program, which I will explain later, Title 12 I, the clean up of the abandoned sites that were generated g 13 for the AEC needs and basically the licensing and regulatory 14 control over the commercial sites that NRC licenses.
15 In any case, if you will turn to the second page 16 of the handout, there is a brief list of the laws that, in 17 effect, govern us in terms of what we do.
18 The Atomic Energy Act, obviously, was our big clout, 19 or the big basis for working in the area of uranium recovery 20 as probably any kind of waste control in that area.
21 That changed certainly when the last act came along, 22 in terms of uranium recovery, the Uranium Mill Tailings Radia-23 tion Control Act of 1978.
24
';e also have to issue the IS and VIAS basically 25 showing an evaluation of alternatives when we do make a Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 -licensing decision. That obviously goes out of NEBA'and the 3 .
2 Energy Reorganization Act again creating URDA-and NRC.
3- I am going to try and focus mostly here on the 4 UMTRCA, the Ur'ariium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act s' simply because that lays out pretty much the framework under 6- .which we operate.
7 Title I, I will refer to frequently, is that part' 8 of the Act that governs the clean up of 24 abandoned sites 9 located in-22 locations, pretty much in the far west and one 10 location here in the east.
11 Mike Fliegel will get into more depth on where 12 these places-are and what we're doing specifically in terms--
h 13 or what DOE is doing specifically in the clean ups and what 14 our role is there.
15 Title II basically provides the basis under which 16 we license the commercial sites that are still active today.
17 Title III is, in effect, the defunct portion of the IS Act now, but what it did was it selected 2 sites that were--
19 for two tailings spots that were located on commercial sites 20 and they were separate from the activities of commercial 21 operations and mostly they were the result of creating uranium 22 for the--preparing the uranium product for the federal 23 government and AEC.
24 The idea of Title III was to do a special study on 25 the part of the Commission to determine whether there was Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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j j of) 1: ' l s 3 regulatory . control in the Atomic Energy Act and Title II to, '
() 2 in effect, say tc the owners of these commercial sites, yes, 3 you'have to take-care of'these tailings as well as the commer-( 4 cial tailings you're generating.
-s ~The choices were:two.- If it was determined by 3
6 this special' study ef fort that the're wasn ' t -enough regulatory 7 control or authority, these two~would have been designated ~
8 along.with the other 24 sites .as part of the Title I- clean up.
9 As it turns out, the Office of General Counsel did go determine, in 1979, that the State of New Mexico and the NRC 33- did have. sufficient regulatory control to have.these piles 12 takes care of under Title II and that they didn't-need to be
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lg 13 included as part of this Title I effort.
14 The'next page now focus' on the NRC Actions Under 15 Title I.
16 The two main words or actually there are 3 main 17 words. They are cooridnation, concurrence and licensing.
18 I have not talked about coordination in that coordination 19 is of common English understanding. It's basically when 20 agencies talk to each other.
21 For instance at DOE and NRC, they would coordinate
- 22 with the Department of the Interior in certain areas of l 23 dealing with these piles, g I have tried to focus mostly on the responsibilities.
24 O 25 of the NRC related to the actual work getting done. The Heritage Reporting Corporation
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jiO 3 first one I list there is the NRC concurrence in the selection
(.J 2 of remedial action. That is a step where DOE finally pulled 3 together a design blueprints, this is how we're going to do
_/ 4 the job and before a shovel has been sunk into the dirt, the 5 NRC looks at it and says, you seem to be doing the right 6 thing according to the aopropriate laws and regulations, I
7 and I'll talk about the regulations a little bit later.
8 In the same breath, we need to concur in the l
9 performance of the remedial action. So, in effect, as it's go being done, and when DOE says, hey, we're all finished we, in 11 effect, have to agree with that as well.
12 The third point mentioned there, the determination of completion of the remedial action. In a way, the third lllh 13 l4 point is sort of a termination of the second one. Obviously 15 l when the remedial action is completed, when DOE says we have i
16 finished the job here, DOE has to--NRC has to go along with 17 that. We have to concur, yes, that's done, according to the 18 standards.
DR. MOELLER: If the remedial action includes 19 l i
20 vegetation growing on the surface, how can that ever be l
21 totally conpleted, em 22 MR. GNUGNOLI: Well, on part of that aspect of
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23 the remedial action would fall into the area of surveillance I 1
24 and monitoring which is the next stage in the process, so (N
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25 what we would do is look at the documentation of the Departner t Heritogo Reporting Corporation non m m.
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i ,- .117 I of Energy'and perhaps visit the site as some of you have
- O 2 done end sey, hey, they're doing it e1ene the propet eggreeche e
.3- and they're not throwing it in one pile and leaving it there !
-4 -hoping tl.e wind will take care of it..
l 5 DR. MOELLER: Presumably-they plant a plant which l 6 is native to the area and known to be'able to_ survive?
7' MR.fGNUGNOLI': We would.' bring lthat up if it weren't 8_ the case. As it turns out, vegetation doesn't necessarily 9 have to occur. There is one pile-that is pretty much com-10 Pl ete where the vegetative cover is established, but in a 11 place that is-extremely arid, the wiser path may be just to 12 use a rock cover and leaveit at that and not tru to vegetate 13 it.
14 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
15 MR. GNUGNOLI: Well, at that point, when DOE come 16 to us and says, here we have this finished, we would have to 17 look at it, look at'the documentation presented, think back 18 over our visits and see whether our suggestions made at the 19 end of each of the visits and inspections were taken and 20 implemented or at least addressed.
21 Then we have to cot to the point of the transfer.
22 A lot of what we do here is just to make sure that when the 23 transfer occurs from the state that owns the pile where the 24 remedial action is going on, is that everything is done in 25 such a way so that the federal government isn't left with a Heritage Reporting Corporation (m m
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2 A lot of our role and involvement in this'is for
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3 that reason. Maybe it's a-driving force for the DOE or for 4 the'NRC involvement. j 5 But, in any case, the site, after it is finished, !
6 would be finished 1 from the state over to the federal govern-7 ment, Department of Energy or another federal agency if
. 8 appropriate,'or_if another one is designated.
9 Once that is done, the NRC licenses the-Department 10 of Energy or again that other federal ~ agency.
11 What we license is surveillance and monitoring 12 activities. In effect, it's not an open invitation-for the 13 NRC, at that point, to'say we didn't have a very hard lever 14 to wield earlier inthe process and we couldn't make you 15 do this as part of the remedial action, so now that we have 16 a licensing authority, we're going to make you go back and 17 do that. That's not what our licensing role is supoosed to 18 do.
19 Again, we're in effect going to be a licensor
- 20 of the Department of Energy or other agency, just to make
! -21 sure there is an entity or federal presence so that if some-22 thing does go wrong or some unforeseen even occurs, something 23 can be done.
24 DR. STEINDLER: I'm a little confused. What is it i O 25 exactly that you are licensing?
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1- + j n fi9 1 MR. GNUGNOLI: What we're licensing _is~ Department 2 of Energy to survey, in other words-go--
3 DR. STEINDLER: They need a license to survey?
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V 4. MR. GNUGNOLI: They' don't need a license. .It's the 5 Act. requires us to hold them under licensing duty activities.
6 MR. LOHAUS: The Act has two part. The first part 7 would be our concurrence in the remedial action that is-being 8 taken. The second part would cover the long term--longer 9 term surveillance and monitoring and the Act requires that .that 10 be done under a license issued by NRC. So the license is-11 issued'at the completion of=the remedial action and it covers 12 the surveillance and monitoring timeframe.
g 13 MR. STEINDLER: So it's not a possession license, 14 it's not an operating license, it' just they have to be 15 licensed to go up and monitor?
16 MR. LOllAUS : Maintain, 17 MR. GNUGNOLI: In effect, the idea there is that 18 if something goes wrong, people don't all the sudden start 19 saying, what's going to happen, who's going to do what.
20 It's the state, it's the region, it's the city or the county 21 and the fact that DOE or that other agency is the responsible 22 party there and they can't do what they want.
23 The NRC says, you have got to cone to us and if 24 that is satisfactory and you have brought the site back to 25 the integrity that you left it when the remedial action is Heritogo Reporting Corporation n.n ..
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s F .i A 120 g completed. l 2 MR. ORTH: Mentioning other agencies, what other l
3 agencies do you have in mind?
4 MR. GNUGNOLI: It could be the Department of 5
Interior, possibly, but after a long long period of time, 6
the Department of Energy could no longer be doing it, that [
7 things had stabilized sufficiently that they could just be i
8 put back in the hand s of the Department of Interior.
j 9 Or, shojld the case occur, that the Department of i
10 Energy would be disolved or absorbed into another department, p jj who is then going to be in charge. So, in effect, that's 12 if, it's for that-purpose.
13 DR. MOELLER: How long does the maintenance go on?
j4 MR. GNUGNOLI: Inperpetuity, as far as we can gather 15 from the ACt. In other words, they are going to be.under 16 license forever.
37 DR. STEINDLER: Have you ever heard of an infinite 18 open ended license?
MR. GNUGNOLI: It is an unusual concept because i 19 20 we're usually used to the fact that we're licensing s6meone 21 who is going through operational phases and trying to keep 22 their missions dovm.
DR. STEINDLER: That strikes me as job security 23 24 in the best fashion possible and by law.
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l 25 MR. GNUGNOLI: In effect, you have to look at what i
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that means. It may very well-end up meaning nothing more than 2 the arrangement is made that-the local. sheriff will' drive 3 out there once a week and just.make sure that things are in 4 good shape or it may_be there is a--every 5 years there's a ,
5 team from DOE that goes out there and just looks at it, that 6 kind of a thing.
7 DR. STEINDLER: I understand that. Mine is armore 8 generic question. Let me ask another question, however, i 9 In the: area of concurrence, do you provide for .
10 DOE a numerical set of guidelines ~that will allow them to- ;
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11 know.when they~are,'in fact, done?
12 MR. GN GNOLI: I'll get'into that a little bit 13 latsr but I'll briefly menti'on-it now.
14 DR. STEINDLER: Fine, t
15 MR. GNUGNOLI: There is a memornadum of understand-16 :.m;' which is sort of a cooperative agreement between the 17 ,
3s;1r ment of Energy and NRC in this area and so we sort of [
18 .511 out what we mean or what we understand to be this and
! 19 I' I'~ a in various aspects of the process. I 20 DR. MOELLER: Well, there are regulatory guides?
< 1 21 ', MR. GNUGNOLI: There are regulations by the EPA l
22 and a number of our regulatory guides would be equallu 23 i applicable, to a Title I or a Title II site.
i 24 l DR MOELLER: And do you have a standard review plan O 25 i-for reviewing their operations?
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I MR. GNUGNOLI: Yes. ;
.. 2 DR. MOELLER:.'Okay.
3 DR. STEINDLER: But the: e is an MOU7 4 MR. GNUGNOLI: Yesa 5 DR. MOELLER: And what.are your' interactions with 6- EPA?
- 7 MR. GNUGNOLI: Well EPA has traditionally taken 8 --the role of once they have sort of promulgated the. final 9 standards and they're in place, EPA's role is sort of minimal 10 unless they hear 'that we 're'doing something outrageous, they 11 probably don't step in. I'll talk about some of these 12 things in a.little more depth'later.
The final point there is that we are in the process llgg 13 ,
14 of rule making for this post remedial period so, in effect, 15 this rule making, if it goes through the way it is, it will 16 establish a general license so that DOE, if it does certain 17 things and it gets our concurrences and gets a surveillance 18 and maintenance procedure in place that we can live with, 19 boom, they are under license to us, so we won't be doing--
20 pretty much, extremely redundani activities for thse 24 21 sites.
22 DR. STEINDLER: Wher9 are you in this rule making O 23 episode?
24 MR. GENUGNOLI: Supposedly this summer, we're 25 going to be getting something drafted.
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1 23 g MR. LOHAUS: It's under staff preparation.
l 2 MR. GNUGHOLI: Somewhere in the August '88 time 3 frame the last time I heard.
4 This rule making would not only= cover these Title.I 5
sites, but'since the possibility and the greater chance would 6
be'that DOE would be the custodian of the sites, :bothefor ,
7 Title I in the abandoned sites as well as for the commercial ',
s . sites, once they are cleaned up.
9 This rule making is being done to take care of both ,
10 situations. Again there are so many similiarities because 11 they're basically _the_same type of materials. -
12 The next page deals with NRC actions under Title II.
g 13 Again, I.'m not going to get into too much detail.
-Bill Smith 14 Will probably go a little bit more into detail in this area.
15 In fact'we do license commercial facilities pursuant ,
1 16 to Part 40.
17 Title II of UMTRCA actually made tailings licensable 18 material. Prior to '78, they were just sort of mines full type 19 material, waste material, the tailings were just put aside 20 and there weren't regulations in place to take care of it.
21 With 1978's UMTRCA, all of the sudden TRCA became 22 radio active and something of concern and the by product 23 material definition in the Atomic Energy Act was revised to 24 include it.
4 O 25 The activities, the responsibilities of the NRC Heritage Reporting Corporation
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- . t J.f 121 I would certainly be due, in fact the NRC would inspect any 2 of the' operations that it' licenses under Parts 20 and 40.
3 The NRC would terminate the operating license upon 4 ' reclamation and then NRC would license DOE or the state, in this 5 case for long term care and custody. Title I does not provide 6 for anyone else but the Department of Energy or the agency
-7 designated by the President.
8 The situation here also brings to light the fact 9 that, if indeed, the DOE is going to be the custodian of the 10 site, in agreement state areas, you can have a situation where 11 the state is regulating the government agencies so they're 12 pretty much in agreement state areas, it probably would have g 13 to be DOE. I think such a transf er would be appropriate.
14 In the next stage, things get a little more compli-15 cated when'we start looking at the regulatory history under 16 each of the titles and'I'll to be as brief and clear as 17 possible on this, but it's rather difficult to do.
15t Title I is simpler. In March of '83, DOE came out 19 with--I'm sorry, not DOE, EPA came out with 40 CFR Part 192 20 and these subparts A, B and C dealt with uranium, no tailints 21 being cleaned up under the DOE " ogram.
22 In the areas that were not dealt with in the the 23 regulations by EPA nor in the Act, these areas were touched 24 upon in the Memorandum of Understanding.
25 For instance, in cases where these sites were Heritoge Reporting Corporation ,
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6 things for sites located on Indian land in terms of' licensing
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1-U 8 The NRC does have standard ~ review plans which were l 9 developed in parallel with the technical approach document 10 issued by DOE, There are a lot of documents that DOE has l 11 issued for each each site and also for generic purposes, l
12 but in any case, these last two documents here, in effect, lay out how NRC is going to look'at what DOE does and also llll 13 i
' 14 lays out how DOE is going to approach doing these clean ups 15 so, in effect, it's been.a great help to try and make our ;
- 16 reviews a lot more easy or easier and effective.
17 Getting in to, Title II,-the histery gets somewhat 18 complicated in that there was an NRVC petition that caused gg us to go into rule making efforte before EPA issued their i
l 20 rules.
21 So although I list 10 CFR Part 40, Appendix A, it's 22 the second item there, it actually preceded the EPA regula-23 tions by 3 years, 24 The problem is that we have been in court ever 25 since that time and finally when EPA came out with their Title Heritoge Reporting Corporation (392) 436 4406
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120 g' II standards, the subparts D and E of 40 CFR Eart 192, we then
() 2 embarked on an effort to conform to the standards because, 3 in effect, we couldn't have standards that really were that
() 4 different or inconsistent'with the EPA standards.
5 So what happens is we have this 40 CFR Part 192 and-6 ~then 10 CFR Part 40 was changed to incorporate that, the 7 aspects of that EPA regulation.
8 There are other regulations involved, obviously, 9 10 FCR Part 20, for-radiation protection of workers, 51 for 10 incorporating NEFA; 150 for the agreement states programs-11 and obviously 170 for licensing.
12 EPA also has other regulations, Part 61 for'for operational releases of radon. 190 for operational release (lll) 13 14 of non radon establishes the 25 milirem limits and sets 5 :
4 15 milirem for thyroids. Partc 264 and 4A0 were the regulations ,
16 as part of the Solid Waste Disposal Act for ground water prob- ,
l 17 lems. >
18 EPA when they came out with 192 absorbed 190 , 264 19 and 440 into that. So it would show that this is a big circle
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! 20 going round, around and around.
! 21 We obviously have regulatory guides, separate standa rd i
22 review plans for the Title II facilities and we have some staf f
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23 technical positions, for instance on decontamination. !
i 24 the next page should be a comparison chart for Title I ( I have concentrated mostly ,
l 25 I and Title II, EPA standards.
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127 I on the numerical ones as much as possible'and then also 2 brought in the ground-water protection.
3 Title I in terms of longevity of control, integrity
-4 however you want to refer-to that, in effeet, I'm not sure-5 that that pile states where it is.
6 It requires that the construction should be done
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7 and the control should be of such a nature that it could last
.8 from 200 to a 1,000 years and it's a design approach. The 9 philosophy is-purely from a design stage. We're supposed to:
10 design the encapsulation or cover or whatever to last for a 11 1,000 years, but if that isn't possible for -various reasons, 12 topography situation or whatever, that it should be designed g 13 to make sure it exists at least--no less than 200 years.
14 The standard is pretty much the same for Title II, 15 in fact it is the same for Title II. It doesn't specifically 16 say how you're supposed to do it, it just says that basically 17 whatever;you do has to last this long. I guess design--the 18 fact is the situation could occur that everybody agree that 19 the design would do that and a year _after its ccrnpleted, it could 20 slope in. Technically you didn't meet the design. Hopefull5 21 it doesn't happen.
22 Radon attenuation limits ere basically, for Title I, 23 there are 2. One talkes about the flux of radon coming through 24 the cover from the tailings thems1ves or it can be dealt with 25 in terms of a limit above backgrounds, concentration limit Heritage Reporting Corporation (set) 636 4ees
E 46 128 1 off site, 0.5 PCI/L.
) 2 DR. MOELLER: Thst 0.5 PCI/L , I understand. Is it 3 20 pica curies per square meter or--
-' 4 MR. GNUGNOLI: Yes. It's 20 pica curies per meter 5 squared second.
6 DR. MOELLER: Okay. So a couple of dots are--
7 MR. GNUGNOLI: It's external.
8 DR. MOELLER: Okay, fine.
9 MR. GNUGNOLI: I didn't have it figure out how to 10 do the--
11 DR. MOELLER: The 20 pica curies per square neter 12 per second.
lllg 13 MR. GNUGNOLI: Right.
14 DR. MOELLER: Thank you.
15 MR. GNUGNOLI: And again, that's above background.
16 DR. MOELLER: That's the one that was increased 17 from 2 a couple of years ago?
18 MR. GNUGNOLI: Right.
19 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
20 l
MR. GNUGNOLI: When we cane out in 1980 with our I
l original 10 CFR Part 40, Appendix A, the figure was 2 instead 21 22 of 1.2.
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23 Title II does not have the option for the concen-lj r, 24 i tration standard, purely flux. Again these are designed, it's
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25 not a question of the fact that DOE is required then for 4 or Heritago Reporting Corporation l ..>..._.
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- l)n%' 1 li 1 5 years or whatever number of years to. monitor it to show that 2 this is exactly what the EPA standard is.
3 It's an average standard over time as well. In 4 fact, it's an' annual average, area.' average. So,'in effect, j- 5 at one place it could be 35 and another place it_could be 10.
6 DR. MOELLER: Now what, and I realize _this is not 7 a straight forward question, but if you had that flux and*I 8 know that it varies with meteorology,'probably temperature and 9 a bunch'6f other things, but what sort of concentrations would 10 you have in the air if I were standing above an area that is 11 getting that flux rate?
12 MR. GNUGNOLI: The EPA's documentation said that g 13 we have to have curies consistent with 20 square, but it's 14 very difficult to say simply because, you're right, it's a 15 question of how windy it is and barometric pressure changes 16 and so it's_ kind of difficult to say.
17 DR. MOELLER: Right.
18 MR. GNUGNOLI: It's kind of difficult--it has been 19 difficult--one,of the claims on the part of the people who 20 have sued us in the past, sued EPA in the past, some of these 21 numbers, they are extremely difficult to take off the radon 22 above the natural backgrounds, it's very hard to detect and 23 that is also another reason why these are designed standards.
24 DR. MOELLER: Well, I guess these are based for 25 people out doors and yet, you know, you keep hearing these Heritage Reporting Corporation m ma
- n 1. . n 130 1 . numbers that the average person spends 90 percent of his or
( 2 her time infoors. I don't'know'if that is true for the people 3 out in New Mexico, but if it is true, then I don't know whethe r
-s 4 they take that into consideration.
5- MR. GNUGNOLI: In Title I, I. don't have it' listed-6 here, there are standards for indoor levels of radon point-7 -ing to' 2 to .03 working levels.
8 DR MOELLER: That is specifically with regard to 9~ homes near these sites?
10 MR. GNUGNOLI: Yes. Not only homes but businesses 11 as well.
12 DR. MOELLER: So it's .02 working levels which lllg 13 corresponds then to the EPA number of 4 pico curies per 14 liter indoors is a remedial action level? I think it does.
15 MR. GNUGNOLI: I'm not sure--I'm not exactly sure.
16 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
17 MR. LOHAUS: Correct me if I'm wrong, Georgio, but 18 I think that the second standard applies to homes that are
[: in the vicinity from materials that would be emanating into 19 20 the house, not necessarily materials that emanate from the 21 reclaimed tailings pile that would move to that house.
- 22 It's from material that is in tbe grour.d where 23 that house is located. ;
)
24 MR. GNUGNOLI: The law defines processing sites 25 in such a manner that you could be talking about where the Heritage Reporting Corporation
<=>.. .
q 131 i i mil tailings are as well as places where abuse of the 2 material occurred in the mishandling of it.
3 DR. MOELLER: So this is, to repeat you. it's not 4 the wind blowing the tailing radon over, it's right from 5 the house?
I 6 MR. LOHAUS: Yes, that's correct.
7 DR. STEINDLER: So it may have no relationship at 8 all.
l 9l I MR. LOHAUS: Right.
10 MR. GNUGNOLI: Right.
I 11 Actually, I guess, at this point it would be good to j
i 12 hop down to te fou-th point. I'll go back to 3.
The land clean up specifications list a 5-15 PCI/G llgg 13 14 above background limit.
15 The way this is done, the 5 pica curie per gram 16 limit is with a top of 15 centimeters and so on and at 15 17 pica curies per grams for subsequent 15 percent of your house 18 and so forth.
19 DR. MOELLER: But if you had 5 pica curies per gram 20 of radium, what would the flux then be? Is it comparable to 21 the 20 pico curies per square meter?
22 MR. GNUGNOLI: No, I believe it's less, but I
'-}
is l 23 l think it corresponds to about 80 milirem per year exposure h
I 24 l MR. GNUCNOLI: The idea here again is that was a
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25 figure that was chosen so that they could distinguish areas Heritogo Reporting Corporation l
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- that had tailings with a significant amount of tracings s_ ) 2 versus those areas that might just naturally hide radon.
3 DR. STEINDLER: You said 18--
4 MR. GNUGNOLI: 80. And that's the EPA's number.
5 You may wonder how this is done, in effect, you know ,
6 with DOE, you have to go through and dig up the entire area, 7 this little square centimeter here.
8 This basically should be considered an average over 9 a 100 sugare meters. So, in effect, DOE would go out and 10 take a number, 180 meter square grid. If the material would 11 average out to be less than 5 to 15--the 15 figure is not 12 an unusual figure to use for sub surface layers because it has llll 13 occurred where top layers have been clean and subsecuent 14 layers, subterranean layers were in f act , contaminated and that's 15 i a good way to tell that it wasn't air borne, it was wind blown i
16 These are clean up figures for DOE in the Title I 17 program. In Title II they are, in effect, waivered at i
18 threshhold values, that if there are areas in the land where
[1 19 l the tailings are located, where you have the radiation 20 levels below these, you wouldn't necessarily have to meet 21 the radon 20 pica curies per square meter. So, in effect,
<~s 22 you wouldn't have to cover this land as part of this regu-(v) 23 lation because it is below these levels.
l fx 24 I The vicinith properties basically are, as mentioned
( ) I ws i 25 l before, places where tailir.gs were used either in the Heritogo Reporting Corporation
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181 i foundation or for fill in area, for such uses and it was (k 2 a significant point, part of Title I, that these would be 3 cleaned _up.- At first estimate, I think someone come up with
() 4 a possibility of 8,000 such locations around the country and ,
5 DOE, in its program, I guesa Jim ~ will get into this a little l 6 later, trimmed it down to, I guess closer to 4,000 - 5,000.
7 As the process goes on,_they identify potential area s ;
8 and look at them and they designate them if they do have 9 these tailings in them and_if they have quantities.that can 10 easily be'taken away, they do so. If removal of-the material 11 would threaten the safety of the community.
12 For instance,_if you needed to destroy the flow of water 4
lg 13 to the area to do this, there are what is called supplemental 14 standards to make judgments in those areas.
15 Title II has no provisions for this because the i 16 assumption is is that since they are all under NRC licenses 17 or AC license, these materisl shouldn't have been taken out 18 and used for these situations.
1 19 I don't know whether you might have heard of this 20 or not, but there have been some motion in Congress to create 21 a tailings reclamation bill to.somehow subsidize the clean up i
< 22 by the parties who benefited from the enery or use of drains
!( that caused the creation of these tailings piles.
) 23 24 One of the provisions that that proposed legisla-1 25 tion does have is to--for our purpose, it's probably just as t
Heritoge Reporting Corporation m.
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134 i well, because there are some instances where they have
-J . occurred in Title II slumps.
3 The last page basically summarizes our regulations
+)
o in terms of what we are trying to achieve. I guess the goals 5 of these--I guess these technical factors'can slso be thought of as i goals. In effect, when it comes to the integrity of the pile, aspects such as longevity, how long it will be there,
! disposal preferences, in terms of the philosophy of disposal, 9 whether you want it above grade, below grade, partially 10 above grade and such, these are basically summarized in II ;ppendix A, parts 1, 3, 4'and 6. I lumped them under the 12 heading of intergrity of the cell or the endowment.
lllh 13 We also mention control and monitoring of opera-14 d tional emissions. We specify trying to achieve alora and 15 also monitoring to ensure that is what happened and parts 7 ard 16 l 8 handle that.
0 17 There are smaller operations than millings which
have small quantities of waste, small in terms of half acres 19 [ of evaporation deposits as opposed to 20 or 30, 40 or more n
acres and as such, what we try not to do is have too many litt le 20 J 21 f evaporation places all over the west and where it can be done, h
,cy 22 n
p we basically try to dispose of these places at a near by t J k 23 uranium mill. You dispose of these materials at a near by l
,eq 24 uranium mill just to sort of cut down on the number of places
( , l 25 where you have to deal with it, i
l Heritogo Reporting Corporation i < mi u.
I
- l 135 g Ground water protection is dealt with in our 2 Criteria 5 and again, it is this incorporation of the 3 reckless standards under the Resource Conservation and g
_/ 4 Recovery Act, the standards that EPA has for hazardous I
It waste.
5 6 I was alerted yesterday that we are being sued 7 for ouF final rule on that. I don't know, that may change 8 in the future.
9 I have omitted the list, Criteria 13 which 10 [ actually lists these hazardous constituents. I tend to 11 forget abo'at it again because it's nothing more than a list.
12 i about 3 pages of the Federal Register.
llll 13 j i
I mention in Criteria 6 again, because that's where 34 the 20 pica curie standards are brought up into our standards.
15 . One thing that we do that parts of the EPA standards I
o 16 don't do is deal with things like financial criteria, in h
17 l other words having some sort surety or figure of money set 18 aside or some sort of letter of eredit corm that would guarantee gg j that when the time comes, these people are going to be in the t
20 h financial shape to do this clean up, li In Title II, the licensee does the clean up and pays 21 l 22 j for it.
() f Also the next item the long term care, there is a 23 p separate fund for that, so we, in e f fect , will do the same (s
\ _)
24 . \
d 25 kind of thing--similar kind of thing in Title II as DOE is l
I l
Horitogo Reporting Corporation l imm.
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136 3 required to do in Title I.
~. )
_J 2 The next to the last point is the site and by product 3 custody and that is just incorporation of these, portions of 4 the Uranium Mill Taalings Radiation Control Act (UMTRCA) into 5 our standards just to make sure that, again someone should 6 control these materials at all times, even after the 7 facilities have suffered.
8 And the last item, actually it's the next to the 9 last item, Item 12 is the long term surveillance, what kind go if things need to be done to monitor such a facility. <
11 DR. STEINDLER: Do you have an estimate of the 12 number of dollars per man rem that the NRC program will cost?
llll 13 MR. GNUGNOLI: I don't have an answer for that.
y DR. STEIMDLER: Are you willing to stick your neck 15 l out and make a guess?
l 16 MR. GNUGNOLI: I will say this much that if you 17 i were to try to base it purely on a cost benefit, the Title l
18 I I Program probably would be too expensive because, in effect, i'
19 that's on the order of a billion dollars for clean up and if Il 20 l you were to put a price on human life and do a cost benefit l
21 l analysis, it probably wouldn't be justifiable for what's
,m 22 being spent.
bj Estimates that we have are--
23 l 24 DR. STEINDLER: That billion dollars is not NRC
<s l (sa ) !
25 [j funds?
U l l Heritogo Reporting Corporation I <mi n.
d L_
ll 137 1 MR. GNUGNOLI: No , no , it's DOE. l 2 DR. STEINDLER: DOE funds.
3 MR. GNUGNOLI. For NRC, in effect the costs of
~
'- 4 what is being done is mostly torne by the licensee in that 5 the cost for ninimizing emissions and various materials later 6 would be borne by the licensees, but it would naturally be a 7 lesser cost because they don't have to go through O&B 8 procedures to get contractors and such and so it probably 9 would come out to be less--a lot less.
10 If I remember, in terms of reclamation costs, 11 I believe--this is based probably on 2 years ago, we did a 12 clea n up cost, in terms of per ton of clean up and we carae lllh 13 up to something like a $1.25 per ton, in terms of cost of 14 l a basic clean up, reclamation.
I 15 And, I think the DOE costs were probably on the 16 order of about $10.00 or more per ton for clean up, I believe.
17 I'm sticking my neck out on that one. I don't know.
18 If we were to just strictly on a cost benefit, it 19 i wouldn't wash, but the law is written in such a way that we l
1 20 really can't--
l DR. STEINDLER: I understand. I'm not suggesting 21 1 I
73 22 that -ou break the law.
,i ,
23 i MR. GNUGNOLI: Others have.
24 DR. STEINDLER: Others have, I an sure.
(~)
( _/ '
25 f DR. MOELLER: Any more questions?
L Heritogo Roporting Corporation j m u,,m
I i39 1 (No response)
O k/ DR. MOELLER: We'll be continuing after lunch.
2 l
3 Will you still be here?
l o/
(- 4 MR. GNUGNOLI: Yes.
5 DR. MOELLER: You're through now?
6 MR. GNUGNOLI: Yes.
7 DR. MOELLER: Maybe this is a gcod time now to take 8 our lunch break.
9 Okay, why don't we take our break and resume at 10 1:30.
11 (Whereupon, the subcommittee meeting was 12 recessed-at 12:25 p.m., to reconvene at 1:30 llll 13 p.m., the same day.
14 15 16 j 17 18 19 20 21 l
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23 24
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25 Heritogo Reporting Corporation eun mas
1 CERTIFICATE I
2
({}
3 This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the 4 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
I' 5 Name NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards 6 In thd matter of: Waste Management j 7 Packet Number: l 8 Place: Washington, D. C.
l l 9 Date: January 21, 1988
)
l
- 10 were held as herein appears, and that this is tha original 11 transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear i ~ 12 Regulatory Commission taken stenographicallf by me and, 13 thereafter reduced to typewriting by ma or under the direction 14 of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a
() 15 true and accurate reco d of the foregoing roceedings.
16 /S/ L la 4 f fY24 RWIN L. C NBERRY 17 (Signature typed):
l 18 Official Reporter 19 Heritage Reporting Corporation 20 21 22 23 24 25
() ,
Heritage Reporting Ccrporation ,
l (202) 628-4888
\ ..
.. ~.
o o og PRESafTATION TO TIE ACRS SLTmfilTTEE ON WASTE FANAGEIBIT CONEPEING REVISION 10F TE SRP ON ALTERNATIVE ElliODS OF DISPOSAL J.D. KANE/M. TOKAR JANUARY 21, 1988 1
_ ____ _ - - A
o o o
.DEFIrlITION OF ALTEMATIiES ALTERNATIVE METl0DS OF DISPOSAL OF LLW ARE Tl0SE THAT h00LD UTILIZE ENGIEERING BARRIERS OR STRUCTURES OR hilICH WOULD OTIIEPWISE BE f.
SIGNIFICANT DEPARTURE FROM TRADITIONAL SHALLOW-LAt0 BURIAL.
2
~
~. .- ;
~
O O O"
. LOW-LEVEL RADI0 ACTIVE WASTE POLICY AMEIDETS ACT (LLRWPAA) 0F 1985 0 BY JANUARY 19Ps7, NRC MUST IDENTIFY ALTtPNATIVE TIHODS FOR DISPOSAL (SEC. 6)
ESTABLISH PROCEDURES AND DEVELOP TEGNICAL CAPABILITY TO PROCESS j LICENSE APPLICATION (SEC. 8 (A))
8 BY JANUARY 1988, NRC MJST:
IDENTIFY TECHNICAL INFORMATION A LICENSE APPLICANT MJST PROVIDE IN ORDER TO PURSUE SUCH KTHODS TOGElha WITH THE TEONICAL EQUIREENIS FOR LICEIGING (SEC. 8(B))
. i 3
i
O O O i
. IDENTIFICATION OF OPTIONS I e STUDY CONDUCTED WITil TiiE U.S. CORPS OF EEIEERS l
0 PUBLISPED MILTI-VOLtM REPORT (NUEG/CR-3774) )
e PUBLISWD FINAL TEGINICAL POSITION IN NUEG-1241 IN DECENBER 1986 l .
l 0 IDENTIFIED 5 MAJOR OPTIONS ABOVEGROUf0 VAULTS BELOWGROUND VAli.TS 1
EARTll-PDUNDED CONCETE IU.'ERS SHAFT DISPOSAL MIED CAVITIES 4
l
O O .O~
i l
MAIN ELEN5fS OF STRATEGY 1
0 FOCUS ESOURCES ON A LIMITED Nlt1BER OF PROMISING ALTERNATIVES.
THIS K ANS THAT, IN ADDITION TO SLB, NE HOULD FOCUS ON S0ll-COVERED OPTIONS lKILIZING CEFENTITIOUS MATERIALS (E.G., PEITORCED CONCRETE, BELOWGROUND VAULTS AND EAR 11H1DlHDED CONCRETE BUNKERS).
0 ENCOURAGE STANDARDIZATION 5
O O O DEVELOPK NT OF TEO NICAL GUIDANCE e INTENT WAS TO DEVELOP TE0iNICAL CRITERIA Tl!AT CAN:
BE FACTORED INTO TE SRPs, AfD ASSURE THAT PART 61 PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES WILL BE ET e REVISION 0 0F TE SRP FOCUSED PRIMARILY ON IIPROVED (TRENCH-TYPE)
SHALLOW LAND BURIAL WITH REVISION 1, WE HAVE ADDED TE INF0WATION AND CRITERIA NEEDED TO EVIEW A LICENSE APPLICATION FOR BGVS Af1D EMCBs.
I 6
l
O O O fiEEPAL DESIGN CRITERIA 0 TE GEERAL DESIGN CRITERIA ESTABLISH MINIttN REQUIRENNIS FOR TE PRINCIPAL DESIGN CRITERIA ....
8 TE PRINCIPAL DESIGN CRITERIA ESTABLISH TliE NECESSARY DESIGN, FABRICATION, CONSTRUCTION, TESTIt0 AND PERFORMAtCE REQJIREENTS FOR IIMPORTANT] STRUCTURES, SYSTEMS, AFD 00MPONBffS THAT PROVIDE EASONABLE ASSUPANCE THAT THE FACILITY CAN BE OPERATED WITHOUT UNDUE RISK TO TIE HEALTil AND SAFETY OF TE PUBLIC.
7
O O O i
) IFPORTANCE OF ENGINEEPE STRUCTUPES IN LLW DISPOSAL 8 ENSURE TIIAT PROPOSED ENGINEERING ENHANCETHITS OVER IFPROVED SHALLOW I LAND BURIAL RESULT IN NETING TE PERF0WANCE OBJECTIVES AND DO NOT i
RESULT IN DEGRADATION THAT COULD LEAD TO CREATION OF TE "BATH-11B"-
EFFECT. A PRIMARY OBJECTIVE OF NRC'S REGULATIONS IS TO PRECLUDE llE POSSIBILITY OF TIE WASTE BECOMING IltERSED IN LIQUID.
8 ,
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i CRITERIA CATEGORIES COVERING STRUCTURAL DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATI0tS l
1 l 1. LOADS AND LOAD COPEINATIONS
- 2. STRUCTURAL DESIGN AND ANALYSIS l
l
- 3. CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL QUALITY AND DURABILITY
- 4. CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATIONS
- 5. 00 ALIT ( ASSURANCE
- 6. STRUCTURAL PEPFORMANCE ITNITORING
- 7. FILTERS AND DRAINAGE SYSTEMS
- 8. WASTE COVER SYSTEMS 10
O O O EXAFPLE OF GDC-LOADS AND LOAD COMBINATIONS STRUCTURES, STRUCTURAL SYSTFMS, AND STRUCTURAL COMPONEITTS ESSENTIAL FOR SAFE OPERATION AND CLOSUE OF A BEL 0k' GROUND VAULT SIDULD E DESIGNED TO WITilSTAND ANTICIPATED ACTUAL LOADS AND LOAD COMBINATIONS. TE LOADS TO BE CONSIDERED SIGO INCLUDE DEAD AND LIVE LOADS AND LOADS RESULTING FROM NATURALLY OCCURRING EVENTS SUCH AS EARTHOUAKES, STORMS, TORNADOES, FLOODS, TSLNAMIS, ilURRICANES, AND SEICES, WITHOUT FAILUE OR LOSS OF CAPABILITY OF TE STRUCTURES, SYSTEMS. AND STRUCTURAL C0FFONENTS TO PERF0fC TEIR EQUIRED SAFETY FUNCTIONS.
11
O O O EXAMPLE OF S RCIFIC CRITERION FOR LOAD COMBINATIONS TiiE FOLLOWING LOAD CTBINATIONS SHOULD BE USED FOR CONCRETE STRUCIURES WilERE TE REQUIED STRBETH, U, IS AT LEAST EQUAL TO TE GREATEST OF TliE FOLLOWING:
0 0 = 1.L'D + 1.4F + 1.7L + 1.711 + 1.7E
! O U = 1.4D + 1.4F + 1.7L + 1.711 + 1.7W G U=D+F+L+T+H+E e U=D+F+L+T+11+W 8 U = ROUIRED STR96lli 0F CONCREE i 0 D = DEAD LOADS (WEIGIT OF STRUCTUE, WASTE COVER MATERIALS, ETC.)
e L = LIVE LOADS (TRANSIENT LOAD, E.G. CONSTRUCTION EQUIPRNT, ETC.)
0 F = LOADS DUE TO INCIDBfTAL LIQUID PRESSURS S H = LOADS DUE TO LATERAL EARTH PRESSURES S E = LOADS DUE TO DESIGN BASIS EAR 11100AKE e W = WIND AND SNOW LOADS 0 T = LOADS DUE TO TBTERATURE DIFFERDKTS 4
12
O O O EXAMPLE OF GDC FOR CONSTRUCTION PAlERIAL OVALITY a DUPABILITY l
STRUCR!E, STRUCTURAL SYSTENS, AND STRUCTURAL COMP 0te!TS SHALL BE
)
C0lTOSED, FABRICATED, AND ERECTED USING PATERIALS M!ICH HAVE BEEN TESTED I AND SHOWN TO MEET STM0ARDS OF QUALITY AND DUPABILITY AND WIICH PROVIDE REASONABLE ASSURANCE OF LONG-TEPfl STABILITY AND INTEGRITY. TE TESTING EIHODS AND PROCEDURES FROM ACCEPTED M0 RECOGNIZED CODES AND STANDARDS .
SHALL BE IDENTIFIED MD EVALUATED TO DETERMINE EEIR APPLICABILITY #D ADEQUACY.
13
~
O O O EXAMPLE OF SPECIFIC DESIGN REVIEW CRITERION FOR PORTLAND CEFDff CONCRETE PORTLAND CEIU!T CONCRETE SHOULD BE AIR-ENTRAINED AND C0rPOSED OF TYPE V PORTLAND CENNT, WATER, C0 APSE APO FINE AGGWREGATE, AND ANY ADMIXTURE TilAT WILL DESIRABLY ENHANCE THE QUALITY AND DURABILITY, SUO! AS SILICA Fife AND OTHER APPROPRIATE MINEPAL PRODUCTS. WATER-REDUCING ADMIXTUPES (WRA) THAT REDUCE T1E WATER-CEKNT RATIO (W/C)
AND STILL PRODUCE A WORKABLE SLlFP SHOULD BE CONSIDEED. THE UNCONFINED COPPRESSIVE STRENGTH f'c_ SHOULD BE A MINIPUi 0F 4000 PSI AT 28 DAYS OF AGE. TIE MIXED CONCRETE SHOULD 00NTAIN 6 TO 7 PERCENT AIR, BY VOLLPE AND HAVE A SLUMP PANGE OF 3 TO 6 INCHES WITHOUT WRA.
CONCREIE MIXED WITH WRA SHOULD PAVE A SLlVP 0F G TO 9 INCHES.
14
l l l o
i NUREG/CR-5041 VOL.2 1
1 Recommendations to the NRC for Review Criteria O
for Alternative Methods '
of Low-Level Radioactive l Waste Disposal Task 2b. Earth-Mounded Concrete Bunkers O
IG t -_
e O O O CRITERIA CATEGORIES CCVERING STRUCTURAL _ DESIGN, CONSTRUCTI.0N AND OKRATIONS
- 1. LOADS AND LOAD 00MBINATIONS SRP 5.1 A
- 2. STRUCTURAL DESIGN M0 ANALYSIS
- 3. CONSTRUCTION IMTERIAL QUALITY AfL DURABILITY SRP 3.%
- 4. CONSTRUCTION AND OPEPAT:i)NS
- 5. QUALITY ASSURANCE NOREG-it%
- 6. STRUCTURAL PERFORMNCE WNITORING -
- 7. FILTERS AND DRAINAGE SYSTDs SRP 5.1 A
- 8. WASTE COVER SYSTEPS lb
- n. _,
O O O-SRPs FOR ALTERNATIVE DISPCSA_L ET110DS SRP 3.2A STRICTURAL DESIGN FOR BELOW-GROUND VAULTS AND EARTH-MOUNDED CONCPEIE BltlKERS SRP 3.3A CONSTRUCTION AND OPEPATION C0f6JTfPATIONS FOR PG5 AND EMCBs SRP 5.1A SITE CLOSURE A10 STABILIZATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR BGVs AND EKBs 17
- O O O 4
4
- LOW-LEVEL RADI0 ACTIVE WASTE POLICY NTNDFENTS ACT (ILRWPAA) 0F 1985 i
0 BY JANUARY 1988, NRC FUST:
l IDEhTIFY TE0iNICAL INF0PIMTION A LICENSE APPLIfRff FUST PRO'/IDE IN ORDER TO PURSUE SUCH ftIN0DS TOGETER WITil TE TE0!NICAL
- REQUIREPBT. S R)R LICENSING (SEC. 8(B))
13
O 2 ,
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VEGE TA TION m
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FIL TER SOIL, AND FIL TER CLOTH FOUNDA TION DRAINAGE BLANKET Major components of a BGV i
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L - - - - - - - - - --- --
o o A u
l DIVISION OF LOW-LEVEL WASTE MANAGEMENT AND DECOMMISSIONING PRINCIPAL DIVISION RESPONSIBILITIES BY BRANCH l Director: Malcolm R. Knapp Deputy Director: John T. Creeves ,
l l
REGULATORY TECHNICAL OPERATIONS BRANCH BRANCH BRANCH l
Chief: Michael S. Kearney Chief: John J. Surmeier Chief: Paul H. Lahaus Policy Coordination 'Geoscience Lead Gr.e:ational Site Management Regulatory Development Engineering Lead Uranium Recovery Management l
Financial Assurance Technical Assistance Contracts Licensing Management Emergency Access Alternatives to Shallow Land Burial Inspection Management Mixed Low-Level Waste Topical Reports Regional Interface 1
Wastes Below Regulatory Concern On-Site Disposal Management State Interface Coordination Storage vs. Disposal West Valley Project l
l Greater-Than-Class-C Wastes L_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . . . . .
I O 1 ,
THE NRC URANIUM RECOVERY PROGRAM FRAMEWORK I l
c JANUARY 21, 1988 l 0
PRESENTED BY GIORGIO N. GNUGNOLI PROJECT MANAGER NMSS/LLWM/LLOB O
t .. . . .
I O
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C RY A CR
- ATOM C ENERGY ACT OF 1954 (AEA)
O t EN ERGY REORGAs ZA~ 0s AC" 07 197L l
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-T ~~ L E I !
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- T T _E O
_ - _ __ - _-_-___-_____________-_-_-____ - _ - - - _________________ _____________-___ _ - ___ G
e O
HC ACTIONS UNDER UMTRCA T" E
- NRC CONCURS IN:
- DOE SELECTION OF REMEDIAL ACTION
- DOE PERFORMANCE OF REMEDIAL ACTION
- DOE DETERMINATION OF COMPLETION OF REMEDIAL ACT!0N
- SITE TRANSFER (AFTER COMPLETION) TO O
FEDERAL CUST0DY
- MRC LICENSES DOE (OR OTHER AGENCY)
- SURVEILLANCE & MONITORING ACTIVITIES
- NRC RULEMAKING FOR POST REMEDIAL PERIOD (TITLES I & ll) ,
O
l l
.O NRC ACTIONS UNDER TITLE II
- LICENSING COMMERCIAL FACILITIES PURSUANT TO 10 CFR PART 40
- TITLE ll MADE TAILINGS LICENSABLE i l MATERIAL (BYPRODUCT MATERIAL) l INSPECTION OF OPERATIONS (10 CFR PARTS 20 & 40)
- NRC TERMINATES OPERATING UCENSE UPON RECLAMATION )
l NRC LICENSES DOE OR STATE FOR LONG-TERM CARE AND CUSTODY 1
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O REGU_A~ORY TRAV EWOR( Us JER UV"RCA
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. V RCA ~ ~_E
- 40 CFR PART 192 (SUBPARTS A, B & C)
- NRC/ DOE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING
- NRC STANDARD REVIEW PLANS
- DOE TECHNICAL APPROACH DOCUMENT
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O U V RCA ~ ~_E
- 40 CFR PART 192 (SUBPARIS D & E)
- 10 CFR PART 40 (INCLUDING APPENDIX A)
- OTHER REGULATIONS:
- 10 CFR PARTS 20, 51, 150 & 170
- 40 CFR PARTS 61, 190, 264, 440, ....
- REGULATORY GUIDES
- STANDARD REVIEW PLANS
- STAFF TECHNICAL POSITIONS O
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- COMPARISONS OF EPA-STANDARDS 4
TITLE TITLE 11
- 1. LONGEVITY OF CONTROL i 200-1000 YEARS SAME-i
, 3. GROU ND-WATER PROTECTION l
t EPA PROPOSED STANDARDS 9/17/87 EPAISSUED STANDARDS 10/7/83 RCRA COMPATIBLE RCRA COMPATIBLE ACL's & INSTITUTIONAL ACL's ONLY BY EPA APPROVAL CONTROLS ALLOWED (NRC DISAGREES) i L
- 4. LAND CLEANUP 5-15 PCl/G RA-226 SAME NUMBERS, GUT THRESHOLD VALUES VICINITY PROPERTIES NO PROVISION u , _____ ___ _ _ _ _
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SUMMARY
OF 10 CFR PART 40 APPENDIX A STANDARDS APPENDIX A STANDARDS I
TECIf!.ICAL FACTORS APPENDIX A CRITERIA SITIN G, ISOLATION, LO N GEVITY, 1, 3, 4, 6 DISPOSAL PREFEIRENCES.
l CONTROL AND MONITORING OF 7 &8 OPERATIONAL EMISSIONS l
DISPOSAL OF RESIDUAL WAST 1..S 2 FROM SMA_LL OPERATIONS GROUND-WATER PROTECTION 5 DESIGN ASPECTS FOR RADON 6 RELEASED FROM CLOSED SITES FINANCIAL CRITEICIA - SURETY O & 10 AND LONG-TERM CARE FUND SITE & BYPRODUCT CUSTOD f 11 LONG-TERM SURVEILLANCE 12
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