ML20217F325
| ML20217F325 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/21/1998 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0122, NACNUCLE-T-122, NUDOCS 9804280127 | |
| Download: ML20217F325 (162) | |
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DISCLAIMER
. UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONS ADVISORY COMMITTEE-ON NUCLEAR WASTE APRIL 21, 1998 The' contents'of.this transcript of the proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory
. Committee on Nuclear Waste, taken on April 21, 1998, as reported herein, is a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
This transcript had not been reviewed, corrected and edited and'it may contain inaccuracies. l l
.;O h
L
1 1 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION I h 2 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE V-3 *** 4 100TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON 5 NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) MEETING 6 7 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 8 Two White Flint North, Room 2B-3 9 11545 Rockville Pike 10 Rockville, Maryland 20852-2738 11 12 Tuesday, April 21, 1998 13 14 The Committee met pursuant to notice at 8:30 a.m. x_ I 15 16 MEMBERS PRESENT: 17 B. JOHN GARRICK, Chairman, ACNW 18 GEORGE HORNBERGER, Member, ACNW 19 CHARLES FAIRHURST, Member, ACNW 20 RAYMOND G. WYMER, Member, ACNW 21 22 23 24 25 O
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2 1 STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE: () 2 SHER BAHADUR, Waste Management Branch 3 WILLIAM R. OTT, Waste Management Branch 4 THOMAS NICHOLSON, Waste Management Branch 5 JACOB PHILIP, NM 6 PHILLIP REED, Waste Management Branch 7 LINDA VEBLEN, Waste Management Branch 8 EDWARD O'DONNELL, Waste Management Branch 9 RALPH CADY, Waste Management Branch 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 t ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. v Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
3~ l' PROCEEDINGS 2 [8:30 a.m.] 3 SPEAKER: Is that comparable to the amount of 4 money that's being-spent in research for reactor-related 5 issues, for example? It may not matter, but I'm just 6 asking. 7 One way to get the report -- one way to be guided 8 by a balanced report is the research investment. 9 SPEAKER: I think if you look at just research, 10 our' technical assistance issue, then I think that the 11 research dollars in reactors far outweigh the dollars in 12 research. But now what we've found is.we've added the KTIs 13 .back in, saying that that essentially should be reviewed 3 14 under -- 15 SPEAKER: Under research. 16 SPEAKER: -- that category. And there, I have no 17 idea what the dollar breakdown would be, but there certainly 18 is more money in the KTIs than decommissioning research. 19 SPEAKER: You need to use a mic, because we are 20 going to record the session. 21 SPEAKER: I just had one other point to make. It 22 is very apparent in the document that there doesn't seem to 23 be like a budget message or anything along those lines 24 simply because it is also an acknowledgment that we're not 25 going to do a complete program-wide evaluation. We're ()
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4 1 basically focusing in certain areas and saying next year 2 we'll do better, v 3 I think what's really needed is to have NMSS and 4 Research side-by-side going over the basic activities in
-5 technical assistance that's non-case work related and what 6 research there might be.in waste management.
7 SPEAKER: Just a couple comments, John. First of 8- all, I think we had started down the road thinking that we 9 were going to write an appendix to the report which would be 10 self-contained and we actually started down that road. 11 I think that it's still possible for us, if we 12 really wanted to, to back off and take such an approach, if 13 that turns out to be easier or more desirable. 14 When I considered it, however, looking at things, (Q,/ 15 and I think the first time I saw Powers' stuff was Georgio 16 faxed it to.me, and if we're going to write a separate 17 appendix, then my belief is that we should follow roughly 18 the same structure that Powers outlined for the ACRS report, 19 so that we have some kind of parallel. structure. 20 After looking at Powers' outline, I thought that 21- with proper cutting-and-pasting, we could fit it and 22 actually perhaps have the message be stronger from both 23 -rather than to have a separate appendix. But that is one 24 -decision.that we should make very early on if we're going to 25 go down the road of trying to make this an integrated
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ______i____.__._
I 5 1 document or whether we want to cut out the cut-and-paste and () 2 make our own sections that parallel the draft ACRS report. 3 SPEAKER: Yes. And there's all kinds of ways you 4 could integrate it. You could integrate it under each 5 heading or you could just have one follow the other and 6 repeat the headings. 7 SPEAKER: Yes. To tell you, one of the things 8 that led me to think that we should really try for the 9 integrated approach, if we could, is that I -- if you had a 10 chance to read through the observations and recommendations 11 that the ACRS had put forward, I agree with a lot of them. 12 And to the extent that we agree with that, if we l 13 wanted to have such things in our own report, then we would i 14 be repetitive. But that would be okay, too. () 15 SPEAKER: Well, looking at the report we have and l 16 considering our schedule, what is the minimum we would have j 17 to do to deliver this thing? It appears that your last 18 go-around here was an attempt to integrate. 19 SPEAKER: That's correct. 20 SPEAKER: So it looks like that juggernaut is 21 rolling. I 22 SPEAKER: I think the first thing that needs to be 23 done, if this format structure is all right, is to look at 24 the beginning part to see that it reflects both the ACRS and j 25 ACNW from Section 2-C on, which is where the techs and the l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 i i (202) 842-0034 I i i l
6 1 narrative for waste begins. () 2 There has been an attempt to at least provide some 3 nominal level of integration one way or the other. 4 SPEAKER: Okay. So we have the beginning stuff to 5 make sure that -- the comment that you had made, John, to 6 make sure that it reflects the ACNW. 1 7 SPEAKER: Yes. I think with some editing that 8 could take place up front that acknowledges that there has 9 been a change in the committee structure, that the 10 subcommittee that would be responsible for part of this is 11 now a committee, and I think that story needs to be told 1 1 12 very early on so that when people start seeing ACNW in the l 13 report, it has some connection. l 14 I think right now it just starts talking about C (_,) 15 ACNW after you become saturated with reactor research. So
~ 16 that fix has really got to be made as a kind of 17 collaborative effort between ACRS and ACNW.
18 SPEAKER: The next step, I think, in the process l 19 that would immediately bring the report a lot closer to 20 usefulness is to go through the KTI section at pages 19 to i i 21 29 and just maybe say we'll say this for this and we'll say 22 that for that. 1 l 23 SPEAKER: You mean greatly compress that. l 24 SPEAKER: Yes. Well, the point is that it's 25 sitting there simply for that reason. The idea is to really i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l D') Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
7 1 cut out anything'else that the committee doesn't think is [Vi 2 important enough and make it like four or five lines for 3 each KTI, and that would reduce it and bring it into a lot 4 better -- 5 SPEAKER: If you want, you could put four to five 6 on and then you could switch other material. 7 SPEAKER: If there is a need. 8 SPEAKER: If there is a need. 9 SPEAKER: And I have some doubts that we'll even 10 need to do that. But anything that we don't want in the 11 main body of the text. l 12 SPEAKER: The KTI things I don't have any problems 13 with. I'm quite happy if the committee wants. I'll take a j 14 crack at editing that. I don't -- but ahead of that, there l D) l\,- 15 is a question of the paragraph that I pinned for the actual l 16 Office of Research and we are going to hear something this 17 afternoon, Georgio, just on what? Just the transfer of 18 rule-making. 19 SPEAKER: Later on this morning we'll hear 20 basically an enhanced presentation on the status of research 21 being conducted in waste management. 22 SPEAKER: We will. 23 SPEAKER: That's item three. 24 SPEAKER: Okay. That's what I thought. I thought 25 we were going to hear some more about research. In fact, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. k- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
8 1 that's why I had purposely left that. [J\ 2 SPEAKER: Yes. I understand that. If things come 3 up that might be useful to address or be essential to 4 address, that's an opportunity to get that in there. I 5 don't think that the nuc] ear waste-related rule-making will 6 provide much fuel to this. But it will provide, I think, 7 the committee with, again, the frame-work of the other 8 direction, with research going one way and supposedly 9 rule-making is going the other way, and this will give a q l 10 feel, give you a complete feel for it, I think. 11 SPEAKER: Right. So I guess the bottom line is 12 I'm quite comfortable that I can take a crack at really 13 whittling this down and putting the Office of Research 14 paragraph into shape. I do think that one of the key things O) (,, 15 that the committee should do is really look through this 16 list of observations and recommendations. That's what's 17 really important and there may be things committee members 18 want to add, there may be things the committee members want 19 to see modified, and I think we should read through the 20 whole list, not just the ones that I created. H 21 Read through the ACRS ones to see whether there is 22 anything that we may want to emphasize. The section three 23 at the end, they're not numbered lines and the pages aren't 24 numbered. 25 SPEAKER: That means that they're Xeroxed already. I i j ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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9 1 SPEAKER: Yes. They're Xeroxed directly from. ( 2 But back toward the end, about maybe ten pages from the 3 back, Charles, the new section three, observations and 4 recommendations. 5 SPEAKER: This one says insert to the end of -- 6 SPEAKER: That's correct. So the insert is the 7 stuff that I had drafted and then the stuff up in front 8 that's not -- it was drafted by Powers as a straw person. 9 But we should read through that, as well. 10 But at any rate, I think that's where -- that's 11 where I think we really need to read and make sure that 12 we're saying what we want to say and make sure that we have 13 everything in there that we want to have in there. 14 SPEAKER: I agree with you. The rest of it is r% (msl 15 fairly easy. That's what I tried to distill, but I want to 16 make sure, first of all, that I'm representing our views 17 correctly and, also, I want to make sure that we have 18 everything in there that we want to have in there. 19 So if everyone could have a good look at that and 20 then get comments, then I think I can take care of it. 21 SPEAKER: Get the comments when, this week? 22 SPEAKER: Yes. 23 SPEAKER: This meeting. 24 SPEAKER: Tomorrow morning. How's that? 25 SPEAKER: Fine. () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 1
l 10 1 SPEAKER: You know, I think what I will do is, () 2 since we've had a little bit of confusion generated this 3 morning by not having a corder, I think rather than taking a 4 break later at 10:30, let's take a break now and then come 5 back and start the first presentation on generic 6 radionuclide transport research program. Would that be 7 meaningful? 8 So let's take about a ten or a 15-minute break and 9 we'll resume our official meeting at that time. 10 [ Recess.] 11 DR. HORNBERGER: I don't have a list of speakers, 12 except for you, Sher. So I'm going to let you introduce 13 anyone other than yourself. At any rate, Sher Bahadur is 14 Chief of the Waste Management Branch. () 15 MR. BAHADUR: Thank you, Mr. Hornberger. I really 16 appreciate the committee for giving us this opportunity to 17 come here and give you an overview of what the radionuclide 18 transport research program is all about, and then we'll into 19 detail about where is the project as to what we are doing 20 within this program. 21 But, also, I understand that when research made 22 its initiatives on the core capability, we made a 23 presentation to ACRS. However, a similar presentation was 24 not made to ACNW, for a variety of reasons. 25 I thought I would take this opportunity also to O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Court Reporters Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
11 1 give you an overview of that initiative, give you the i ) 2 results of the core capability determination in the Office 3 of'Research, and then, after that, then I will move on to 4 the radionuclide transport waste-related research programs. 5 So what I'd like to do is I'd like to make the 6 purpose of this meeting into three-fold. First, I will give 7 you the results of research core capability effort. Then I 8 will give you the overview of the radionuclide transport 9 program, which is more like a periodic review, because I 10 came in front of this committee in October of last year. 11 And then I would also like to use this as an 12 opportunity for the Waste Management staff who is working on 13 various projects within this program to come and present 14 their part, so that the committee would have a firsthand () 15 chance of meeting those and if you have any detailed 16 question on any of the projects, maybe they can answer 17 those. 18 So the way I would like to run this briefing would 19 be that after covering the core capability efforts and the 20 overview of the program, I will ask Bill Ott to come here, 21 who is our team leader for the radionuclide transport 22 program, to give you an overview of all the projects and the 23 program, and then individual project managers will come and 24 present a five or ten minute synopsis of what they are 25 doing. [- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
12 1 That will give us some chance of the r~s\ (G 2 question-and-answer type session. 3 As I understand, we have about three hours of 4 presentation, f rota 9 : 30 to 12 : 30. Whenever you want me to 5 take a break, you want to take a break, please feel free to l 6 do so. 7 I will describe the core capability effort within 8 research by taking or by referring to at least three , 9 documents, which I think the committee has seen from time to l 10 time. The first one was a direction-setting issue paper, 11 which was prepared by staff during the strategic assessment 12 effort, and the Commission direction on that DSI-22. l 13 The second was the methodology and criteria that 14 research developed to identify the core capabilities and !(")N l (_ 15 then the Commission's guidance on that paper, and, last of 16 all, the recent core research capability Commission paper. 17 DSI-22. This issue paper was developed with an
- 18 assumption that the issue right now in front of NRC and the 19 industry are evolving, they are changing, and, as a result, 20 research may have to make some sort of an adjustment in its 21 program.
l 22 So the staff had developed various options on the s 23 scope and also on the role of research programs in the 24 future. The Commission selected an option where they wanted 25 research to continue on the confirmatory research, as well [~) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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! _J
f 13 1 as the exploratory research. The Commission was very clear i (O) 2 in saying use the AP-20 ratio in the confirmatory works with l j 3 the exploratory, but don't get bound by the AP-20. Keep the i 4 program flexible enough so that you can take into account l 5 whatever comes in due course. l 6 And the second guidance the Commission gave was ! 7 for the research to develop core capability program, a 8 capability that needs to be maintained in order to run the 9 laboratory mission of the agency efficiently and 10 effectively. 11 In response to the Commission, research developed 12 a methodology and criteria for identifying the core research j 13 capability within the office. The methodology and criteria 14 was essentially focused into four activities. ' O'\_) , 15 The first one was to identify the areas where the 16 core capability was needed. Second, listing those functions I 17 which would be supported by these core capabilities. Third, 18 the FTE and the contract support needed for the core 19 capability. And last of all, the skills and the 20 experimental facilities needed to .naintain that core 21 capability within research. 22 All these were summarized in the SECY-97, which 23 was issued to the Commission last year about this time. 24 The Commission approved the proposal and asked the
- 25 staff to ensure that when you develop the core capability, s
'( }
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14
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1 make sure it not only supports the current regulatory (m m/
) 2 activities, but also responds to an issue which might come 3 into being in the foreseeable future.
4 Also, it asked the Office of Research to look 5 towards industry for any proposals in the research area and, 6 of course, coordinate that within NRC. 7 The paper identified two main types of core 8 capabilities. The first one expertise-driven; that is, the 9 agency would like to have a cadre of people who are 10 completely independent of any workload that might come as a 11 result of a licensing activity. 12 This cadre of people would be on-call; that is, to 13 have response to any issue, any question that may arise 14 while the agency is performing its mission on the -- on any km 15 one of the licensee's activities and to respond in a 16 knowledgeable, timely and independent manner. 17 Of course, this core capability was supposed to l 18 have been only in the limited manner. The second type of i 19 core was the workload-driven and that is a core capability i l 1 20 needed to respond to a complete continuing relatively 21 steady-state work in a manner which is given in the good l 22 regulations, i 23 Now, the good regulations this paper describes as 24 four points. First should be objective and bias assessment. 25 Secondly, it should be the highest technical and managerial m I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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15 1 competence. Third, decision without any delay. And, () 2 3 lastly, the regulations based on the best available knowledge and expedience. 4 You if you hear the summary, you would say the 5 expert-driven core capability is more like stay active, stay 6 alert, stay at the edge of technology, so that if a question 7 comes, we are able to answer that to a contractor who can 8 answer it or just know where to go to get the full answer. 9 On the other hand, the workload-driven core was a 10 core which was more like, you can say, alarm level. If you 1 11 go below that, that means the agency is not being able to 12 fulfill its regulatory mission. 13 In coordination with the directors of the NRC's 14 user need, the program managers from DOE laboratories, the () 15 deans of nuclear engineering departments or nuclear 16 engineering curriculum in six universities, and also the 17 representatives from the industry, including the NEI and 18 EPRI, the staff developed criteria which could-be applied to 19 the research areas to see whether they indeed are the core 20 capability required by the agency or not. 21 In that respect, 14 criteria were developed, and I 22 don't need to repeat them here. I can refer to the SECY 23 paper in which these criteria have been listed. 24 So these 14 criteria were developed only to judge, 25 in a very qualitative sense, whether a core capability is to [~ ' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters [ 1250 I' Street, N.W., Suite 300 ! Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
16 1 be maintained or not. Each of these 14 criteria was given a (' ) 2 high, medium or low rating. Then metrics were developed to 3 define as to what you mean by high, medium or low. 4 So that a consistency over all these research 5 programs are maintained. And then a form was designed which 6 captured all this thinking into a table form, and all these 7 tables are also in the Commission paper, which the committee 8 has. ' 9 As a result of -- when this Commission paper was 10 produced, 39 areas of research were identified where the 11 core capability assessment was to be made under these 12 criteria and metrics. 13 One of the problems with maintaining c .e I l r 14 capability is that there is always a very strong ( ,%) 15 relationship between the availability of expertise and then 16 the pursuit of meaningful research. You can't really have 17 six or eight experts sitting on your payroll with no 1 I l 18 meaningful work and hope to maintain that forever. This was 19 one of the criteria that had to be kept into mind when this 20 core capability-driven numbers were generated. 21 The researchers must have to keep actively engaged 22 to keep their skills sharp, maintain their qualifications, 23 and also stay in contact with their peers. 24 Lastly, if they don't have any stable programs to 25 challenge them, then they will either leave or the I
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17 1 facilities may disappear. For example, there are 2 experimental facilities, either in the DOE labs or in some 3 universities, but if you do not keep on supporting it in the 4 form of a core, then it's quite likely that such facilities 5 may not be there when we need them. ) 6 With this as a proposed method, 39 research areas 7 were assessed and the latest Commission paper, which has ( 8 been given to the committee earlier this month, was 9 developed on the core research capabilities. 10 The 39 areas which were previously identified were
)
11 reduced to 27. Not because some areas were eliminated or 12 discarded completely. It was just a logical grouping of a 13 number of areas into a wider area. So 27 were the logical l 14 combinations of the 39 areas previously identified and two 15 new research areas were added. One was on the fire 16 protection risk methods and secondly was on material 17 criticality issues which were not previously part of the 18 core. 19 In the FY-98 budget, when you compare the core 20 with the budget, you find in some areas the budget was more 21 than the core. In other cases, the core and the budget were 22 equal, and, in some cases, the budgets were even lesser than 23 the core. 24 What I would like to do is, at this time, 25 distribute some material which is somewhat of pre-decisional f) v ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 ; l
18 1 in nature, because either the Commission paper has not been () 2 made public because the final SRM has not come or, in one 3 instance, even the Commission paper has not been prepared 4 yet. 5 The first part of that handout, which the title l 1 6 says expertise-driven research core capability resources, 7 was the FY-98 budget. You will see research areas are 8 listed in the left-most column, followed by the three 9 columns where the expertise-driven core capability resources ) 10 are given. 11 The first column is the NRC FTE. The second 12 column is the contractor FTE and then the third column is 13 the contract dollars needed for that particular core. 14 Then similarly, these three columns are repeated
) 15 again, this time under the heading of FY-98 budget, and the 16 last three sets of columns are simply the arithmetic 1
17 difference between the core capability and the budget. 18 Wherever the difference was in the positive 19 number, that is where the core resources were more than the 20 budget. Those areas were defined as the sunset areas, those 21 areas were the ones where we are spending more money, more 22 dollars, more FTEs to maintain the core capability, not to 23 respond to the NRC's mission for it's regulatory purposes. j 24 There is an exception to this. You would notice l 25 that all the fire protection is lesser budget than the core, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
19 1 but it's not defined as a sunset and the reason being that () 2 fire protection is a new area and so far the need for this, 3 in the regulatory sense, has not been completely 4 established. 5 Similarly, the criticality safety is shown as 6 sunset and that's because the difference is almost equal, I l 7 mean, less equal and, therefore, it's under sunset. j 8 The second handout that you have, which I just 9 gave you, is also part of the same Commission paper, and 10 this describes the core capability requirement specifically 11 for the radionuclide transport and decommissioning research 12 program. 13 If you turn the pages, you will see that it 14 answers the key questions as to where this core capability () l 15 would be applicable in the regulatory sense and it's 16 followed by a number of tables where this entire area has 17 been classified into four tasks and each task is indicated 18 by a table of FTEs required in NRC, FTEs required by a 19 contractor, and the contract dollars. And the following l 20 page gives the justification of the required expertise. 21 Again, you will notice that there are three sets 22 of three columns in these tables, also, because they are the 23' -- the first set of columns is for the core, the second for 24 the FY-98 budget, and the last set the difference between 25 the two. () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
20 1 The third set that I have just now given to you is () 2 -the operating plan for this program. As you will notice, in i 3 the operating plan, in the -- it looks something like this, 4 it says draft all over the place. 5 This is the Commission paper under preparation. 6 The Commission hasn't seen it yet and we anticipate this 7 going to the Commission either next week or the week after 8 next, depending upon how the review process goes. 9 All these tables have gone through review by the 10 licensing offices and their comments are not included in 11 this table because they are -- as we speak, these tables are i 12 .being modified. l l 13 In the left-most four columns you are seeing plan 14 accomplishments fut this program and then as you would see ) ( 15 the products under FY-99, 2000, and 2001 are described. I 16 The actual operating plan which is going to the ! 17 Commission would also include the dollar values for '99, 18 2000, 2001. I have taken those dollar values out of this 19 table at this time. However, if you turn to the last page, j 20 you will see the total budget for this program, which is 21 about 2.9 million for the entire '99, 3.1 million for the 1 22- year 2000, and again 3.1 million for 2001. 23- DR. HORNBERGER: What was the total '98 budget? 24 MR. BAHADUR: The '98 budget was 2.7. 25 MR. OTT: I'm not sure what it was. There are two O - ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
21 1- programs in here. Ours was about 1.6 or 1.5. () 2 MR. BAHADUR: 1.6 and then we have taken 3 decommissioning, which was previously in a sister branch, 4 and about 700K from that effort, so a total of about $2.1 to 5 $2.2 million. l 6 If there are no comments or questions on the core ( 7 capability efforts, then I'd like to move to the 8 radionuclide transport program. 9 DR. HORNBERGER: Any questions? 10 (No response.] 11 MR. BAHADUR: I came to this committee in October 12 of '97 and at that time I brought back two messages. The 13 first message was that this branch, the Waste Management 14 Branch, in the past, had been actively conducting studies in () 15 low level, high level and also decommissioning, and we have 16 been very active internationally for the reasons that I have 17 enumerated here. i 18 And as we go into the details of our presentations j 19 by Bill Ott and the project team, you will see on what l l 20 specific ways we have been dealing with these issues in the. 21 international arena, as well as joint sponsorship with 22 sister agencies. 23 But the reason I put this here was to give you a 24 little historical perspective as to how the funding of our 25 branch has evolved over a period of time. In 1994, the high t l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters-1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
22 1 level waste program was active and we had about $6.2 or $6.3 () 2 million worth of budget only dedicated to high level waste. 3 We did most of the research with the help of the center in 4 San Antonio and I'm sure the committee has heard from them 5 periodically over a time period. i 6 In '95, we continued almost at a similar level and l 7 at the end of '95,.beginning of '96, a waste management 1 8 board which comprised of the managers from research, NMSS 9 and the EDO staff, had looked at all the existing research 10 projects and made a decision that it would be more i 1 11 efficient, especially in the light of the reduced budget and 12 the high level waste, it will be more efficient, from the 13 agency's point of view, to run all the projects under one 14 office and, therefore, what you see is in '96, research was ! () 15 completely out of the high level waste program and all high 16- level waste efforts, either in the center or through a 17 private contractor, were to be conducted under NMSS l 18 management. 19 The green, which in your handout may be a 20 different pattern, is the low level waste. In '94 and '95, 21 the low level waste program was fairly active, as well, and 22 we had something like $3.1 or $3 million worth of budget. 23 It's about that time when the Commission had made a decision 24 that the agency needs to taper down their low level waste 25 program to the extent that the research had to be completely i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 23 1 zerced out of the program eventually. () 2- Research had invested a lot of money and a lot of i 3 time, a lot of effort in a number of projects under the low 4 level waste program. So our '96 efforts were mostly 5 concentrated on bringing some of those projects to an 6 orderly close, truncating some projects where we thought 7 enough data and enough information had been gathered for us 8 to reap the benefit, and then to revise some of them so that b 9 the end product would not only be applicable to low level 10' waste, but wider applications into decommissioning areas, 11 and that's where you see the beginning of the radionuclide 11 2 transport, a small amount in '95 and then greater in '96, 13 and then totally in '97. 14 By '97, all research dedicated to low level waste 15 was completely eliminated from the Office of Research and 16 only the generic program of radionuclide transport has 17 started, and that's what's going to be the focus of today's 18 briefing. 19 I had listed some of the accomplishments that we 20 had done as a result of our research work in the high level 21 waste and low level waste in '94, '95 and part of '96, and I 22 presented that to the committee in October and I just 23 thought I will just add some of the more significant 24 accomplishments from those and just list them down here. 25 I'm not going to go through by one by one unless I O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 !' (202) 842-0034 l i
24 1 you have specific questions. This is part of the package 2 that you have and you can view it as background information. 3 So the generic program on the radionuclide 4 transport was designed basically with the goal to provide 5 NRC with a performance assessment capability, not just for 6 high level waste, not just for low level waste, but any NRC 7 licensed activities, where we are concerned with the dose 8 which can be administered to the public as a result of that 9 licensed activity. 10 As Bill Ott would come, he would give you the 11 components of this program, but the end product -- if 12 somebody were to ask us why you're doing what you're doing, 13 the end product would be a tool, an instrument, a software, 14 a disk, a tape or something which a licensee can use, stick 15 it in his PC, answer the questions about specific licensed 16 activity, push the button and get the dose assessed as a 17 result of that geology, that physical / chemical 18 characteristic of the source term, any number of complex 19 situations that the site may have. 20 We are very far away from that goal, but that's a 21 goal which is underlying this program. 22 So how do you apply such a program? You see the 23 problem, regardless of whether it's a high level, low level 24 facility or a facility to be decommissioned or a uranium 25 mill tailing, you would see that there is a certain sort of ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
m 25 1 commonality that runs in all these problems. You have a () 2 source of radionuclides, maybe a waste or something, maybe a 3 mill tailing sitting up at the surface, maybe an industrial ' 4 operation which was having the byproducts which were 5 l l radioactive or may be directly involved in the radioactive 6 process, or you may be solution mining the uranium more. 7 But whichever operations you are doing, the idea is 8 radionuclides will leave those areas or, in this case, maybe 9 you might have a concrete barrier, engineered barrier, you 10 may have a cover or whatever, but eventually these 11 radionuclides will leave their source, will travel through l 12 the media and eventually either would get to the water table l l 13 or if you can stop it before that, would be definitely 14 present at substratum. 15 DR. HORNBERGER: Is atmospheric transport part of 16 your program? 17 MR. BAHADUR: We plan to do work as and when the l i 18 money becomes available. So it's a component, but with no i 19 active project at this time. 20 DR. HORNBERGER: How about biological uptake? l 21 MR. BAHADUR: The biological uptakes are part of a j 22 mission of sister agency, sister branch in our division. As 23 I said, I was the chief of the Waste Management Branch. We 24 have two more branches in this Division of Regulatory l 25 Applications. The other branch is the Regulations
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26 1 ' Development Branch, and that's right now in the middle of ( 2 upheaval'because the rule-making activities have been 3 transferred either to NMSS and to NRR, and the remaining 4 people are working on a number of issues, but with a thread 5 which is not very common, such as they are working on fire 6 safety, they are working on regulatory accidents, they are 7 working on material criticality. 8 So it's like a track team of four or five people 9 working on different problems. So that's in the mode of 10 upheaval at this time. 11 The third branch is the Radiation Protection 12 Health Effects and most of the biological uptake related 13 studies are being done under their branch. If the committee 14 would like to know more about that, maybe we can ask that ( ' 15 branch to come in and give a presentation. 16 So to summarize, the applications that I see of 17 this radionuclide program. Decommissioning facilities and 18 the cleanup of contaminated sites. We have certain projects l 19 which we are doing specifically to help NMSS in this area. 20 Reclamation of uranium mills and the tailing 21 disposal sites, and Sna have projects which are dedicated to 22 that portion. The spent fuel storage is one application 23 where it is more of an extension of what we are doing right 24 now in terms of the work on the structures, then you would
'25 see how we are progressing in that area.
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27 1 And then, of course, in the back of our mind, () 2 3 there's always the performance of future waste disposal sites and facilities, where some of this work could have 4 applications. 5 So the budget had been drastically cut, but as you 6 appreciate, the problems haven't gone away. We still have 7 issues that need to be addressed. There is still models, 8 data, other licensing tools that need to be improved, but 9 how do you do that when you have $30 million at one time and 10 you have now $2.1 million or $3 million, and they're also 11 not sure, because each time Congress says they're going to 12 hit NRC with $60 million or $70 million, all that has to 13 come from research. 14 And if it comes from research, where do you think O) 5 15 it comes from? It comes from the waste management research. 16 Sometimes I pay so much money as a cut, I don't have that. 17 Maybe I may have to take a loan or something to pay that. 18 But in order to make that dollar go further, we have 19 followed certain strategies, one of which is we have made a 20 command decision that we are only going to improve the 21 existing field and lab data tests. We are not going to 22 break new ground. Whatever is the existing information, we 23 just see where the gaping holes are and then we'll improve 24' upon that. 25 We will better understand the physical and I . ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l 28 1 chemical processes. When I said better understand, that ( 2 means I am not going to start saying, well, let me do this 3 and see whether I understand this or not. 4 I have already done that. Now I need to find out l 5 if I need to do more work in that area to fill that gap or 6 can I just move on. We have started working on the in-house 7 research on the existing models and database and, again, as 8 the presentations progress, you will see how we are doing 9 it. 10 We are actively looking into the partnership with l 11 other Federal agencies. We are also entering into l 12 partnerships with the research institutes and universities, 13 especially those universities that have the experimental 14 facilities available for us to go and do the work ourselves. () 15 And then lastly, we have been active in the 16 international arena before and it is time to see how we can 17 leverage by being active in those areas and still keep on 18 getting the information, without being the sole source 19 supporter of the project. 1 20 If you don't have any comment at this time, what 21 I'd like to do is turn over the presentation to-Bill Ott. 22 Bill is our team leader on the radionuclide transport 23 program. 24 Before I came to Waste Management in '95, Bill was 25 acting branch chief for an extended period of time. He is g . ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i L_
29 1 very knowledgeable about the history of high level waste, ( 2 low level waste, and then the decommissioning program that 3 we have today. 4 DR. HORNBERGER: Sher, before we go on, we may 5 have actually a couple questions. 6 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: On your first bullet here, I 7 realize that as you have reduced funds, you have to get much 8 more focused, but, on the other hand, isn't there a bit of a 9 contradiction here in talking about fewer conservative { 10 assumptions in a declining budget environment? ! 11 One way to offset the absence of research, of
)
12 course, is to be more conservative, not less conservative. 13 Isn't that the problem? 14 MR. BAHADUR: Yes. And as you would see in the
- 15 succeeding presentations, the problem with the existing 16 tools right now is that they are based on some of these 17 conservative assumptions, some of the uncertainties about l 18 the data sets. The way I mean to say fewer conservative l 19 assumptions is if there is an existing model which you can 20 improve upon, if there is an existing data set that we can l
21 improve upon and by doing so we can remove the conservatism 22 from the assumption, then we would do it. 23 But we are not going to start into newer ground 24 and just see -- just go and investigate see what turns out. 25 In other words, we have been working in this field for some ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
30 1 time and if we can focus on only those areas where we think () 2 3 the answer is going to be X or Y and we just go there to make sure whether it's X or Y, more like a confirmatory type 4 of research, something that we do when we develop a < 5 regulation, not completely exploratory. 6 Of course, while I'm saying that, I may just add 7 here that, remember when I was saying we should have two 8 kinds of research programs, either the confirmatory or the 9 exploratory, with the 80/20 as a given ratio, and since the 10 Commission has asked us to be flexible, I think you will 11 notice this program is somewhat flexible in the sense that 12 perhaps our exploratory research is more closer to 40 13 percent. 14 What we do is we take care of all the user needs ( 15 that come from the licensing office first. We fund those 16 programs which were responsive to those user needs and then 17 the remaining funds are diverted towards these exploratory 18 type of work. 19 DR. HORNBERGER: Sher, following up mainly on that 20 same issue, there clearly are lots and lots of things that 21 could command your research attention. How is it that you 22 decide which things that you're going to do? That is, do 23 you go through a formal procedure to -- you mentioned 24 identifying gaps, critical gaps and working there. 25 Do you have a formal procedure that you go through ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
i 31 1 to prioritize those gaps and then prioritize your efforts? () 2 3 MR. BAHADUR: Other than the coordination with the user office and identifying their needs, even if a user need 4 is not developed as a result, if we perceive that they are 5 going to be needing information in the near future, then 6 that becomes a priority. We do have a peer review program. 7 We do have informal peer review with the National Academy of 8 Sciences. 9 And with the usual technical judgment and 10 experience that we have gathered over the period of time 11 doing our researches, there is a list of projects that we 12 just take from one to other. I think, Bill, you're going to 13 be presenting the list of projects that we have right now. 14 MR. OTT: We'll give them a copy of the list. We () 15 won' t go through them FIN by FIN or proj ect by proj ect, but 16 the project managers will go through their general areas. 17 And we can revisit this question again back when we start 18 talking a little more about the technical aspects. 19 But certainly one aspect is that we do a lot of 20 things like participating in workshops and soliciting 21 reviews of our program, as well as the views of other 22 experts on what they consider to be the critical issues at 23 the time. I think, by and large, we have a fairly good 24 handle on that. 25 There is also, because of the core capabilities O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i
32 1 thrust, a part of our program that tries to seek balance in () 2 3 terms of expertise. So there is a little bit of an effort to maintain some consistency across a number of areas of 4 investigation, primarily to support the minimum number of 5 staff that we have to address issues across that sort of 6 problem. 7 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: One of the interests of the 8 committee, of course, is trying to understand if there is a 9 built-in inertia against change, where the research is 10 driven principally by user requirements or user requests 11 and, in particular, if the agency is trying to transition 12 into a more risk-informed approach to regulatory practice. 13 Are we in a situation here with the budgets the 14 way they are and the agency maybe being very comfortable in () 15 the regulatory process, continuing as it is, are those two 16- elements causing a real obstacle to change, change that 17 needs research, needs the kind of information that is very 18 difficult to get in a routine operation. 19 So that's something you don't need to answer or 20 address now, but it is something that's behind a lot of our 21 interests in the research program and how it's addressing 22 the information requirements and the product requirements 23 for supporting the desire to do more things on a 24 risk-informed basis. 25 So we're going to probably be pressing that issue ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. - Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
33 1 a bit as we go along. () 2 MR. BAHADUR: And this issue that you just now 3 raise, is that very close to NRC's current emphasis to talk 4- about the risk-informed performance-based regulations, but 5 then it's been spl~it into -- not a very clear split, I must 6 say, but, nevertheless, a split into two areas, one where 7 you can apply this into the existing regulations and the 8 other in which you have a conscious decision made that any 9 new regulation would at least follow this risk-informed 10 performance based approach? 11 In that sense, right now what we are doing is the l 12 work which is helping the user need, namely NMSS, to 13 implement the existing regulations on the decommissioning I l 14 licensees, on uranium mill tailing licensees, and our 15 research in no way right now is focused towards developing 16 new regulations or revising the existing ones in to 17 risk-informed performance-based type requirements. 18 DR. HORNBERGER: Ray and then Charles. Ray? 19 DR. WYMER: One of your very fundamental decisions 20 is what core capabilities do you need and I wondered how far 21 you threw your net to try to capture that those capabilities 22 are. Is it all determined in-house or do you go out and 23 solicit outside input? 24 MR. BAHADUR: Yes. The thought was that -- 25 incidentally, the core capability that you're seeing, which O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 I
34 1 is in this handout, and it's listed, at the top, Thin Band, 2 the research FTEs are eight, the contractor FTEs are three, 3 and the contractor funds are 650K. 4 And the thinking behind this was the agency would 5 need this as a core, assuming all the tools have already 6 been developed and modified. That means if we have given 7 the tools to the licensees where they can have the realistic 8 assessment of dose, then you would need eight FTEs within 9 NRC to address any questions, issues, any tinkering with the 10 existing tools, or answering any questions that the licensee l 11 may have. 12 And these eight FTEs would be knowledgeable enough l 13 to go to various contractors or other sources where such 14 information may be gathered and that would require three 15 FTEs in the contractor and 650K, of course. I mean, this l 16 was developed based on a number of assumptions, which I have f l i l 17 listed down at the end of each table. l 18 The basic thing to remember is that we have 19 assumed that all development of the revised, modified tools 20 and data sets and models have already been completed. So l l 21 this is more like a stay alert and provide knowledgeable 22 response, timely response, in a limited manner, you will 23 need eight FTEs within NRC, three in the contractor, and 24 650K. i 25 DR. HORNBERGER: I think the question, though, is ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 ' (202) 842-0034 l
35 1 you have a list, in your mind, of sort of the expertise of '( ) 2 those eight FTE people. 3 MR. BAHADUR: Yes. i 4 DR. HORNBERGER: And the question is how did you l 5 identify the list of expertise? Was this all done in-house j 6 or -- l 7 MR. BAHADUR: Yes. As I said, when the core was 8 identified and developed, then the coordination was held at 9 four different levels. The first level was the directors of t 10 the user needs, namely the NRR, NMSS and AEOD. Secondly, l i 11 the project managers at the DOE national labs, the existing 12 projects. Thirdly, the deans for nuclear engineering 13~ departments in six different universities, and the last one 14 was our coordination with the industry, namely the EPRI, the
) 15 NEI, and the vendors.
16 DR. WYMER: That's the level at which they made 17 their -- l 18 MR. BAHADUR: And that's the level on which this 1 l 19 has been coordinated. l ! 20 DR. HORNBERGER: Fine. Charles. 21 DR. FAIRHURST: Yes. There's enough paper here to l 22 sink a battleship. 23 DR. HORNBERGER: Is that your comment? I i 24 DR. FAIRHURST: How much money have you spent on ) 25 this versus research? I i i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i
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36 1 MR. BAHADUR: Don't give all the handouts that 2- you're planning on. 3 DR. FAIRHURST: There's more yet to come. Just on j 4 this sheet here, I'm trying to understand what you've been 5' saying. You've got a list of funding for research which 6 indicates a level of the order of $2 million, right? There 7 was a bar chart. I want to keep this one. 8 MR. BAHADUR: Yes, I !- 9 DR. FAIRHURST: So that's indicating somewhere in 10 the region of $2 million that you have to deal with. l ! 11 MR. BAHADUR: Yes. 3 12 DR. FAIRHURST: Of that amount -- now go back to I 13 the one you had after. The one that was on immediately l 14 before that. Of that amount, the last three items, how much 15 of $2 million is spent? Because when I look through this -- 16 I forgot where it is now, but there was a list of the I 17 funding for international, and it was zero. I 18 MR. BAHADUR: The partnership with Federal 19 agencies, as Bill will describe to you just as soon as I 20 leave this place, has taken place in a number of -- three 21 projects right now and we will describe that in detail and I 22 don't want to steal Bill's thunder, but one is with NIST, 23 one is with the USGS, and then the work that we are doing 24 with the agriculture research services. 25 And maybe we can provide you the dollars for each O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
37 1 of the projects. 2 DR. FAIRHURST: No. Ten percent for the last 3 three and 90 percent for the fourth one. 4 MR. BAHADUR: The partnership with the Federal 5 agencies, the partnership with the research institutes and I 6 the universities total would give us about 30 percent of our 1 7' total budget, because we have four projects, 30 to 40 I 8 percent of our budget. 9 DR. FAIRHURST: About half a million, 600K. 10 MR. BAHADUR: Something like that. There is no 11 active expenses in the international cooperative agreement 12 other than the travel money that we have spent last fall and 13 then again in the winter, where we visited a number of 14 countries and saw what they had to offer, and then come up I) 1.5 with a partnership. 16- We just had the visit from the people from Nigra 17 and then next winter we are going to have people from GRS, l 18 from Germany. And when we went there and when we heard 19 through their presentations, one little clear niche we found 20 was because of their laboratories, in nature, because they 21 are doing the actual measurements in some of the tunnels and 22 some of the areas. 23 Some of the countries are extremely rich with the 24 actual data. While we have done an extensive amount of work 25 in the models that we have developed based on certain 4 f) \/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
38 1 assumptions, I think a very good niche would be where we can
) 2 use their data, put it on our model and see as to whether 3 there's a validation in our assumptions or not, and those 4 are some'of the areas where we are exploring the 5 possibility.
6 DR. FAIRHURST: Excuse me. Are you interacting 7 then with the fabricators of facilitics and so on or are you 8 dealing with the regulators in those countries? 9 MR. BAHADUR: Right now there's no active 10 coordination with anyone, other than just the visits. 11 DR. FAIRHURST: Okay. It's informal. 12 MR. BAHADUR: And we are looking into all 13 possibilities. 14 DR. FAIRHURST: And what about the partnerships I 15 with research institutes and universities? 16 MR. BAHADUR: We have research going on and Dr. 17 Linda Veblen is here. 18 DR. FAIRHURST: Fine. Maybe I was anticipating 19 too much. 20 MR. BAHADUR: She is working with the university 21 and she will givt you the details on that. 22 DR. FAIRHURST: One less question then. How much 23 of that budget then comes to something like CNWRA? Any of 24 that? l 25 MR. BAHADUR: At this time, no contract dollars l i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l , 39 1 from the Office of Research are going to CNWRA. As you () 2 know, CNWRA, with a real mission on the high level waste or 3 the waste-oriented program. 4 None of our project sites now are in the -- which 5 are dedicated to the high level waste and, therefore, , 1 i 6 nothing is going to the center. l 1 7 DR. FAIRHURST: But your radionuclide transport l 8 research, that doesn't have a liaison with the modeling? 9 MR. BAHADUR: If you're asking whether we have the 10 coordination with them, every week there is a meeting in 11 NMSS where the center is part of it and we participate in 12 that meeting and we share what we have done and we listen to 13 what they are doing. But there is no active project going 14 on at the center. 15 DR. HORNBERGER: Thanks very much, Sher. I think 16 we'll move on and ask Bill. 17 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: It has been suggested that'in 18 order to get the recording operation in proper order that we 19 take a five-minute break and let that occur before our next 20 speaker. 21 So let's take a very short break, five minutes. 22 [ Recess.) 23 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I think we will resume the 24 meeting. Bill, are you ready? ) 25 MR. OTT: I'm ready. ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
r 40 1 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: All right. Let's go. () 2 MR. OTT: Before I get into the prepared remarks,
'3 I'm going to offer a few more observations with regard to.
4' some of the issues you were discussing at the end. The 5 operating plan that Sher gave you was specifically tailored 6 for presentation at a forum, public forum. Basically, that 7 means we can't give you out your dollars in detail. We can 8 only give you dollars that have been approved in the budget. 9 I believe you have access to the dollars from 10 other sources outside of the public meeting. If you look at ! 11 those, you'l.'. be able to cross-correlate between the columns i 12 on the left side of that table, which indicated user need 13 status, as well as priority in the user office, to the 14 dollars and you'll be able to see actua21y how much of the O) (, 15 program is directly related to user need requests and how j 16 much is, quote, RES-sponsored, Office of Research sponsored. 17 We weren't going to talk about those exact i 18 numbers, but'you can get that information from a more detailed version of the table than we gave you. 19 20 I'm going to talk about the user need situation 21 just for about 30 seconds. When we get high level waste and 22 low level waste programs, those are dedicated programs to 23 support the high level waste and low level waste regulatory 24 efforts. 25 The Office of Nuclear Material Safety and i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 j Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 842-0034 ) i l
1 41 1 Safeguards developed user needs. They developed 2 comprehensive user needs across their entire program. The 3 last user need'that we got from NMSS was, I believe, f 4 included as an appendix in that draft NUREG that we gave you 5 last fall. And if you look at the user need, you'll find 6 out something like 50 to 75 pages of detailed programmatic 7 descriptions of things they needed from research. 8 Low level waste similarly generally provided 9 rather comprehensive lists of user needs and both those 10 programs were very strongly user need-driven and very highly 11 user need coordinated. When both high level waste and low 12 level waste essentially disappeared from the horizon, as you 13 saw on that table, as the red and the green gradually went 1 14 to zero,.a decision had to be made on whether the agency , 15 needed to retain research capability in this area and I 16 guess what you would say is that a fairly high level in the 17 agency determined that they did want to maintain some kind 18 of a generic capability to address radionuclide transport 19 issues for the agency. 20 I'm not going to go into what I personally believe 21 is the rationale for that. Just the fact exists that j 1 22 decision was made. And the program was put together as an 23 Office of.Research sponsored program. 24 We do now receive user needs from NMSS. They 25 still perceive that we have expertise in areas that they are ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Ox Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
42 1 currently having problens with in thins like decommissioning () 2 and we are responding to those user needs whenever we get 3 them by placing resources on them and trying to give them 4 direct support for their licensing program. 5 Those are mostly the programs that are listed in 6 -that version of the operating plan as NMSS-sponsored, those 7 for-which we have gotten sort of piecemeal user need 8 statements. 9 Wh_n you talk about -- asked a question about, 10 one, how we determined the expertise in the core capability 11 presentation, Sher gave an answer that was a very high 12 level. I'm going to give an answer that's a very low level, 13 mainly the gut level, i l 14 We get the request to develop the user need or to 15 develop the core capability and what we do is we go to the 16 project managers, project managers that have been, by and 17 large -- Ralph, you're the newest, how long have you been 18 here? 19 MR. CADY: Eight years. 20 MR. OTT: Ralph is the newest of our staff and 21 he's been here for eight years. We have a very long history 22 in the program. He's worked in high level waste, he's 23 worked in low level waste; before us, he worked for the 24 Department of Energy. We have six other staff members on 25 the team, something like 75 total staff years of experience h k/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
43 l l 1 putting together research programs in the area of high level 2 waste, low level waste, and radionuclide transport. 3 We essentially went to them and we said, okay, if 4 we need to support an unusual situation in performance 5 assessment, not knowing what the unusual characteristics 6 are, if the problem is in your area, what kind of expertise 7 would you have to use either on staff or at a contractor, l 8 And admittedly, they weren't given a whole lot of 9 time to think about this, but I think they gave me a very 10 rational answer based on their expertise and experience in 11 the area, and that's where the list of expertise in that 12 core capabilities write-up, which has four separate areas 1 13 and given areas of investigation or given areas of 14 knowledge, that's where that came from. 15 is it comprehensive? The observation is that if 16 we have expertise in those areas, there probably isn't an ! 17 area that we won't be able to find the right expertise, find 18 the right knowledge. So I think we have reasonably good I 19 coverage there. 20 Coordination with the center, that was a specific l 21 question that there are some very specific answers to. We 22- still know who's at the center fairly well. There's being l 23 some continuing turnover down there. There is very little 24 turnover up here, but we continue to be aware of who is 25 working down there. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 , (202) 842-0034 L
l 44 1 In two recent instances, one with a natural analog () 2 working group, for which we have provided a core group 3 member for the last eight years, Linda Veblen was on the 4 core group of the natural analog working group, when we got 5 out of the high level waste business. That group primarily 6 deals with high level waste kinds of issues. We essentially 7 turned that activity over to Bill Murphy at the center, who 8 has also worked closely with us in the past. 9 We have become a member of the NEA absorption 10 forum, which is looking very closely at the state-of-the-art 11 in modeling absorption processes for performance assessment. ! l 12 Dave Turner from the center went to that meeting, the 1 i 13 original meeting, and he hasn't gone to subsequent meetings I 14 since the actual representation in the NEA is through our 15 staff, through Linda Veblen and one of our contractors, Dr. 16 Pat Brady at Sandia National Laboratory. 17 But when we got their recent report, we 18 distributed it not only to those two people, to Pat Brady 19 and to Linda, but we also sent it down to Dave Turner at the 20 center to get his review with respect to what's going on in l 21 the high level waste program and their perspectives on the l 22 view being put forward in that absorption report. l l 23 And then when Pat Brady went off to that l 1 i l 24 absorption forum meeting about two weeks to a month ago, he 25 took with him not only our comments, but those views from 1 1 l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 I l
45 , 1 the center. 2 So.we are still trying to naintain at a technical 3 level contacts and awareness and transfer of information 4 between our staff and the center and the activities we do in 5 the center. 6 That's all I'm going to say about that stuff. 7 That's why I'm Bill Ott, Team Leader, Waste Management 8 Branch. 9 Sher ended his presentation with a set of four 10 ' bullets on program strategy, so sometimes supposed to be the 11' interface between Sher and the rest of the presentation, I 12 figured I better start off addressing the program strategy.
'13 So I developed a slide called program strategy 14 implementation. This first bullet talked about doing work
() 15 and data sets and field experiments and if you look at the 16 ten projects or you listen to what comes later, you'll find 17 that two-thirds of the projects in the branch, listed in the 18 branch operating plan, some of those actually haven't 19 started yet and they're planned for starting in the fall 20 into a couple of current activities. 21 Ten of them actually involve field experiments or 22 field data collection of some kind or another. Three others 23' rely on the use of field data collected from other ' 24 locations. So it's a very strongly field-oriented, 25 experimental-oriented program right now. It's not a paper (N/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
46 1 study or theoretically centered program. We're trying to go 2 out and measure actual phenomena and study those things 3 where they actually occur. 4 In terms of getting our own staff involved in 5 doing research, as funding has decreased, is being advocated 6 throughout the Office of Research, for the staff members to
-7 become more directly involved. You'll get more details on 8 that as the day goes on or as the morning goes on, but eight 9 projects out of the 15 listed now have some substantial 10 contribution from individuals on our staff.
11 Linda is spending 80 parcent of her time up at 12 Johns Hopkins University working with equipment in the 1 ! 13 laboratory studying sites. She'll tell you a lot more 14 detail about that. 15 In the out-years, Linda and Ralph are both. going i 16 to become heavily involved in one of the absorption projects 17 that we have. Ralph is going to do the PA modeling'for us 18 and try and do a demonstration of the feasibility of doing l 19 mechanistic modeling as opposed to standard approach. 20 Tom Nicholson and Ralph Cady are working with the 21 Agricultural Research Service out in Beltsville on.another 22 small project, looking at instrumentation for infiltration. 23 Jake Philip spends about 20 percent of his time up at NIST 24 working on a project on concrete durability and getting 25 validation data to.put 4 SIGHT, which is a font model l ! i h v ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
I 47 1 developed for us by NIST in a mode where it has a technical () 2 3 basis for being used for extrapolations to longer time-frames. 4 So we have probably been more effective than any 5 other branch in the office at this time, in the degree of 6 involvement we have with our staff directly in research 7 efforts. But we don't intend to end here. We intend to l 8 continue to push for even greater involvement. 9 We have direct arrangements with the U.S. 10 Geological Survey, as I mentioned, with Ralph and Linda in ; 11 one project, with NIST for Jake, the Agricultural Research 12 Service for Ralph and Tom, and JHU for Linda. 13 These actually -- all of these arrangements have 14 some formal-either memorandum of understanding or an () 15 interagency or intergovernmental exchange agreement or 16 something like that that specifies that access to the i 17 facilities and participation of the individuals involved. l 18 Sher mentioned that we are renewing contracts on 19 information exchange agreements. He visited five countries 20 in Europe in the fall. I returned about six weeks ago from 21 visits to both Korea, South Korea and Japan. I know JAERI 22 and KAERI representatives gave a brief overview of our 23 program and got an overview from them of what they were 24 doing. It now remains for the staff to look at the contents 1 25- of their program and determine whether there's a sufficient l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. N Court Reporters , 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 I
48 1 commonality of. interest and value for us to make some kind () 2-3 of a formal arrangement. that, as well. So we are continuing to pursue 4 We're continuing to do things like when it's l 5 appropriate, such as the NAA absorption forum, trying to 6 become directly and formally involved; so that we'll not 7 only be able to get their views on what we're doing,-but be 8 able to influence whatever the international view is on 9 certain activities. 10 Development of the program. I had a slide like 11 this in the presentation I made to you last time, but this 12 is different. The words have changed. Primarily, the first 13 bullet and the last bullet. 1 14 I think everybody in this room knows that lots of () 15 people out there can make performance assessment 16 calculations. We can do it We now have an integrated 17 program to do it now in-house. Sandia can do it, DOE can do 18 it, EPA can do it. ' 19 It's common that everybody has this capability. 20 It's also very common that almost all of these 21 methodologies, integrated models, whatever they are, use 22 simplified conceptual models, containing a large number of 23 unconfirmed input parameter values, conservative 24 assumptions, and they've been mandated with significant 25 amounts of uncertainty. l i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005
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49 1 We try to systematically go through and assess 2 uncertainty. How well we're doing, I don't really know. 3 I'm not certain that anybody -- it would be interesting to 4 see somebody give a confidence level on that, on the 5 confidence levels that are portrayed for giving 6 calculations. 7 We see our role as being one of trying to get 8 better confidence in those calculations, aimed primarily at ) 9 complex sites. Conservative assumptions have a very real 10 and useful place in this organization, because in reality, 11 80 to 90 percent of the sites that have to be licensed or 12 cleaned up have very minimal contamination problems. 13 If you can demonstrate with a model conservative 14 assumptions and all sorts of error bands, that there is no O V 15 way in the world that there is ever going to be a health 16 risk, then why apply a more complex model. We're not trying 17 to solve that problem. Conservatism and assumptions have 18 their appropriate place. 19 But there are times when the inventories, when the 20 amounts, when the environmental situation is such that a 21 simple model won't work, and we are essentially trying to 22 improve the capability of our techniques to the point where 23 we can handle those complex situations without placing undue , i 24 burden on licensees. 1 25 What happens now is that if you get a large ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
50 l i 1 inventory and complex site and you apply conservative 2 assumptions, you wind up making regulatory decisions that 3 are very expensive. It costs a lot to clean up some of l l 4 these sites or to assure that somebody -- you know, that the l 5 contamination isn't going to get off site. 6 It doesn't mean we can't do it. We can protect 7 the public health and safety even in those cases with ! 8 conservative assumptions and regulatory actions that are ! 9 based on those assumptions, but we see it as one of the 10 agency's responsibilities to try and do better for the 11 industry and the public in terms of the applications of 12 resources for everybody. i 13 So for complex sites with significant 14 contamination, we see that the only way to support less 15 conservative licensing decisions is to provide a sound 16 technical basis for more realistic assessments. 17 Given that description, you come up with 18 performance assessments as the general envelope of -- before
.19 defining what your concerns are. This is a conceptual 20 diagram of the performance assessments office. We showed 21 this to you before. But to a large extent, it shows you how 22 our program is organized, because what we feel is this is 23 the way the model works and we need to be able to address, )
24 in a complex situation, problems in any leg of this ) l l 25 particular effort. l t 1 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 l i 51 1 Are we doing that? No. And I will point out U) 2 exactly where we're not in a minute. But we have a program 3 in hydrology. Tom calls it hydrology, I title it in here 4 infiltration monitoring and flow. We have a source term 5 program which primarily is Phil Reed's responsibility. I l 6 Linda Veblen is also working on it in terms of specifically l 7 source terms for slags. We have a program in engineered I 8 barriers that Jake Philip will talk to you about. l 9 We have a program looking at transport properties, 10 specifically at things like sorption, the effect of organic 11 complexants, micro-particulates, colloids, that kind of 12 thing. Ed O'Donnell will describe most of that. 13 The final part, the integration of all these 14 things into an overall methodology will be discussed by G k,) 15 Ralph Cady, i 16 The part that we're not doing much on and the part l 17 that you asked about before is the part over here that leads i 18 to dose to man. Sher mentioned the fact that most of that l 19 work was being done in Cheryl's branch. You can take a look , 1 l 20 at the decommissioning or the operating plan again. 21 It's combined, because it has the stuff from our 22 branch and the stuff from Cheryl's branch. You won't find l 23 much in there that's actually looking at these pathways 24 right now. I think she has an intent to do some of that 1 25 work. We have identified a need to do some of that work, l l ( T ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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i 52 1 too. () 2 I don't think either one of us is actually funding 3 it yet. That's a continuing problem that we're just going 4 to have to deal with. 5 What are we looking at in infiltration flow and 6 monitoring? I'm going to.just give a brief synopsis of 7 these things, because you're going to get more details from 8 the staff. So I'll try and rush through these so we can 9 start getting into those presentations. 10 Basically, we're trying to establish and test 11 techniques for estimating, measuring, monitoring water 12 movement. In most cases, the medium for conveying 13 radionuclides from a contaminated source to some other place 14 is going to be water. It's the primary -- the exception is k 15 the air pathway. So Reed has actually done the air pathway 16 calculations for the BTP on performance assessment. We're 17 not doing any research in that area. I don't think that we 18 have indicated any need to do research in that area. 19 Phil would be better qualified to address that 20 question, if you want to ask it again when he gets up here. 21 We're working on methodologies for testing and 22 selecting conceptual models for infiltration and flow 23 processes. We're looking at monitoring techniques very , 1 24 specifically. We've got two programs. The one program out 25 at ARS in Beltsville, Tom and Ralph are looking specifically l l . ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005
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53 1 at instrumentation use for monitoring in the near surface. ( 2 At Maricopa, being run by the University of Arizona, we have 3 a large field program that's looking at setting up 4 monitoring programs, how you do it. We recent1:- had a 5 workshop on it, that Tom will mention. l 6 We want to look at optimization techniques to l l 7 enhance the effectiveness of data collection for the 8 infiltration and flow analysis. 9 Engineered barriers. As I said before, we 10 developed 4 SIGHT at NIST specifically to give us a tool for 11 predicting long-term performance of concrete barriers. As 12 Jake has pointed out many times in discussions with the POG, l 13 performance assessment working group, he didn't feel there 14 was a technical basis to support those predictions out to () 15 500 years. And one of the things that he wanted to put in 16 the program was a project to collect data on aged concrete 17 samples. 18' He's got that program in place He's working on 19 it directly himself. Jim Clifton from NIST is out here in 20 the audience, if you guys want to talk to him at a break or j 21 at lunch or something, you can get even some more insight 22 into it, and corner him and Jake together. 23 It's specifically looking at structural durability 24 of concrete vaults, covers, hydrologic integrity of covers, 25 chemical forms of barriers, looking at protocols and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
54 1 strategies for long-term monitoring. () 2 At the completion of the present program, Jake 3 will tell you what he views as long-term needs in the area 4 of engineered barriers. We've also had a project out at 5 Beltsville for a number of years that's been looking at 6 covers, various cover designs, bio-engineered covers, 7 capillary break covers, rip-rap covers, clay barriers. 8 Just sitting there, put in the waterfall, 9 measuring infiltration and taking a look at how these covers 10 perform over time. That project has just about ended, Ed 11 will mention a little bit about it, but that was the other 12 component of our engineered barriers program. 13 Source term. Phil Reed will talk to you about 14 source term. We're trying to characterize the inventory, (.,) 15 identify radionuclide species, physical and chemical forms, 16 amount and type of each type of contamination, establish 17 mechanisms controlling contaminant movement, leachability, 18 solubility, evaluate Licensee estimates of releases from 19 disposal units. 20 Our objective, of course, is to develop some kind 21 of realistic picture of what is there. In many cases, for 22 old disposal sites, particularly at the Department of 23 Energy, there is very poor information on actual amounts of 24 radionuclides, sometimes even the chemical forms. Very poor 25 knowledge of what's out there. rm I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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55 1 Transport processes. I should say one is at 2 Sandia and one at the USGS. We're trying to actually get 3 down to mechanistic, a mechanistic understanding of 4 absorption processes and hopefully get a better
'5 understanding of how absorption changes with things like 6 ionic strength of solutions, pH, state of the nuclides 7 involved.
8 We also want to investigate the computational 9 limitations of this problem, because the baggage that 10 mechanistic modeling carries with it is that it's too 4 1 11 complex, too hard, too computationally intense to implement 12 in a performance assessment.
-13 KDs are simple, they're constants, they just get i
14 >added in, but they're not realistic representations because ' 15 the one we know that many absorption processes are pH 16 dependent. They are also dependent upon the presence of 17 other ions in the solution. 18 So we're hoping that we will be able to both 19 develop mechanistic models and demonstrate their feasibility l 20 of use in the PA context. l 21 All of this stuff is nice, but if isn't put into a 22 package where you can use it, it becomes very 23 labor-intensive to carry out the calculations to do the l 24 necessary iterations to do some kind of a statistical 25 sampling of possible future state. So we have a program O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
56 1 'which is designed to maintain and incorporate into an () 2 3. integrated PA model improvements in models as they occur. One of these is directly connected up with one of 4 the absorption proj ects, the Sandia absorption project is 5 -directly connected in to the Sandia environmental support 6 system. You probably heard that mentioned before by John 7 Greeves or one of the people from his program. 8 Maintain the code and ensure that system models 9 are consistent with regulatory purposes. 10 Now we come to the good part, the staff i 11 presentation. This is how they will come up. The first one 12 is going to be Tom Nicholson. He will talk about { 13 infiltration flow and monitoring, but his front slide will 14 say hydrology. It's hard to get the word out of his 15 vocabulary. 16 Jake will come -- Jake will follow that. We're l 17 essentially following the water through the system. Tom is , 18 going to start with infiltration. He's also going to talk 19 about flow. Start at infiltration. We'll go to engineered { 20 barriers for Jake. Talk with Phil about source term, get a 21 little bit of information from Linda, about her program on 22 slags, and talk with Ed about the transport projects, and 23 we'll sum it all up with our integration expert, Ralph Cady. 1 24 Now, I gave you a handout which contains all the : 25 viewgraphs that the staff are going to present in the order l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
I J l 57 1 that they're going to -- in this particular order. There 2 are two other pieces in that handout, as well. 3 One is a brief list of biographical sketches of 4 the staff, gives you an idea of who they are and what their 5 background is. That way they don't have to get up here and 6 say who they are and what they do or what they're training 7 is. 8 The other is an update of the list we gave you 9 'last fall. I believe we gave you a list of projects, 10 one-page summary of each project. We've updated the status 11 line on each one of those so you will know where we are now 12 as opposed to where we were then. 13 We're not going to go into those particular 14 packages. That's presented for your interest, edification, () 15 and use in your letter-writing processes. 16 I'm going to say one more thing before we get to 17 Tom, and that's how the programs -- how we've asked the 18 staff to prepare the presentations for you. 19 Rather than going project by project, although 20' there may be some project by project in the way they line up 21 their. bullets, we've asked them to do four things. We've 22 asked them to address the problems that they are concerned 23 with, the kinds of. problems they are trying to address in 24 ongoing work, and I stress ongoing because we later on give 25 them an opportunity to say what kinds of things do you think O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
58 1 we ought to be doing later on, what things also need to be ( 2 done that we aren't currently addressing. 3 First, we'll focus on the problems that they are 4 actually addressing. Next, I've asked them to say, okay, 5 you've got the problems, these are what we're doing, this is 6 how we're trying to address the problems. 7 Then what kind of a product they expect out of 8 these particular activities they're going through. 9 Hopefully, in telling you what the product is, they'll tell 10 you how they except the product to be used. 11 Then we asked them to end up with their current 12 best estimate of what other problems they think we should be 13 addressing, future work that we don't currently have the 14 budget, absent the work that we're -- you know, if we k 15 continue to do the work we're doing, we don't have the work 16 -- have the money to do these other activities. 17 In terms of what you have to do in terms of 18 viewing our program, we figured this was probably the best 19 way for you to assess the relevance of what we're doing, the 20 technical content of what we're doing, and the validity of 21 our approach for going forward. 22 So this is what we have to offer. Any questions? 23 DR. HORNBERGER: Thank you. I suggest that if we 24 have questions on specific topics, that we hold off until we 25 hear from the people. But does anyone.have any general O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
59 1 questions that they'd like to address now? 2 [No response.] 3 DR. HORNBERGER: Very good, Bill. And I might say 4 that there is no way that we would ever want anyone to 5 expunge the word hydrology from their vocabulary, Tom. 6 MR. NICHOLSON: Thank you very much, George. I 7 couldn't agree with you more. I'm coing to be talking about 8 hydrology and, as Bill says, infiltration and groundwater 9 flow. 10 Bill showed this diagram earlier that kind of 11 provides an overall performance assessment logic. I'm going 12 to be talking about infiltration primarily, groundwater 13 flow, flow through wells, human exposure. We will not 14 discuss surface water release because we do not have a 15 program at this time in surface water hydrology; in the past 16 we have, primarily with regard to flooding and design basis 17 flood determination, things of that nature. 18 So right now, the only aspect of surface water is 19 basically looking at the pathways. 20 In hydrology, I want to point out that I am not 21 the only hydrologist. Dr. Ralph Cady, in the back of the 22 room, he and I work together as a team. A lot of the work I 23 will be discussing, he has a very large part in it. So I 12 4 want-you to remember Dr. Cady. 25 Now, what are the problems that we're addressing? () ANN kILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters p 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
60 1 Well, there's a variety of problems we have identified () 2 3 through a variety of means, some of which are user need. Some of those are based upon technical mallacies. Some of 4 those are from things such as INTRAVAL, INTRAVAL taught us j 5 an awful lot. That was international cooperative project 6 and validation of models. 7 We also learned from attending ADU meetings, 8 attending National Academy of Science meetings, workshops, a 9 variety of things. We also have an MOU with the ARS, 10 Agricultural Research Service, and the United States 11 Geological Survey. Last fall we had a meeting with Bill 12 Alley, who is chief of the groundwater branch, and his 13 staff, and a variety of people from throughout the United 14 States met with our staff and we went into a variety of 15 topics dealing with hydrology. 16 Now, the specific problems that we're now 17 presently addressing, the first one is estimate infiltration 18 rates and distributions. This has been identified in a l 19 variety of means. NMSS staff, in doing their analyses for 20 site decommissioning management plans, previously on low i 21 level waste, and the high level waste program, early on, i 22 with regard to Yucca Mountain, infiltration was an extremely I 23 important issue, and that's what we're addressing in a 24 generic sense. 25 Another issue is that a lot of the codes that are i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 j Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
i 61 l' now being used for reviewing SDMT sites use very simple () 2 codes, RESRED, D&D, and in those they provide default 3 values. These default values have to be assessed. We have 4 to determine where they fit within the distribution of soil ! 5 properties, how conservative are they, do they represent the 6 mean or the tails. l 7 We also are looking at alternative conceptual flow 8 models. This came directly out of the INTRAVAL project, but 9 from time to time, we get involved in the -- when we were 10 involved in Yucca Mountain, we looked at issues such as the 11 seep groundwater gradient north of Yucca Mountain. We were 12 the first ones to come up with the idea that it may be a 13 perch system. There may be other alternative conceptual i 14 models dealing with that.
) 15 There are many examples of alternative conceptual 16 models, that are one of the major stumbling blocks in l 17 reviewing a license application.
l 18 Finally, we look at monitoring infiltration and l 19 groundwater flow to determine a preferential pathway. This 20 issue again has come up on numerous occasions. The West 21 Valley site, there was an issue there dealing with sand 22 lenses. We were able to get Dr. Richard Parizek from Penn 23 State to help us look and determine are there, in fact, sand j 24 lenses that are continuous that are pathways. 25 The issue at Yucca Mountain, whether fracture flow ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
62 1 is governing of the faults. So a lot of the issues dealing ) () 2 3 with preferential pathways we're trying to address. I have five other colleagues of mine, so time is 4 of the essence. I will try to be much brief in my comments 5 and not provide as much detail. 6 A user need came in discussing monitoring 7 strategies. This issue was extremely important at the Ward 8 Valley site with regard to what kind of monitoring 9 strategies could be addressed and how do you go about 10 evaluating them; how reliable are the instruments that are 11 being used in a monitoring program, do they last a year, 12 five years, do you use them in a long-term sense, do you 13 have to have someone out there actually making the 14 measurements or can you do it remotely, can you get 15 real-time data, can you get information on a monitoring 16 program when it's Christmas vacation and everyone is away, 17 can you actually have a remote -- a means of getting that 18 information, and that's some of the work we're doing with 19 the Agricultural Research Service. 20 Then finally a new item that came up as a result 21 of a user need from NMSS was this issue of aquifer 22 restoration, leach mining. You put a chemical into the 23 ground, you mobilize uranium to remove it. At the end of I 24 the mining, you want it restored back to as an original 25 state as possible. So the question is how much water do you O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
63 1 have to introduce and move through the system to get back to () 2 a certain water quality, and these are called pore volumes, 3 and right now that's an extremely important issue because 4 it's a bonding aspect that has to be involved in licensing. 5 We are being asked to do research in that area. 6 So those are the questions. What are we doing to 7 address those questions? What is our present program? 8 Well, we are developing and we have developed methods to P look at infiltration for estimating the rates and the 10 distribution. Infiltration, as you can imagine, is very 11 transient and it is not the same everywhere. Unfortunately, 12 a lot of the models that are being used, the simple dose 13 models, use steady-state, and saying that the uniform 14 infiltration. We know that may not be the case. There is a 15 conservative assumption we have to question and look into. 16 So we are developing and we have used Pacific 17 Northwest' National Laboratory to develop a series of 18 methodologies that are being provided directly to the staff, 19 licensing staff, in their analyses. 20 We started a new contract with Dr. Shlomo Newman 21 to test the conceptual groundwater flow models. We have 22 provided support to the National Academy of Science to 23 convene a workshop on the topic of conceptual models with 24 regard to fracture flow. DOE and other government agencies , 25 are co-sponsors of that. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 , Washington, D.C. 20005 ' (202) 842-0034
64 1 We have a program at the University of Arizona, () 2 the Maricopa Agriculture Center, in which monitoring 3 strategies are being evaluated. They have gone through a 4 very detailed analysis by applying water and drip irrigation 5 systems, using designed field experiments of water 6 contaminants, seeing how effective these monitoring 7 strategies are with the instruments. 8 We'll get into the products later. We want to 9 assess the capabilities, limitations and usefulness of the 10 various instruments used in those monitoring strategies. We 11 are conducting cooperative field studies, again, with the 12 Agriculture Research Service in Beltsville to evaluate some 13 of the monitoring instruments and data. 14 Finally, the process of working with NMSS staff, 15 looking at databases and methods to look at actual 16 restoration with regard to in situ leach mining. 17 What are the products we hope to get out and what 18 is they're going to be their regulatory application? First 19 of all, in the area of infiltration analyses, Drs. Philip 20 Myer and Leonard Gee, at P&L, have developed, first, an 21 infiltration evaluation methodology. It was later updated 22 and it became a hydrologic evaluation methodology and they 23 were used initially for low level waste. Now they're being 24 used in SDMP site reviews and the licensing staff is using 25 the methods, the models and the data in those reports. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 10005 (202) 842-0031 l
65 1 We're also looking at evaluating and testing r~% (
} 2 alternative conceptual models. We're hoping Dr. Newman will 3 provide us information on how to develop a methodology to do 4 the analysis for conceptual models.
5 DR. FAIRHURST: What is the SDMP site? 6 MR. NICHOLSON: Site decommissioning management 7 plan. These are the sites that were formerly AEC licensed, 8 that now they want to return the license, you have to 9 determine that. 10 Now, at the Maricopa site, Dr. Peter Wyringer and 11 our Board have developed a series of field experiments and 12 they are now in the process of analyzing the data from those 13 experiments. 14 On February 11 and 12, we had what was called a ( ( ),/ 15 hands-on workshop out at the site in which NMSS staff, 16 agreement state staff from a variety of states, the U.S. 17 Geological Survey, the national labs, Nevada test site, both 18 those worked on Yucca Mountain and those cleaning up 19 Frenchman Flats, and the analysis were there to understand 20 the instruments that are being used, the experiments that 21 were conducted and just look at the data. 22 On July 9, here at NRC headquarters, we're going 23 to have, again, a letter sort of briefing from the same 24 gentlemen, but this time focusing on the monitoring 25 strategies and systems. l i ( ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \~/ Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 I (202) 842-0034
66 1 For instance, we have monitoring islands as one (} 2 strategy, in which the instruments are put in the walls of 3 this large caisson, looking to see how quickly that 4 migration of moisture and contaminants move down through the 5 unsat to the water table. 6 Another approach is a buried trench in which, 7 again, instruments are put into the walls and we're looking 8 to see, and there's also a conveyance to carry a neutron 9 probe horizontally through that buried trench. 10 We also have a geometric, a conventional pattern 11 of vertical holes in which geophysical methods of other 12 techniques, neutron probes are used to look at the 13 distribution of moisture as it advances to the water table. 14 In the area of pore volume estimation methodology, () 15 that will be produced by the research staff. At this time, 16 we do not have a contractor. Ralph and I, working with Bill 17 Ford, are looking at a very interesting site, Bison Basin, 1$ in situ leach uranium site. This is the only one that the 19 company, Obra Petroleum, went bankrupt. The State of 20 Wyoming had to come in and do an aquifer restoration using 21 the bond that was bolted on and by using this example, Bison 22 Basin, we're hoping to be able to get a good database to 23 test the methodology we are developing. 24 Dr. Cady is developing a series of models to 25 understand the hydraulics of the well field during the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
67 1 pumping and then following in the aquifer restoration (} 2 portion and then looking at the water quality. So that work 3 is ongoing and we hope to have that done within about a 4 year. 5 Now, what is the future work we're trying to do? I 6 These are programs that are not funded at the present time. 7 These are things that we think are needed and we're given an j l 8 opportunity to discuss those. 9 With regard to the infiltration of.our 10 methodology, as I said before, there's a series of dose l 11 models, D&D, MEPAS and RESRAD that use default values. We 12 need to look at those default values used in those codes and 13 provide a technical basis to see where they fit within the 14 conventional knowledge base of soil and rock hydraulic and () 15 transport properties. P&L in the past has worked with 16 Reed, Ganupton and Marcel Shop in Riverside. They have been 17 looking at the database that was developed by the Department 18 of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service. We want to 19- look at those default values and put them in that context. 20 We also want to look at uncertainty assessments 21 using these technical bases and information from the 22 Amargosa Desert Research Institute, but people at the USGS, 23 Dave Budick and Brian Androwski, have been kind enough give 24 us a lot of information from their field sites, the research i 25 program adjacent to Beatty, and we think that information I O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
68 1 will also have benefit to our program. f~\ V 2 MR. OTT: Tom, I think you probably ought to try 3 and wrap up so we can move on. 4 MR. NICHOLSON: Okay. I'll just quickly go 5 through. I think the only thing I really want to bring to 6 your attention, since I have to stop, is this one wonderful 7 opportunity has come along and I just want to bring it to 8 your attention, and that's to collaborate with Lawrence 9 Berkely National Laboratory and Russian scientists there. 10 We provided a small seed amount of money to put on a 11 hydrogeologic seminar last fall -- actually, last summer, at 12 Berkely, at which problems in Russian Ukraine were brought 13 to our attention and there was analysis of those things, 14 that if we could participate with the Russians at Lawrence p) ( 15 Berkely Laboratory, there might be a tremendous benefit in ] l 16 the way of technology transfer to us. l 17 With that, I'll turn it over to Jake. Jake is the 18 next speaker. Thank you. 19 MR. OTT: Tom and the rest of the staff will stay l 20 here until we're done. We'd just like to try and get 21 through everybody, if that's okay with you. 22 MR. PHILIP: That's me, Jake Philip. I'm a 23 project manager and geotechnical engineer. I've been here 24 for about 15 years now and I'm the only engineer in the 25 branch. So I take care of all the engineering aspects of [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \~- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
69 1 waste management problems, whether it be low level waste, () 2 barriers, decommissioning sites. 3 Bill had put up this figure on the general 4 performance assessment process and my expertise, being an 5 engineer, on engineered barriers, engineered barriers would 6 be covers. It could be a combination of covers. You could 7 also have engineered chemical barriers, which would take 8 care of the longer radionuclides. It's more like a physical 9 containment of the radionuclides. 10 I think one of the most important things that 11 engineers have looked for is what status are being placed on 12 these engineered barriers when they do the performance 13 assessments. When we worked on this program with our 14 colleagues in NMSS, one of the things that they asked us was
) 15 to let them know how long would these covers last.
16 If it's concrete, how long is that concrete going 17 to last. When we talk about how long it's going to last, we 18 are specifically focusing on the permeability of these 19 barriers and how durable they are.
'20 So what we would like to do is to look at some of 21 those physical barriers. We have not done very much with 22 the chemical barriers. And for the physical barriers, we 23 looked at concrete. We did look at a little bit at the 24 covers, things like desiccation of the covers, to include 25 biological intrusion, animals and stuff like that.
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70 1 So we said, okay, this is one of the things that 2 we are going to have for the review and we say if you look 3 at the concrete of one of those components 4 We are analyzing data on concrete degradation and 5 working with NIST researchers out at NIST, trying to look at 6 tracking, which is one of the most important aspects of 7 this. 8 We have looked at some sites. We have looked at 9 all concrete models, which we are going to present very 10 soon. We have identified other sites suitable for sampling, 11 because we do have a concrete model, a degradation model, 12 which was developed for the first time ever. A synergistic 13 model which looks at the mechanistic behavior of concrete 14 over time. 15 What we are trying to do here is get samples from 16 the field to test our models to see how good they are. 17 We're also working with DOE to get some information on 18 chemical barriers; how long do they last, what is the 19 modeling data you have on them, what is the effective 20 lifetime. 21 It's mostly literature study. We don't have any 22 specific projects on that. To get from this program at 23 NIST, it the 4 SIGHT computer program. The computer program 24 has already been developed. We have given some 25 demonstration of the program based on interest from the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 1 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l 71 1 State of Pennsylvania, with researchers, give them a () 2 3 demonstration of the code as it exists and how they can use it for their performance assessment. 4 We have also been told that several universities 5 are using this code in looking at the performance of 6 pavements, concrete pavements. 7 We have developed this code mainly based on 8 mathematical models and some lab data. The model is now, as 9 existing, is on the internet that people can actually 10 download it from the internet and use it for their 11 particular program. 12 I have a list of future work that we need to look 13 at it. We've got to look really at the mechanistic type of ] i 14 degradation of covers. We have not looked at the synthetics ) () 15 and other components of these covers. 16 We would also like to look at barrier systems, 17 particularly for contamination, which seems to be the big 18 thing now for contaminated sites. There are several 19 engineered barrier systems which are involved and are being 20 applied, but really we do not know how well they perform 21 over time, what the effective lifetimes are and we hope 22 somehow to get some data on monitoring so that we can make 23 some intelligent discussions on how well they work. 24 I will turn the talk over to Phil Reed. 25 DR. FAIRHURST: Can I just.ask a very brief l l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
72 1 question? The mental frame-work of old and long, it's about () 2 100 to 200 years, right? 3 MR. PHILIP: Yes. What we visualized is are we 4 talking about short-term, are we talking about containing 5 short-term radionuclides. It is something that can be away 6 from the system in say 300 to 500 years. And then you have 7 the longer term, where you're talking in terms of a physical 8 containment of radionuclides the first 500 years and then 9 chemical containment better than 500 years. 10 Short-term 300 to 500, and 500 and more. That's 11 the long-term. 12 MR. REED: Radionuclide source. term is part of the 13 radionuclide transport program. A couple words on the 14 problems being addressed. Uncertainties range anywhere from () 15 not knowing the precise inventories and having a difficult 16 understanding of the degradation mechanisms, uncertainties 17 related to the model development, and also uncertainties 18 related to the data that goes in the computer code. 19 The issue that I want to talk to you this morning 20 about are inventories, solubilities. I also want to talk to 21 you about some field data, possibly perhaps some data that 22 could clarify some models. I want to talk to you about some 23 organic materials to enhance mobilities of radionuclides, 24 and, finally, I want to talk to you a little bit about some 1 25 colloid work. j O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 ! Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
73 1 The approach that we take at our research program () 2 is to use actual radioactive materials that have actually 3 been collected from the sources. In this case, the site 4 decommissioning management plan samples have been collected 5 from several sites. They include slags, they include soils, 6 and they also include a site that has a pond and soil. The 7 operating nuclear power stations provide us with the low 8 level waste that we use in our research. 9 One of the things that we're interested in, of 10 course, is always to identify to the most important 11 radionuclide. In many cases, since Part 61 came out, there 12 have been new waste forms, there have been new solutions, 13 new agents that were not included in the early Part 61, but 14 we want to make sure that we've got all the radionuclides. (h 15 For the nuclear stations, we are interested in the 16 fission products, transuranics, activated metals. These are 17 the particular waste forms which could be used for research 18 by now. We are also interested in the activated metals, and 19 the understanding is one to be incorporated in Part 61. 20 And, finally, ion exchange resins. Ion exchange 21 resins of course, we're looking for some new radionuclides 22 that were not in 4036 and we're also looking at the 23 possibility of upgrading our computer cedes to incorporate 24 these mechanisms. 2$ Recurrent problems. Again, the radionuclide ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
74 1 solubilities, we're interested in radionuclide solubilities () 2 as a-function of several chemical parameters, ionic 3 strength, and we're looking at them principally from the 4 SDMP sites mentioned previously. 5 In addition to solubilities, we're also interested 6 in release rates, and release rates for two reasons. 7 Principally, there is some guidance that's being developed 8 early on release rates and also because there is a feeling 9 that if we develop next generation computer codes. Any 10 case, we are looking at releases. 11 The field data, we've actually looked at some 12 field data that contained actual waste forms. A couple 13 experiments at Argonne National Laboratory The trash can 14 is approximately three foot high. We've got six-foot 15 cylinders and each of them containing radioactive waste 16 forms that we looked at over a period of time. 17 These monitored samples were analyzed and we've 18 been able to look at some of the data. 19 You saw the term validation used as field 20 lysimeter data that we've collected over approximately five 21 years. The initial calculations were performed using the 22 DUST computer code. DUST is an acronym for disposal of 23 source term. The leach transport code is a very 24 sophisticated code. The feeling was that in some cases, we 25 liked a more simpler code. O 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 !
75 1 And it turns out both of those codes are now being () 2 widely used. I was told that the DOE folks were using both 3 the DUST code and the IT code. 4 We're also interested in modifying the computer 5 codes. In the branch technical position, we have in draft 6 phase, we have three mechanisms listed. They are the 7 wash-off, the solution mechanism, and the dispersion 8 mechanism. We are interested in modifying some of these 9 models to incorporate the ion exchange capabilities. We are 10 looking at them and doing some experiments in absorption. 11 There is also a great concern on what happens when 12 you have organic material in the source term. The feeling 13 is that Part 61, if you have the chelating agents associated 14 with Part 61 radionuclides, it would enhance the mobility. h 15 We are trying to determine that using decontamination 16 chelating agents that are currently used by the industry. 17 We've already completed the study at Citrox in 18 Melomi and we're now ready to do some experiments with 19 EANDIREM. HANDIREM is a new decontamination fluid that is 20 on the market, it's currently used by the industry. 21 I want to go back to the first part again. Again, 22 the way we're approaching this is we're testing the validity 23 of the radionuclide chelating complex that is in solution 24 end if the radionuclide chelating complex is formed, we're 25 interested in studying the absorption complex because it l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l l 76 1 does appear that depending upon how big the organic molecule () 2 is on one, it could absorb, or depending on the ratio of the l 3 sizes. 4 As you know, in the chelate, Picolinic acid is an 5' aromatic compound. It is the only one we use. The rest of 6 them are just simply alothetics. 7 As far as the colloids, we're also interested in 8 the colloids. What we're doing, we're examining the 9 leachates from the field lysimeters and the SDMP leaching lLO samples to determine if there are any radionuclides colloids 11 in these solutions. 12 Some of the results that we've looked for, some of 1 13 the products. Indeed, we did look at the SDMP data and we 14 do find that the uranium-238 and the thorium-232 are ) 15 included in the daughters for the majority of the samples. 16 We did find a couple samples that did not have that and that 17 related to a site mostly with the thorium. 18 We have determined uranium and thorium 19 solubilities for SDMP slags and soil for a pH of about two 20 to 12. We also have determined release rates for the 21 uranium and thorium in the SDMP slags for -- and also for 22 the soils. We have looked for radionuclide release rates 23 from the decontamination waste for both the Lomi and the 24 other site that or the other fluids that I have listed. 25 We have identified a number of radionuclides in ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. C) Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
77 1 activated metals that are presently not included in Part 61 ( ) 2 and are not included in performance assessments, and these 3 radionuclides would include the burlean-10, AOE-93 meta 4 stable, malignan-93, and then, in parentheses, I have 5 radionuclides that are listed in the control rod material. 6 Now, prior to, I guess, maybe about three years 7 ago, the control rod material, cadmium, was actually cut up. 8 It was at the low level waste sites, but in the last couple 9 years, there is some uncertainty as to whether it's going 10 there. So I put those radionuclides in parentheses, the 11 feeling it would be going to the high level waste site, but 12 that's still not too sure. 13 The field testing results, we actually have 14 measured the radionuclides in the soils, both radially and ( 15 actually. We've been able to provide what we be?ieve to be 16 some acceptable source terms that could be used in some code 17 verification. 18 We have also been able to look at the waste form 19 as it has behaved over a period of time, both at Argonne and 20 both at Oak Ridge, and it's interesting to see the snow 21 effect at Argonne versus the lack of a snow effect sometimes 1 22 of these releases over time that we do not see at Oak Ridge. l 23 The final product, the field data, particularly j 24 strontium-90 and cesium-137 concentrations, we believe, are 25 useful for possible source term model verification. We have ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (- /)\ Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
78 1 actually ran the BEST code and this year we've ran the BLT () 2 code and the results of the BEST code indicate that the 3 computer code does predict a little higher concentration of 4 strontium-90 than the measured field data, although the 1 5 profiles of the plume do appear to be reasonable. 6 Now, since we did not design the experiment for 7 code verification when we did it about nine years ago, we l l 8 think that these numbers are reasonable at this particular l 9 time. 10 We also have obtained data that will allow us to 1 11- give credit for radionuclide retention for ion exchange 12 resins in performance assessment. They are in-house and we 13 can make those modifications essentially through the NEUTRON 14 computer code that was used in our performance assessment or () 15 either the DUST computer code. l 16 We have calculated the radionuclide complexes as a 17 chemical mode) and we find that they either behave as anions 18 or partially anions and, therefore, since they behave as 19 anions, it's quite likely that they're not going to be 20 absorbed on the soils as they go through and you can see 21 some of the figures. They show dramatic changes. If we had 22 just the caption there, say, like, nickel or plutonium or 23 something like that. You look at the complex, and it's 24 complete changed to an anion form. And that covers a range 25 of pH, say, from four to perhaps 12. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
79 1 We did not find uranium or thorium colloids in the () 2 SDMP leachates, but we did find the presence of a radio 3 colloid in the lysimeter leachate. That information has i 4 been published. It's in the open literature and,so we 5 believe that both the field studies, as well as the 6 laboratory sr.udies, do give us some good indication of at 7 least finding leachates and particularly to look at some of 8 the transuranics. l 9 But the last bullet, I indicated some of the tools 10 that we use, of course, our understanding and basically 11 we're looking at chemical species of pH. Also, we're l 12 looking at EHPH diagrams and, of course, we're looking at i 13 stability constants. All these are tools that enhance our 14 understanding of the behavior of these radionuclides as they 15 are in chemical form. 16 As far as the future work, I think it's very 17 critical that we looking at the solubility and leaching 18 studies of activated metals and decommissioned reactor 19 material for important radionuclides as they are -- as this 20 material is presently going into low level waste sites. 21 We think that you need to look at the -- update 22 the actual logarithmic -- not the logarithmic -- the 23 algorithmic mechanism that goes in the codes and I think 24 that the codes need to be modified. i 25 I think that we need to continue the current ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
80 1 solubility and leaching studies for radionuclides, , (m) V 2 neptunium-237, americium-241, plutonium-241, technetium-99, 3 et cetera, under varying chemical conditions, because there 4 are a large number of models that are available that 5 presently use solubility datas, but that solubility data is 6 still uncertain. 7 I think it's important to recognize that there are 8 a lot of new emerging waste forms and new technologies 9 coming on the market. I think you heard from the EPRI 10 presentation the last time about some of those waste forms. 11 In particular, new decontamination solutions that are coming 12 on the market. These have not yet been tested and most of 13 them will probably end up in low level waste sites. 14 I think it's important to look at some of the DOE
) 15 data that's presently available. I think it's important 16 that one compile, collect, analyze and look at the DOE 17 national laboratory field data as a basis for perhaps 18 verifying radionuclide transport models.
19 Indeed, I notice that DOE is starting to do this, 20 but they do seem to have a large amount of data that could 21 be_useful to us in our evaluations. Now, of course, they 22 want to dig it up and do things with it, but I think they 23 ought to hold out and at least give us an opportunity so 24 that we can compare our calculated results with 25 calculations.
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81 1 The last one is sort of a sleeper. A couple of 2 years ago we looked at microbial activity from actual 3 radioactive waste and we did notice releases of 4 radionuclides. We looked at cobalt-60, cesium-137, small l 5 amounts of carbon-14, technetium-99. 6 I think we ought to at least recognize that the 7 microbes and the little bugs and critters and things like 8 that in these waste forms could have a dramatic change in 9 some of the radionuclides. They could essentially release 10 radionuclides that are presently insoluble to perhaps more 11 of a soluble phase. 12 MR. OTT: Phil, would you like pick one or two 13 more and let us move on? 14 MR. REED: Okay. Got two more. Three more. I think it's important that one look at these very long-lived 15 l l 16 radionuclides over long time periods, particularly when you 17 were talking at half-lives at ten-to-the-fifth, 18 ten-to-the-sixth years. This is not easy to do, but you 19 might want to get some feeling, say, from the carbon-14, 20 where we're seeing today that we're having bi-carbon in 21 solutions, going to CO2 gas, which is then filtering up 22 through the environment and coming out as a source term. 23 There are also other ways, field lysimeter studies 24 and perhaps looking at oxidation reduction, but it does 25 appear that even after the sites are long gone, you're still ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters. 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 84 b3 } l
1 82 1 going to have a long-lived radionuclide. () 2 Experimentally, I think that we've mentioned some 3 of this about the radionuclide pathway and uptake 4 mechanisms, particularly soil concentration factors and the 5 feed / animal transfer coefficients. I think the difference 6 between our branch and the previous branch we talked to is 7 we have the expertise do the field work. 8 In the early '80s, I worked with the Quad Cities 9 nuclear power plant. We did air graph cow / milk pathways, 10 cut the grass, measure the milk, and did transfer 11 coefficients for iodine-131 and carbon-14. And I think 12 maybe the other branch would concentrate mostly on the 13 analytical factors and things like that. 14 Finally, the last one, are very critical. It A '\_j 15 turns out a lot of thermodynamic data that we need in order 16 to calculate our species and the HPHs isn't available for 17 some of the radionuclides that we're interested in and I 18 think it's important that -- I know a lot of this work is 19 now discontinued, but I think it's important if we get into 20 areas where we need to do understanding of mechanisms, that 21 we have a reliable chemical thermodynamic database 22 available. 23 That concludes my presentation. 24 MR. OTT: That will bring up Linda Veblen next. 25 MS. VEBLEN: I'm Linda Veblen, geochemist with the [) \/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
83 1 Waste Management Branch. I'm going to speak to you today () 2 about a fairly specific study that I have been doing at l 3 ' Johns Hopkins University over the last year-and-a-half. l 4 The specific study, though, has some rather 5 general applications to both decommissioning waste, also 6 high level waste and the potential work that might be done 7 with the Hanford -- remediation of the Hanford waste sites. 8 I've been looking at an SDMP site that -- at three l 9 SDMP sites that contain radioactive slags. Now, these are 10 industrial metallurgical facilities that held material 11 licenses with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because they 12 had above background levels of uranium and corium in the ore 13 or in-the slag that they produced. 14 And currently 17 of these facilities have 15 requested that the licenses be released by the NRC and that 16 the sites be returned to either unrestricted public use or 17 restricted use. 18 Under NRC regulations, they have to be stable for 19 on the order of a thousand years. So the main question that j 20 we have then is how easily do these slags leach; first of ) 21 all, what are the slags, what are they made of, and, 22 secondly, then, what is their long-term stability, do they 23 exist over thousands of years. I 24 Some of the problems with these sites, there are , 25 17 slag sites that the NRC SDMP group is currently worrying l l 2 () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
84 1 about. There are -- they range in uranium and thorium f~% 2 ( ) content of one to 2,000 pico-curies per gram. Very often 3 these site are limited within cities. One of the ones I'm 4 looking at is sitting right on the Schuykill River in 5 downtown Reading. The sites, as I mentioned, are to be 6 considered for public use, release for public use. 7 And some of the problems'are that they're very -- 1 8 of the 17 sites, there are varied slag composition, very ' 9 site geology, and also site geometry. Some of them are 10 piles, some of them are just dumps over hillsides. 4 11 And while we'd really like to know -- we know that 12 leach rates, experimental leach rates vary over several 13 orders of magnitude, that's what our work by the center has 14 shown and also by P&L, and so we'd like to try to narrow i k,g) m 15 that down, and then also address the long-term -- the issue 16 of long-term leach rates. 17 So what am I doing at Hopkins? We have microbeam 18 facilities at Johns Hopkins University and I went out and 19 collected slag samples from two of these sites and then went 20 ahead and prepared the samples and analyzed them to -- did i 21 bulk chemical analyses with XRF analyses and then through l 22 TEM sections, looked at, through optical licroscopy, 23 electron microprobe analysis and TEM work have identified 24 the phases that contain the radionuclides and also the other 25 phases that are in there. f ,. D) ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 For instance, there are galenites and hibonites, 2 things that form ceramics. The radionuclide bearing phases 3 are glass, zirconolite, perovskite, and these are all 4 minerals that are abundant in some other waste forms, namely 5 synrock, which is being considered by most of the other 6 countries as a primary waste form for their high level ) 7 waste. 1 8 And synrock is a synthetic rock-like material and 9 the industry really doesn't know how this material will 10 behave.over long periods of time. So there is a real nice 11 analog here between these slags and a potential waste form. 12 And then so I've been doing this with the slags, 13 the SDMP slags, and we're moving into now a phase where 14 we'll be collecting archeological slags. These slags that 15 I'm looking at are primarily myobium talenum slags that 16 resulted from extraction of myobium talenum from tin slags. 17 Tin slags have been produced since the bronze age, so we 18 have slags that are on the order of anywhere from 100 years 19 old to several thousand years old. 20 And we have located slags in Turkey, the Czech 21 Republic, Malasia, and also the UK that we plan to take a 22 look at those to see what the long-term leaching or i 23 long term weathering of these slags might be. ; 24 And just briefly, so we have identified that there 25 are basically three major types of slags. There's a tin i I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O. Court Reporters l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 ' Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
+ 86 1 slag that is a calcium illlumino silicate, glass, contains () 2 3 galeninte, zirconolite, perovskites, all the things that are in synrock. 4 The synrock also is being considered as a material 5 or a waste form for the Hanford tank. Hanford waste tank. 6 There is also a myobium tanelum slag that is the 7 byproduct of the tin slag. The tin slag you can think of as 8 the ore, the myobium tanelum is the waste from the tin slag 9 ore. 10 And then there's several of the sites, they've 11 taken the myobium tanelum slag, crushed it up, and leached 12 it and then dumped that sedimented -- had that sediment out 13 in a pond and so we have that slag, as well. 14 Again, we have identified the radionuclide bearing k 15 phases. Why is that important? They leach at different 16 rates, they degrade at different rates. Glass is meta 17 stable, whereas some of the crystalline phases, like 18 zirconolite, pervoskite, and pyrochlorus, we know containing 3 19 uranium and thorium, may be stable for a very leng period of 20 time. 21 We do know from natural analog studies that 22 zirconolite will become metamict over a period of time. 23 And let's see. From this, I have determined a 24 very preliminary effective leach rate, where we have looked 25 at the apparent depletion of uranium and thorium in the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
87 1 glasses over time and based on that, have determined a leach () 2 3 rate of five-times-ten-to-the-minus-ninth per second, which is in the ballpark of close to what they found at the center 4 and also at P&L for some of their studies. 5 But -- and then there's also a total release 6 model, which is basically just taking what's available in 7 the total slag and allowing that to erode to be released 8 over -- and this was a 30-year period. Again, we come up 9 with a ten-to-the-minus-eight release rate. And these are 10 both sort of in the ballpark, but I'd like to try to narrow 11 that down with these analog studies. 12 And one of the things that we found in a recent 13 meeting with both NMSS and the P&L contractors is that the 14 phase characterization is really important to trying to () 15 understand, A, the mechanisms, but also these leach studies, 16 because in some of the cases, the -- by just looking at a 17 particular leach test, the investigators weren't really able 18 to tell how things would behave over a longer period of time 19 and what phases were controlling the release of these 20 radionuclides. 21 Future work. We're -- I'd like to continue with 22 the archeological data that we'll be doing in this next 23 year, but I think, in particular, that this has application 24 to looking at vitric and ceramic waste forms, molten metal 25 technology, type of work that might be going on in the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l l t
88 1 future. () 2 And also in doing some of the work, I've seen some 3 evidence of microbial activity on these slags and that's one , 4 area that I would like to look at, specifically how the 1 5 microbial activity either affects the glasses, enhances the 6 degradation, or in some cases microbial activity can 7- actually precipitate out some of these toxic metals and 8 radionuclides. And so may we -- we know that there may be 9 some helpful bacteria, as well. 10 And while this data is actually being used now 11 -with NMSS and also with another one of our branches in 12 research where they're looking at activated -- rule-making 13 for activated metals. , 1 14 That's basically all I have to say. () 15 MR. O'DONNELL: I think we'll be able to finish on 16 time. I will probably take about ten minutes. Ralph, I 17 know, is always very, very brief. i 18 This is one of these situations I really wish that l 19 we had an hour or so to sit across the desk top to kind of 20 go into details, because there are a number of interesting 21 things that we're doing which would be of interest. I know 22 that Dr. Fairhurst and Dr. Hornberger and Dr. Wymer. 23 Where I fit in the program, we've heard from Phil 24 Reed. Phil has talked about the source term. Tom talked ; 25 about water. I'm kind of fitting in. I'm going to talk a l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
S9 1 little bit about water getting into waste and also () 2 transport. Where I come at it, I'm a geologist, I'm a 3 sedimentologist, worked with sands, clays and other things 4 like that and a variety of other materials. So this is kind 5 of how I got involved in the soils part of it. 6 I have also worked on the effects of organics in 7 the rhyzosphere. 8 I also think of the world in those types of 9 diagrams rather than the flow diagram that we used a little 10 bit earlier to kind of illustrate how all the integrated 11 parts of the program fit in. 12 Now, what's the problem? We've got some 13 engineering, we've got some radionuclides. They're going to 14 long outlast the engineered facility. These are well known, 15 the carbon-14, the technetium-99, iodine-129. 16 Here is another part of the story. We're starting 17 to discover that there are nationally produced organic 18 complexants that seem to be enhancing mobility and this idea i 19 about colloidal transport, that's no surprise. That has ' 20 been observed in a number of places. 21 Before I jump into the regular handout, just again 22 to amplify this idea that there is a problem, I think, all 23 of us have heard about the problem at the laboratory KD 24 versus in situ. Here is some actual data from Hanford, from 25- the N reactor site, and the radionuclides, this is predicted ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i
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90 1 from the standard laboratory YD. This was observed. .V 2 Now, what the situation was, they took liquid 3 effluent from the N reactor, put it into rock-lined cribbed. l 4 It migrated about a thousand foot to the Columbia River, 5 came out in springs. There.was a marvelous research 6 opportunity for us. We were able to sample it as it 7 migrated down the Columbia River. I 8 From this, you can see that the observed ratio, 9 this is velocity of ratio predicted versus what was actually 10 observed. You can see that things moved much, much faster 11 than was predicted in the laboratory setting. 12 So that kind of sets the problem with the soils 13 performance assessment models, that things don't quite 14 exactly work out as.you do -- as you might expect in the 15 laboratory. 16 Now, going to the handout which is before you of 17 the problems being addressed, most of the current transport 18 models assume a constant KD. This is a simplification. 19 Everybody in the business knows it's not quite correct. As 20 research scientists, we think you can probably do better if 21 you examine the situation, examine the materials, and the 22 processes and the mechanisms. l 23 With this kind of information, maybe we'll be able 24 to predict a little bit better. Therefore, an alternative 25 approach is to a constant absorption coefficient are being i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i l Washington, D.C. 20005 I (202) 842-0034 1
l l 91 1 assessed through studies of surface complexation modeling. 2 This is being done by several different 3 laboratories. It's being done, in part, by Jim Davis of the l 4 United States Geological Survey and it's also being done by 5 a team at Sandia, from the chemistry department of Sandia, 6 and we've also used Bill Casey up at University of 7 California-Davis. So we have some pretty bright people that 8 have been involved with us. l l 9 The transport of some radionuclides, for example, 1 10 plutonium, americium, cobalt-60, is greater than predicted 11 by geo-chemical models. Data to date indicate that probably 12 organic complexation naturally produce organic complexants 13 and colloidal transport may be playing a role in 14 facilitating transport. 15 This is the situation where I wish that we had the 16 hour or so that I could lay out the diagrams. This was done 17 up at -- the sampling was done up at Chalk River nuclear 18 laboratory. We used actual contaminated plumes and were ; 19 able to trace this. 20 Carbon-14, of course, is a problem. It's a very 21 mobile radionuclide. It's around for a long time and, 22 again, the problem being addressed, it is expected to 23 outlast most engineered facilities, mobile. Therefore, the l 24 environmental dynamics from release through transport and 25 ground, uptake in vegetation is being assessed to l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. u Court Reporters l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C 20005 (202) 842-0034
92 l 1 understand, better understand the pathways and those ( 2 contributions. 3 Finally, the fourth of-these areas that I was 4 going to' talk about is that infiltration of water through 5 covers has been on problem on eastern sites. Dr. Garrick 6 asked about the risk-based approach. A number of years ago, 7 Tim McCarten, who now works for NMSS, when he worked for ! 8 research, did a risk assessment of disposal facility to find 9 out which component is most sensitive to failure and 10 everything else, water getting in and other things like 11 that. It was determined through that risk assessment that 12 the cover was the most vulnerable part of an engineered 13 facility. You can keep water from waste, things are a lot i 14 simpler. !( ) 15 So there's a need. We've seen failure at a number 16 of these eastern sites. This effectively closed the 17 commercial site at Sheffield, also Maxie Flats. Water is l l 18 passing through the covers at Barnwell and also at West 19 Valley. 20 The actions to address the problems. This is to l l 21 get a better approach on that KD thing. So we're studying i 22 the absorption and desorption and mechanistic and simple , 23 monovalent and divalent actions on clays and iron oxides, 24 hydroxides. These are common soil components and usually 25 with standard experimental kinetics measurements, the twist l i I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters i 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 ! Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 r -
93 1 is we're using also nuclear magnetic for characterization of () 2 the absorption and desorption. AFM stands for atomic force 3 miscroprosy. What that gets us is the idea of the structure 4 of the clay particle. 5 I assume you're familiar with the clays or a group 6 of minerals called philosilicates. That means they're 7 layered structures and stuff like that. The charge is 8 different between the upper and lower surface versus the 9 edge and if you -- usually clays have a great what we call 10 basil plane, so it turns out that certain things are 11 absorbed here and not here. 12 By using the AFM technique, we're able to see in i 13 certain clays, for example, chelate, some of the eticles 1 14 had a much greater edge area than expected, which meant that () 15 they would be much more effective than absorbing cautions 16 than we had realized, and this has important implications 17 when you start talking about mechanisms. 18 Then we took that information and independently 19 used molecular modeling, using biological simulation 20 packages, to see what would be reasonable structures, 21 various pHs and stuff like that, related it back to 22 experimental and the kinetic measurements and it's all 23 fitted in very nicely. 24 The current actions, conducting demo and i 25 mechanistic models. This is the work that the United States l 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. s Court Reporters i 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 i (202) 842-0034 l
94 4 1 Geological Survey will be doing at a uranium mill tailing 2 site that got the surface complexation models, now let's try 3 it to real site and see if it works. 4 We are completing a final report on organic 5 complexants, completing a report on the environmental l 6 dynamics of carbon-14. Finally, measuring long-term j l 7 performance of covers and lysimeters. A lysimeter -- 8 there's two definitions of a lysimeter. One is it's a 9 device for gathering percolation data. Phil Reed, when he 10 described the garbage can in the back of the room, he was 11 talk about his lysimeters were like that. He was collecting 12 percolation. 13 We've got some very large-scale lysimeters out at 14 Belstville, Maryland. They look like -- well, they're about 15 the dimensions of a swimming pool. I'll have to pass these 16 around. These are 75-foot long, 35-foot wide, and about 17 12-foot deep. And experiments at this site are very rare 18 because of costs and we're gathering water data on these 19 sorts of things on the cover project. Here is another one. 20 In this particular study of. covers, two of the 21 covers are unique in the sense that nobody else really has 22 used them and really unique to it. This has been applied. 23 One of the covers has been applied up at West Valley, New 24 York, and they have the capability of reducing infiltration 25 to zero and maintain subsidence. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 , (202) 842-0034 l l l- i
95 1 This particular cover I'm passing around is at () 2 West Valley, New York. The cost of that cover was $70,000, 3 which was chicken feed in our business. 4 So in terms of products, this goes back to the KD. 5 Data is being developed on experimental kinetics of cesium, 6 strontium, absorption in. Smectites, you may know the word 7 mocorilinite, particular clay mineral of the smectite 8 faimly. Smectites are a complex faimly of expandable 9 lattice clays. 10 Iron oxides, hydroxides, that's a little reddish ) 11 stuff you see common in soil minerals. We're doing this as 12 a function of pH ionic strength, being coupled with NMR 13 characterization, AFM, et cetera. l 14 The data and models will be used to extend 1.he () 15 Sandia environmental decision support system. That's -- i I 16 Ralph Cady will be talking about that. We are trying to 17 make our work useful, put it into a form that our licensing 18 colleagues can use. 19 The evaluation of the practicality of applying the 20 models will be tried at a -- through a field demo. Field 21 sampling of contaminated ground water plumes at Chalk River i 22 provide expectation data on radionuclide transport in 23 groundwater. These will be related to mechanisms for the 24 facilitated transport. 25 These data indicate the transport is being O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
96 1 facilitated by organo metallic complexes. It's kind of the I) U 2 bad news part of the story, that things -- you know, these 3 organics, naturally produced organics are enhancing 4 transport. 5 MR. OTT: We're starting to run behind. So if you 6 can speed up a little bit. 7 MR. O'DONNELL: Jumping on. The carbon-14 8 dynamics, long-term performance of covers, this was that 9 project at Beltsville, 11 years wroth of data, and that is 10 kind of unusual to have projects go for so long in this kind 11 of business. I 12 Finally, what should we do in the future? I see 13 areas that are needing -- starting looking and what's 14 happening in the rhyzosphere, kind of continuing in that '}!
'q,, 15 area, because in the rhyzosphere, which is the root zone of l
16 deciduous trees, that area, all sorts of things are i 17 happening which are going to be mobilizing radionuclides. 18 That information would be useful for performance assessment. l l l 19 The carbon-14, we did that at a contaminated site, l 20 at Chalk River. It was done for a short period of time. It 21 would be of use to continue that, get a little bit more 22 data. 23 Finally, this would fit into the engineering area, 24 the near-field environment, see if we can condition it. 25 We've looked into use of natural soil materials for binding I ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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97 1 up anions. We identified a group of soils called andosols, 3 2 which have this capability, and that's kind of a little bit J 3 unusual. Most soils will bind up actions, but not anions, I 4 and come up with a natural soil that will do that, it's an 5 unusual thing. i j 6 With that, I think I better defer to my colleague, i 7 Ralph Cady, and then I'll stand by for questions. 8 MR. CADY: I will be brief. I'll never be short. 9 My responsibilities he.ce are with these little arrows. Bill 10 called me an integration expert. I prefer the term 11 hydrogeologist a little -- we'll reserve integration expert 12 for later in life when I try to mainstream tall people by l 13 increasing the leg room in coach class. l 14 The problem that I have been assigned and working () 15 on in a number of these different projects that you have ) 16 heard mentioned today are incorporating some of these more 17 complex codes into a frame-work for doing performance 18 assessment. The word performance assessment is not that 19 well defined in the sense that we're talking about in situ 20 uranium that has a different regulation. 21 In the in situ uranium world, they are trying to
)
22 preserve concentrations in groundwater at pre-mining 23 conditions or as close to it as they can get, whereas in the 24 D&D world, they're actually looking -- the regulation is 25 looking at a dose to a human. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 98 1 So there is a -- the water has to come out of the () 2 ground and be ingested or the air has to get off-site to an 3 individual. 1 4 So there are different aspects to this thing that 5 we'll call performance assessment that make it an even more 6 complex problem. There are things in this D&D code that I 7 believe you heard a summary of. You can't ask the question i 8 what is the concentration in groundwater in the aquifer. It 9 doesn't have that capability. 10 So our intent here is to flesh out a frame-work to 11 enable those sort of what-if questions to be asked without 12 essentially restricting the analyst to a very simple code or 13 encumbering him with needing to know extremely sophisticated 14 codes. 15 Yes, brief. So what are we doing? We have a 16 contract with Sandia, as well as -- it's a cooperative thing i 17 with EPA, as well as they've had additional support from DOE 18 in the past to develop a frame-work to incorporate models 19 and allow the analyst to step through assumptions and then 20 the code will go out and select the appropriate model to l 21 recognize those assumptions. 1 22 What we're currently working on is incorporating 23 elements of that D&D code that you heard about, all the 24 pathways, into this frame-work during this and next fiscal 25 year. l O' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters j 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 ) (202) 842-0034 j 1
99 1 We're also worrying about the potential of 2 relaxing a lot of these assumptions on dimensionality and 3 the complexity. Obviously, if we're trying to incorporate 4 models from these different research projects, in order to 5 relax the conservatism, you've got to be able to handle 6 those models within this frame-work or embody the essence of 7 those models into the frame-work. That distinction may be 8 subtle, but it's subtle because we haven't figured out how 9 to do it yet. 10 So what do we have to date? Sandia delivered a 11 one-dimensional version under Microsoft Windows in March 12 that we are currently reviewing. Now, this thing only does 13 drinking water. It only does the one-dimensional 14 groundwater pathway at this point, but it does do it within 15 a. Monte Carlo frame-work. The D&D code was purely 16 deterministic, even though the parameter distributions were 1 17 determined stochastically. 18 This says it is Monte Carlo, the frame-work is 19 Monte Carlo. During this fiscal year, we're working on 20 another iteration of an analysis, analysis and design to 21 look at how we are going to flesh out this frame-work to 22 incorporate foreseeable models. We are going to produce a version in about a year 24 or so that will do the D&D pathways and then they're going 25 to be working, at least if we get sponsorship -- I know ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
100 1 there's interest in EPA to flesh out the dimensionality of () 2 3 the groundwater. So that will be in a few years. In the out-years, we would also like to 4 incorporate potentially some of the models that were talked 5 about in the earlier presentations. 6 And that's it for me, unless you've got any 7 questions. 8 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thanks, Ralph. 9 MR. BAHADUR: That concludes our presentation on 10 that. If there are any specific questions, the project 11 managers are here, i 12 DR. HORNBERGER: Sher, I do have one question, l 13 Maybe it is for you or you can call on people as you see 14 fit. 15 We started the program with -- or the discussion 16 of this radionuclide transport with this nice little diagram 17 of everything in it and we completed the program talking 18 about a performance assessment tool, which you said is the 19 long-term goal. 20 The question that I have is what role -- again, 21 I'm back to the same question that I asked earlier, and that 22 is how one decides on priorities. We heard a bunch of 23 presentations on specific topics, but the end result that 24 we're all after is an integrated tool. 25 The question always comes up as to how one O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \~ / Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
101 1 envisions integrating, how one might use an integrating tool ( 2 like performance assessment to help decide what the l
.3 important areas for research are.
4 Do you have any -- you clearly indicated that this 5 isn't the way things were done. Do you have any 6 anticipation in the future to use the tool to help decide 7 what the important research areas are? 8 MR. BAHADUR: Before I ask Bill Ott to come and 9 give you his perspective, when this tool that you're talking 10 about is being developed, modified into a universally 11 applicable product, then in doing so, one of the things that 12 it does is it strings along a number of all of the existing 13 models. We have existing models, data sets on source terms. 14 i We have existing models and data sets on hydrogeology and () 15 it's applicability into the transport mechanism. 16 Then there are models in the absorption process, l l 17 as well. What it does is when we go to the stringing of ! 18 these existing models and data sets, then there are certain 19 holes, there are certain weaknesses, there are certain i 20 uncertainties. And the staff that I have who is responsible 21 for a particular field, the field that they have come here 22 and described, based on their technical judgment, based on 23 the present user need that we have in our hand and the past 24 user needs that we had already before, and also the 25 corporate knowledge that we have on some of the low level O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034'
l 102' i 1 and high level waste programs that we had to truncate () 2 3 because we don't have funds, but we knew that those programs also had certain pressing issues, questions that need to be 4 answered. 5 These are all brought into the play and that's how 6 the mention is made about which research project to be 7 funded and which not to be funded. 8 And while having said so, I would like to add that 9 we haven't had that luxury for a long, long time. Two 10 million does not go very far. Two million dollars in a 100 11 percent in-house effort may be a very substantial sum. When 12 you go to contractors, which include the DOE national labs 13 as well, the two million does not give you enough 14 flexibility to decide which one to be -- which product to be A (,,/ 15 made, which problem to be solved today. 16 MR. OTT: A couple of observations and I guess I'm 17 going to attack this differently than I have attacked it l 18 before. Presume that we have the perfect model. Then we l l 19 can go into that model and we can do a sensitivity study on 20 any parameter. We can vary it, we can eliminate it, we can 21 make changes to it. 22 The problem right now is that we don't have the 23 perfect model. We have imperfect models with a lot of l 24 simplifying of functions and conservatisms in them. Quite 25 often, they don't even have the capability of testing some l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
f 103 1 of~the things that we're trying to investigate. ( 2 If you can't really test sensitivity with regard 3 to what you're trying to investigate, quite often you have 4 to fall back on expert judgment or on things that you know 5 are wrong; for instance, our interest in looking at 6 absorption mechanisms is based on the fact that there has 7 been-a lot of criticism of the constant KD approach. B We know that that is not a reflection of reality. 9 How much benefit we're going to get from that we won't 10 really know until we get models that can do a realistic 11 calculation and we can do a comparison. That's one of the 12 things we're attempting to do in our demonstration project 13 with the USGS. 14 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Bill, in those cases where you k 15 know you're wrong, you're telling me that you have some 16 evidence. You have some basis for saying that and you can 17 reflect that knowledge in your -- in the uncertainties of 18 your parameters. 19 MR. OTT: It's not always a -- you can -- you can 20- reflect of the lack of knowledge with a constant, but you 21 don't always know whether that constant :bs conservative or 22 not. l 23' For instance, in the situation where you have pH 24 dependence for absorption parameter, that pH dependence is l 25 not linear. It's a non-linear process and it essentially ; I i
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104 1 peaks. 2 So it depends on where you are on the pH range, l 3 whether'you're under-estimating or over-estimating the 4 contribution absorption. 5 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: But my only point is that in 6 those cases where you know that you're conservative or 7 non-conservative of whatever, there are mechanisms for ) 8 incorporating that knowledge into your models. You don't 9 have to just keep saying you know something and your model 10 doesn't represent it. There is nothing to keep you from ) 11~ putting into your model what you know.
- 12. MR. OTT: What you know, yes. But it's difficult 13 -- it is difficult to incorporate the impact of what you
! 14 don't know. 15 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: My other point here, though, is 16 that the treatment of uncertainty gives you a mechanism of 17 conveying to the people who use your products, these 18 anxieties about a lack of knowledge. 19 What you have to do, of course, is document that
-20 and indicate what the basis is of whatever it is you put 21 into the parameter.
22 MR. OTT: There is another project that we've got 23 going on that Tom discussed briefly, which is going into an 24 area where no one has really gone before quantifiably. 25 That's the area of selecting -- not only selecting l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters j 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 j (202) 842-0034 j
105 1 conceptual models, but trying to get some kind of an idea of () 2 3 how much you may be in error by selecting one conceptual model over another. I 4 At the present time, what we do is we select a set ) 5 of models. We make a calculation and then we vary i l 6 parameters within that set of models and we come up with a 7 calculation and we have a whole set of futures, but those 8 futures are based on the assumption that we've made the 9 proper selection of the conceptual model for the system. 10 There are two possibilities; one, that we've I 11 selected the wrong conceptual model and, two, that over l .12 time, it will evolve into a different -- a system r. hat's 13 better represented by a better set of conceptual models. 14 So even though we have a method of mathematically () 15 representing uncertainty the way we currently do things, we 16 haven't even scratched the surface on being able to estimate 17 the uncertainties that we have the wrong conceptual models. , 18 That is one thing we're trying to address in the new 1 19 project. 20 So there are techniques out there for addressing 21 uncertainties, but there are uncertainties in using those 22 techniques. 23 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: You, at the outset, Sher, 24 indicated that you're out of the high level waste business. 25 On the other hand -- pretty much. On the other hand, j l [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATSS, LTD. l v Court Reporters 1 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
I 106 i i 1 throughout the various presentations, I heard things that (' I 2 are very important, basic issues to high level waste and
%-)
3 radiological transport, such as the transport of 4 neptunium-237 and plutonium and americium and technetium-99. 5 Also heard some interesting observations about glasses and 6 the performance of glasses and what have you. 7 All of these are issues that are extremely 8 relevant to Yucca Mountain, for example, and including the ! 9 disposal of high level defense waste. 10 How much piggy-backing are the high level waste 11 people doing on your research? Or maybe another way of l 12 asking the question is, is there much interaction between 13 the work that you're doing, and I recognize that $2 million ,,x 14 is not much, and the work that NRC is doing in the high ( ,) 15 level waste arena or maybe DOE? 16 MR. BAHADUR: Let's take one point at a time. 17 When I mentioned that research is completely out of the high 18 level waste program, it meant that any research we are doing l 19 at the waste management branch right now, the funding does 20 not come from the high level fund. So it's more of a 1 21 programmatic statement that I made. 22 There is no research in the waste management 23 branch to date which is 100 percent dedicated to hiih level 24 waste. However, as I mentioned earlier, the program that we 25 have designed now is a generic program, applications in the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 l 107 1 decommissioning and uranium mill tailing type of work, but, () 2 3 at the same time as you have -- you have seen in the presentation some of the work is extended to the low level 4 waste issues and also most certainly to the high level waste l 5 issues, especially the work that Linda Veblen is doing at l 6 Johns Hopkins where the waste forms do indicate that they 7 have been used somewhere in the high level waste. 8 The way the cooperation and the coordination is 9 held between the Office of Research and NMSS is that there 10 is a' weekly meeting at the Waste Management Director's -- 11 the Division of Waste Management and NMSS holds a branch 12 chiefs meeting once every week and we participate in that. 13 The center also participates in that meeting. 14 And that is one way whereby we exchange the () 15 progress on where this program research is going on. There 16 are projects in which we are working hand-in-hand with the 17 center along with the contractor, Linda Veblen working on 18 the slags, is working with the center as well as the Pacific 19 Northwest Lab. 20 So there are procedures whereby our results are 21 being shared by the center and NMSS and the NMSS shares 22 their thinking with us. We receive twice a year a progress 23 report from the center on their waste management projects. 24 DR. FAIRHURST: My question was very similar. I 25 will look more specific to the one that John raised, looking ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. . O-l Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
( 108 1 1 'at interaction. It refers to what Jake Philip is saying ' 2 about concrete degradation.
- 3 You're doing work with the NIST or you are 4 monitoring their work. Do you know -- are you familiar with 5 comparable work at DOE or -- you also mentioned privately to 6 me the work that Jack Damon was doing. Is that funded by I 7 NRC or is it coming from DOE?
8 MR. BAHADUR: Jake, you have to come to a speakr 9 or something. No , none of that work is funded by NRC. All 10 I can do is like abroad on the trip to Europe and talked to 11 his counterparts in France and Germany and stuff like that. 12 They were very interested in the concrete work they were 13 doing and they wanted a copy of our program 4 SIGHT that was 14 developed. And so we are trying to contact those people in O Q 15 those different countries to see what they are doing. They
-16 have data which we could use and test our models. There are 17 no moneys involved here, though.
j 18 DR. FAIRHURST: And the work that you are doing is 19 in the ambient sort of environmental. i 20 MR. BAHADUR: Yes, exactly. { l 21 DR. FAIRHURST: You're not talking about -- I 22 MR. BAHADUR: High temperatures, no. 23 DR. FAIRHURST: Stressed environments, thermal j 24 environments. 25 MR. BAHADUR: No. When you talked about Jack i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD 1 Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
109 1 Damon's work, Jack Damon is involved in plugging up bore () 2 holes. Now, that would be at ambient temperatures and he 3 was interested in the long-term stability or long-term l 4 durability of these concrete plugs and bore holes, which is ) 5 the big issue now, because once you poke holes in the l 6 ground, you've got to. 7 DR. FAIRHURST: But the same issues are raised in 8 lining of -- l 9 MR. BAHADUR: Exactly, yes. One of the things -- 10 we're looking at, for instance, like silicate reaction, for 11 instance, in concrete and it will be a big issue in the 12 concrete liners at Yucca Mountain. But we are not -- we are 13 aware of those problems, but we are not really looking at it 14 in our program because we don't have those resources for
) 15 that. But it's an area that we can -- I do interact with 16 NMSS, because I do get some information from NMSS people who 17 are working on the liners for the high level waste program 18 and they would like to know a little bit more of what I am 19 doing and I give them contacts that I have or some of the i 20 information that we have developed.
21 MR. OTT: I'd like to make one observation. In 22 terms of the high level waste fund, there are certain things l 23 that are very specifically high level waste. Elevated 24 temperatures, volcanism issues, issues with regard to 25 tectonics of range. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. A Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005 l 1 (202) 842-0034 i i I
r 110 1 Those are things that we actively pursued when we () 2 were in the high level waste program. Those are things that , 3 we're not doing anything now that would even be conceived to 4 be of assistance in the high level waste program. 5 Once you get out of the heated zone, once you get 6 into the far field, get into ambient temperatures, and much 7 of the work that we're doing we would hope would be of some 8 value. If it's a specific low level waste waste form, , 9 perhaps not. But where applicable, we would hope it will be i ! 10 of value and we try to make certain that NMSS is aware of 11 what we're doing. 12 DR. FAIRHURST: Quick question. Since I'm a 13 relative newcomer to this, it would be interesting to know 14 what you were doing when you had this large amount on the () 15 bar graph to -- not what you cut out, because presumably you l 16 thought what you were doing then was important, too. What 17 you've got now is something like about a fifth of that. l l 18 MR. OTT: When we were in the high level waste l 19 program, we had an extensive program in volcanism. Most of 20 the work that is being reported now is based on work that 21 was begun under our research program in terms of volcanism 22 in the basin and range. We had a multi-year program going l 23 that was designed by Linda Veblen. She is a volcanologist, 1 24 as well as a geochemist. 25 There were three components to that program. The t O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 1
i 111 1 last program was not funded, which would have been an () 2 3 integration of the data collection, with various models. We also had a seismic program, tectonics of the 4 basin and range, which was funded at the Center for Nuclear 5 Waste Regulatory Analyses. We were the ones that initiated l 6 the work that was originally reported by Brian Warnecke that 7 was done under contract with the Office of Research, 8 originally submitted to us as a grant and changed into a 9 contract. 10 We had a program in materials -- metallic 11 materials research to do studies of degradation of proposed 12 canister materials. That was running at about a l 13 half-million dollars a year. We had extensive programs in 14 fracture flow studies being carried at Apache Leap tuff site
) 15 in Arizona, with the University of Arizona. That was 16 running about a half-million dollars a year between two 17 separate investigators.
18 We had natural analog studies being carried out at 19 Pina Blanca in Chihuahua in Mexico, at Akrotiri in Greece. 20 That was a very small-scale project, looking at near-field 21 migration of materials, metals. 22 And we had a natural analog program during part of 23 that period that was being done in Alligator River in 24 Australia, and that was later re-focused on some low level 25 waste issues and is actually being completed this year and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
L 112 1 it was performed under the work that we're doing on ( ) 2 absorption with the USGS at a western filled site. 3- That's, in a nutshell, some of the things that we 4 were doing. l l 5 MR. BAHADUR: We had work on draft mechanics. 6 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: You gave us a good flavor. I 7 don't that Charles needed an entire list. Ray, do you have .
,I 8 any last-minute questions?
9 I think because we are constrained to start again ; ! 10 at 1:30, we need to wrap this up. ! l ! 11 MR. BAHADUR: Thank you so much once again and j 12 thank you for the long attention and the patience that you 13 gave for this program. 14 This the first time we came to this program, so I
) 15 guess it was too long. Next time we come, we promise we 16 don't do that now. Thank you. j 17 l MR. OTT: Thank you, sir. Let me say that the 18 staff will be more than willing at any time. Their phone 19 numbers are in the presentations. If you have questions 20 about any of the projects, feel free to contact them.
21 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you very much. I think ( 22 we will adjourn and we do have to be back here at 1:30. 23 [Whereupon, the meeting was recessed, to reconvene 24 at 1:30 p.m., this same day.] 25
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l i 113 1 AFTERNOON SESSION () 2 (1:35 p.m.] 3 CRAIRMAN GARRICK: The meeting will come to order. 4 We are now going to talk about nuclear 5 waste-related rule-making. Here to tell us about it and the 6 events, the recent events about transferring rule-making 7 process into -- I guess it's gone from the research into 8 NMSS. It will be Trish Holahan. 9 MS. HOLAHAN: Thank you. Good afternoon. 10 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Are you wired up? 11 MS. HOLAHAN: No. Good afternoon. As you 12 indicated, I'm Trish Holahan. I'm a section chief in the 13 rule-making and guidance branch in the division of s 14 industrial and medical nuclear safety in NMSS. This is a 15 new branch that was created as a result of the transfer of 16 rule-making activities from the Office of Research to NMSS, 17 effective February 28. I will get a little bit into more 18 exactly what we're doing, but right now let me give you a 19 little bit of the history. 20 In staff requirements memorandums dated September 21 5 and December 5 of 1997 -- I'm sorry -- September 16, the 22 Commission directed the staff to expeditiously transfer the 23 resources and the responsibilities for all rule-making to 24 the program offices. So the rule-making functions went 25 primarily to NRR for reactor-related rule-makings and all l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i
114 1 rule-makings relating to fuel cycle, industrial and medical () 2 uses, radioactive waste management, transportation and for 3 byproduct source and special nuclear material went to NMSS. 4 In addition, the lead represent for parts 19 and 5 20 also now reside within NMSS and those, of course, are all 6 coordinated with NRR. 7 With NMSS, the division of industrial and medical 8 and nuclear safety has the primary responsibility for the 9 administrative and program management lead for the 10 rule-makings. However, each programmatic division, for 11 example, waste management, fuel cycle, spent fuel project 12 office, has the primary responsibility for the technical 13 aspects and the policy-related issues relating to their area 14 of programmatic responsibility.
) 15 So we basically work with the individual 16 divisions. We'll sort of do the coordination function and 17 making sure that we have all the pieces of the rule-making 18 necessary together, that we're meeting the schedules, make 19 sure the coordinations that need to be done, but then each 20 division will then have the lead to make sure that the 21 issues in their programmatic areas responsibility have been 22 addressed and the appropriate technical . issues have been 23 addressed.
24 DR. HORNBERGER: Trisha, when you say the transfer 25 of resources, as well, is that basically FTEs? ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l I 115 1 MS. HOLAHAN: Yes. l () 2 3 DR. HORNBERGER: Previous to the move, had this 1 group of people existed as a unit with RES and was this then 4 disbursed? 5 MS. HOLAHAN: I'm sorry. Let me go back a step l' 6 then. Yes. Previous to the move, the primary 7 responsibility was within the division of regulatory 8 applications with research. Now, there were three branches 9 within that division that did rule-making. As part of the 10 transfer, there was a transfer of 16.5 FTE and actual 11 individuals that were transferred down into IMNS and these 12 were individuals that had rule-making experience and the 13 experience to do the analyses and cott: benefit and all that 14 aspect. So, yes, there was an natural move of people, as 15 well as contract moneys to do the necessary support for 16 rule-makings. 17 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: How much was that in 18 combination with what went to NRR? What was the total? 19 MS. HOLAHAN: I believe -- well, as a result, 6.5 ; 20 FTE went to NMSS. I believe six FTF went to NRR and then 21 three FTE went down to the office of administration, and the 22 office of administration now has the responsibility for, 23 again, the specific administrative aspects, the database. 24 They have the lead for the rule-making activity plan which 25 is provided to the Commission on a semi-annual basis. The I) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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116 1 regulatory agenda, which is published semi-annually. [/) N. 2 And so we are coordinating and working with admin j 3 and also NRR on some of the other rules. 4 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you. 5 MS. HOLAHAN: Okay. Currently, we are in the 6 process of developing procedures to refine the rule-making 7 process. They are currently under development and out for 8 comment by -- within the agency, which basically outlines 9 how we intend to sort of process the various rule-makings. 10 And if I can jump to this last slide -- I 11 apologize if it's difficult to see, but I believe everybody 12 should have a copy of it in front of them. 13 This is just basically to outline where all the 14 different players will come in to play here. For all -- l () 15 this is for either proposed or a final rule package and just 16 to indicate where the involvement of the different parties l 17 are. But basically a task leader or a working group, 18 depending upon the complexity of the rule, will develop a 19 rule package that will go into a concurrence process, where 20 it goes into a branch review. 21 We get the burden estimate for any information 22 collection requirements, work through -- when it goes out to 23 -- then goes to the division at which time we're working on 24 developing procedures to involve our agreement states and 25 developing the OMB package. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. N.- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
117 1 The division now, where previously the office 2 director from research issued it for office concurrence, it 3 is now going to be issued at the division level for office 4 concurrence, at which time the advisory committees will get 5 an information copy, when it goes out for office 6 concurrence. 7 So if it's a rule-making that the advisory 8 committees would be interested in, it would go to ACNW and i 9 ACRS at that time. i 10 Following then it will go to the NMSS office 11 director, who will then provide it to the EDO and forward it 12 on to the Commission. l l 13 Overall, this process, in and of itself, we have l 14 tried to compeers, but still takes about 11 weeks. So at 15 this time, when it goes out to the different committees, it 16 would be out for about three weeks, which is when it goes 17 out Zor office concurrence. I 18 So we did a similar process for rule-making plans, 19 as well as, as I said, for proposed and final rules. i 20 We have a number of different rules in the works ; i 21 at the moment. What is currently in the rule-making l 22 activity plan comprise about 53 rules, of which they are 23 divided up amongst the different divisions for 24 responsibility, for the programmatic responsibility, but we 25 are sort of monitoring all those and keeping track of them ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
118 1 and working them through now. () 2 That was really about all that I wanted to cover 3 at this point. It was just sort of, as I say, an indication 4 of what had happened with the transfer and how we anticipate 5 working with it and I'd appreciate any input you might give 6 us or indications as to when you might like to see packages 7 other than what I've indicated, if it's otherwise. 8 CRAIRMAN GARRICK: With the change that's been 9 taking place and what you've described here, where are the 10 real changes in the procedures from how it was done before 11 or are there any fundamental changes? 12 MS. HOLAHAN: I think a lot of the sort of -- some 13 of the changes are in terms of working together at a much 14 earlier stage as a working group. I think we work very O( ,/ 15 closely with the divisions and have actually got working 16 groups where we bring in OGC and the different divisions 17 that would be involved and get a package well worked through 18 that when it's going out for office concurrence, I hope that 19 we are able to resolve issues somewhat quicker and get them 20 raised up. 21 We also have a rule-making status sheet which we 22 send out to all the offices and the divisions on a weekly 23 basis, letting them know where their rules are, what the 24 status is of them, and any issues that may be coming up to 25 give them an awareness and it allows them, and we've sort of 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. d Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
119 1 communicated with all the different offices, it gives them 2 the opportunity to be able to schedule and give us sort of a 3 prompt turnaround on a lot of the issues. l l So I think we've tried to facilitate the process 4 5 as much as anything and still we're -- you know, there is 6 still interactions, but at this point, we're still in the 7 early stages. 8 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Any questions, Charles? Ray? 9 DR. WYMER: I'd sort of like to have just a flavor 10 of what some of the rules are. You said there's 53 of them. 11 MS. HOLAHAN: Some of them I'm sure you're 12 probably familiar with in terms of the rule on Yucca 13 Mountain is one of them. There are rules in the area of 14 financial assurance. There are some dealing with low level 15 waste issues. We have a number of rules in the spent fuel 16 area for storage of spent fuel and also some transportation 17 issues in Part 71. 18 We have a couple of ongoing rules now with 19 generally licensed devices and how we regulate those and a 20 registration program. There's issues related to uranium 21 recovery facilities. There is a rule related to Part 35, 22 which is the medical use of byproduct material, and that's a 23 major rule ongoing. 24 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Where are most of the rules-25 . initiated from? l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
120 1 MS. HOLAHAN: They're initiated by various means. () 2 The primary ways of initiating them are either through a 3 petition for rule-making coming in from the public and we 4 have probably a dozen of those in-house at the moment. We 5 have staff requirements memoranda where the Commission 6 actually directs the staff to go forward and do a 7 rule-making in a specific area and then we have user need 8 memos from the other divisions or within our own division if 9 we see a need as we're going through and there is an issue 10 that has come up that is a generic issue that needs to be 11 resolved through rule-making. 12 For example, if we see that there's some 13 exemptions that are being requested, we may initiate a 14 rule-making within the office. 15 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: What about industry? 16 MS. HOLAHAN: That would be through a petition for 17 rule-making. 18 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Sort of in the same venue as 19 the public. 20 MS. HOLAHAN: Yes. 21 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: How would you distribute it? 22 Where in terms of ~-- what fraction of the rules, of the 53, 23 are public-initiated, for example? 24 MS. HOLAHAN: As I say, currently, of the j 25 rule-makings that we have, about -- there are about a dozen l I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters i 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
121 1 petitions for rule-making. Now, not all the petitions l - n 2 necessarily go forward to rule-making. What happens is when 3 they -- 4 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: That's from everybody, isn't 5 it? That's not just the public. l l 6 MS. HOLAHAN: Correct. 7 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Or is it? 8 MS. HOLAHAN: Yes. Okay. I'm sorry. I 9 misunderstood your question. Of the petitions for 10 rule-making, I would say perhaps half of them are from 11 industry and half of them are from the public. 12 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I see. 13 MS. HOLAHAN: And those are all published for 14 comment, for public comment initially when they are 15 received. 16 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: From your perspective, being 17 involved in this business and looking at your figure on the 18 procedures for rule packages, where would you think that 19 advice from the advisory committees would have its greatest 20 impact? l 21 In one respect, where you've shown it here is
]
22 quite far downstream in terms of the language of the rules. 23- MS. HOLAHAN: Well, I would certainly anticipate 24 also that, as I mentioned, the rule-making plan stage, which 25 is in the formative stages for the staff to even be going l i ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
122 1 forward to the Commission, that would also go to the (~m () 2 advisory committees and that would certainly give the 3 advisory committees a chance for early input into the 4 direction of the rule. 5 I mean, that's -- also, at the time, it would be 6 going out to the acreement states for comment and, as I say, 7 typically, there would also be -- receive a copy at that 8 stage. 9 Then this current layout is more for the proposed 10 than the final rule. So, again, as it's moving along the 11 path. I guess if there was a specific rule that the 12 committee was interested in, if they informed the staff, we 13 could certainly work with that. 14 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Any other questions?
'(~h t,/ 15 MR. LAVSON: You said that -- on your chart here, 16 it shows the agreement states. You're only going to give 17 them one week to review?
18 MS. HOLAHAN: No. I'm sorry. This is sort of, as 19 I say, in the early stages. The rule-making plans, they get 20 45 days. The way that it is anticipated -- and this chart, 21 it hasn't been finalized, but they would actually get five 22 weeks here. They would get 45 days for the rule-making plan 23 and then 35 days for a proposed rule. 24 They would get it when it goes out to the division 25 and it would stay with them the entire time it was out for i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 l 123 1 office review and concurrence. () 2 MR. LAVSON: Okay. Because that's going along 1 3 with with Dr. Garrick's comment that when should it go to 4 the advisory committees, because it would only meet eight 5 times a year and if it fit into -- as you say, it goes to l 6 them the same time it goes to a division review or even to 7 an office review, which is either one week or three weeks. 8 They won't have a meeting in that short a time-frame. There 9 has to be some recognition, if the advice is desired, that 10 they have sufficient time to look at it. 11 MS. HOLAHAN: I believe with specific rules, that 12 they are specifically scheduled. I mean, I think with the J l 13 Part 63, they'd come in or have talked to the committee. 14 That Part 35 on medical use has gone to the Advisory
) 15 Committee on Medical Uses of Isotopes, specifically outside 16 the -- in addition to this time.
I 17 DR. WYMER: It seems we talk about this from two 18 different points of view. One is the point of view of -- 1 19 you said what are we interested in, which rule-making are we 20 interested in. The other point of view is what rule-making 21 are you interested in having us interested in. How do we
'22 decide this?
l 23 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Would you repeat the question? 24 DR. WYMER: The key word was interested. 25 MS. HOLAHAN: Well, I think the -- as I say, all O 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 I Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 842-0034
124 1 the rules are currently going to the ACNW and ACRS when they 2 go out for office review and concurrence, for information. 3 Some rules, the committees have come back specifically and 4 indicated that they have a specific interest in that. 5 DR. WYMER: But the reciprocal is not necessarily 6 going to happen. We really would particularly like to have 7 a look at this one. l 8 MR. HOLAHAN: You would, you're saying. l- 9 DR. WYMER: Would you ever say we would especially 10 like to have you look at this rule-making? 11 MS. HOLAHAN: Yes. I would anticipate that would l 12 happen, yes, that we would specifically go to the advisory 13 committee and ask for their advice, yes. 14 DR. WYMER: Okay. It wasn't clear to me. 15 MS. HOLAHAN: Okay. I'm sorry. 16 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Any other questions? Staff? 17 [No response.) 18 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thanks a lot, Trisha. 19 MS. HOLAHAN: Thank you. 20 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: One of the activities that the 21 committee has found to be very useful is to invite senior 22 executives into our meetings from time to time and have 23 chats about a variety of issues and we're very pleased today 24 to have Hugh Thompson, Deputy Executive Director for 25 Regulatory Programs, with us today to sit in the catbird ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l 1 I
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125 1 seat. ( 2 MR. THOMPSON: I thought that was a chat bird 3 seat. 4 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: And we do have a lot of 5 operational issues, for example, that I think are on the 6 minds of the committee. A lot of it centered around this 7 issue of how to operate in the so-called pre-decisional 8 environment. So we are very pleased, Hugh, to have you here 9 to talk to us. 10 We have some items here that are listed that we 11 would like to get your comments on, such as risk-informed 12 performance-based regulation and from your vantage point, 13 how do you see that proceeding? Are we making any progress? 14 The question of the oversight of certain DOE
) 15 activities by NRC, the matter of the DOE's viability 16 assessment for Yucca Mountain. While this officially is not 17 a regulatory activity, nevertheless it is a very important 18 event in the minds of many and an opportunity for the NRC to 19 get heavily involved in looking at Yucca Mountain under a 20 license environment, even though this not a licensing 21 action.
22 And as I said at the outset, the issue of 23 pre-decisional information and how we as an advisory 24 committee can increase our effectiveness in offering advice 25 on pre-decisional matters, given the instructions and the [D 'I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
126 1 guidance we've recently received in that regard. () 2 So with that, I'll let you chat. 3 MR. THOMPSON: Well, thanks. It's always a 4 pleasure to be here. I think last time I was here I was 5 somewhere sitting over there with a group of three and I was 6 able to be less pointed. I think I have less support today. 7 I guess I should commend -- is this the 100th 8 meeting here? 9 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yes. 10 MR. THOMPSON: I think this is a marvelous 11 achievement for the advisory committee. I know -- I think I 12 was even around when we started the Advisory Committee on 13 Nuclear Waste, and it has been really a good opportunity for 14 us to have a dialog, have some external reviews. () 15 One of the things I have always been pleased with 16 is the ability for the advisory committee not only to raise 17 problems, but sometimes help resolving them. 18 It's easier to sometimes just raise issues than 19 help in solutions and I certainly applaud your efforts to 20 not only raise issues, which obviously are important for the 21 staff to look at, but also to, at times, provide some 22 pathways towards some resolution of issues and it's always 23 helpful to do that. 24 You can always have the staff have some concerns 25 of, well, you know, here comes more work load if we are not O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ! 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
127 ( 1 too careful in how we present the issues. I mean, we have n) (G 2 to be kind of smart how we present the issues likewise 3 because if we come and tell us everything is wrong with 4 this, you'll probably tell us everything is wrong with this. 5 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Right. Right. l [ 6 MR. THOMPSON: But I thought there were a couple l 7 of ways we could go today. We could start and talk about 8 things I know something about or we could talk about things 9 I don't know anything about. I think maybe if we start with 10 something I know something about, it will at least start off 11 on the right foot. And then if we wind up on the wrong 12 foot, we'll declare the meeting over and we'll start -- 13 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Have a break. 14 MR. THOMPSON: Have a break, that's right.
/"'
( ,s) 15 Obviously, one of the real big efforts is the oversight of 16 DOE activities. We have, again, put in the budget process, l 17 that's over on the Hill right now, a million dollar program i 18 that would essentially continue the pilot program activities l l 19 on the current level that they are on this year. We have j 20 John Austin and a small staff who are heading that project 1 21 up right now and he has a counterpart on DOE. 22 They have completed their evaluation activities 23 for the first site, which is the Lawrence Berkeley site, and 24 are presently in the process of finalizing the report, which 25 has the inputs not only from the team members that we have, l
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128 1 but also from Lawrence Berkeley and from the State of () 2 California and other interested parties there. 3 So it's a report that will have a wide range of 4 views. I guess it hadn't been finalized yet and we're still 5 awaiting some key input from DOE, but essentially our review 6 of that activity, such as very similar to a review of NIH in 7 one of the major broad-scope licensees, and there is 8 probably nothing that would preclude us from having an 9 effective regulatory program. 10 Probably the key issues that are still there are 11 who would be the licensee, kind of whether it would be DOE 12 or Berkeley or a combination of the two, and there are pros 13 and cons and we need to kind of spell all those out. 14 Obviously, probably having Berkeley as the f 15 licensee makes the benefits a little stronger by not having 16 kind of a dual regulatory program, and DOE thought they 17 still had to have a regulatory effort on that. 18 Likewise, there is always some regulations that 19 you probably have that we'd have to look at, given the ! 20 context the way that DOE is funding these activities and 21 cleanup, you know. Cleaning up the Berkeley site may be ; 22 much lower on the priority than cleaning up Hanford tanks or 23 West Valley or Savannah River. 24 Our regulations don't quite recognize that. We 25 just say if you have a facility that's no longer in use, i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
129 1 clean it up and start your effort in about two years. l () 2 So those are the types of things that are facing 3 the decision-makers as they get into those review l 4 activities. They have started the efforts down at very i 5 logical chemical engineering development center down in Oak 6 Ridge. They've had site visits and that seems to be going 7 'quite well. That's going to present some different 8 challenges for the review effort. It gives them some of the 9 higher order of radionuclides and more, maybe some 10 classified type activities. So it's one that will add some 11 new challenges to the review process. 12 And the spent fuel receiving basin at Savannah 13 River had been now formally nominated by DOE as the third 14 pilot that we'll do later this year. So that gives us this
) 15 year's complements of pilots.
16 The Pacific Northwest National Lab has been ' 17 identified as the first pilot for the next year. So they 18 have kind of a history up there of having a number of 19 activities that we would be able to look at. So those are 20 the next ones on the books. 21 We did receive, I think, a letter today from DOE, 22 which is not part of the pilot program, but in parallel to 23 the pilot program is the Brookhaven non-power reactor. They 24 have an agreement to review the proposed operation of that 25 facility and provide our reviews to DOE on that particular i I ( () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
130 1 reactor facility. We're not looking at the site. It's just () 2 3 the non-power reactor. It's not part of the pilot program at this time, 4 although information would obviously be useful potentially 5 to anyone making some decision in that regard. 6 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: What qualifies them as a pilot 7 plant? 8 MR. THOMPSON: What qualifies them as a pilot 9 plant is we have kind of a matrix that we look at. A couple 10 of things you are looking at is if the facility is going to 11 be around hopefully operating for a long period of time. We 12 wouldn't want to spend a lot of effort on a facility who 13 plans to shut down before we could ever get legislation 14 through and to look at becoming the regulator. O( ,j 15 Another thing would be somebody who was 16 volunteering. We are still in a place where we need the 17 cooperation, and people that think there's some benefits and 18 that are willing to participate because it's not a cost free 19 type of effort activity. 20 A third one is facilities that we kind of have 21 some existing regulatory framework for. I mean we could 22 maybe take the FERMI accelerated lab. We are working to 23 those a little further down the road and we want to avoid 24 anything as best we could with the Defense Facility and 25 Nuclear Safety Board, because they already kind of have an O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
131 1- oversight process and no use us falling around each other ( 2 until we have looked at those that would be probably 3 cleaner. 4 We look at those elements and people have to 5 volunteer and DOE's organization has to support it so when 6 we find those, we will hopefully be able to put those in a 7 process that allows us to look at them in kind of a 8 sequential time frame. 9 DOE has established kind of an oversight, kind of 10 a steering review group, which is both given a higher level 11 of attention to these activities within DOE, but at the same 12 time, it's probably not sped the process up. 13 You have additional reviews and additional 14 committees. It seems to be one of the problems in DOE, any () 15 time anybody says we'd prefer NRC external regulations, they 16 usually announce their resignation shortly following that. 17 I don't think it had anything to do with Secretary Pena's 18 recent announcement though. 19 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: You can't ever tell. 1 20 MR. THOMPSON: We are probably starting the i 21 Brookhaven review in about six weeks, probably early June we 22 will start that review. We also are having in oversight of ! 23 DOE activities, the mixed oxide fuel facility. That's one I 24 along the lines of what would require some type of 25 legislation. They may be looking at something like the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
132 1 Hanford tank approach, where you start something out, where
) 2 we really don't have the oversight and regulatory authority,'
3 with the anticipation that NRC would be the regulator. 4 DOE has to in a new facility built after year FY 5- 2000, it has to be basically constructed to NRC criteria and 6 standards, and it doesn't require us to be regulators. 7 We think some legislation would probably be useful 8 to clarify the role, the expected role of NRC. We are in 9 dialogue with DOE as to what legislation might be needed, 10 appropriate and the timing of when that legislation ought to 11 be. 12 Our process of looking at the Hanford tanks is 13 ongoing. It continues to be one where we are still in the 14 early stages of kind of assisting them in having a () 15 regulatory program to be put in place and we are staffing up 16 for that activity. As far as I know, that is going 17 reasonably well. 18 As a kind of an overview, I think that's kind of 19 where we are. Maybe we have some questions I can answer in 20 this public meeting. 21 DR. WYMER: It looks to me like staying clear of ; 1 22 the Defense Nuclear Safety Board stuff and the Hanford tanks 23 are sort of at odds. i 24 MR. THOMPSON: Well, I think there are activities 25 out there that they are having oversight responsibility for. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
133 1 Right now, we are not looking at the tanks themselves. We () 2 are looking at the process, how the new facilities being 3 built would be focused on. We would probably have to be 4 reasonably careful if we get into the tanks themselves as to 5 where one's role ends and another role begins. They at 6 times have suggested we just tak? over things like the K 7 basins and some of those which are real problems. We don't 8' see those fitting into the kind of categories that we were 9 looking at as the facilities that were going to be 10 operational for a long period of time. 11 But that is the concept, we really are looking at 12 the new facilities that are being built. 13 DR. WYMER: By the private companies. 14 MR. THOMPSON: By the private companies; right. 15 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: That's a good summary. 16 MR. THOMPSON: DOE's viability assessment for 17 Yucca Mountain, which is probably the third item on our 18 list, which deals with again a very important program, 19 certainly as a key element of that, we are looking and 20 working with EPA and DOE and the Administration on what the 21 standards, performance standards for the site would be. i 22 There is considerable dialogue going on'right now I 23 as to what the appropriate standard would be. EPA and DOE 24 are meeting. We are obviously very acutely aware of the 25 EPA's position they have taken with respect to clean up of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
134 1 terminated sites, and that presents the issue of ground I () 2 water, whether a separate standard is required, issues with 3 respect to the National Academy of Science report, whether 4 or not that was intended to have a separate standard, a 5 performance based standard. 6 I think those issues are ones that the 7 Administration is right now struggling with and we are kind 8 of outside of that as the regulator, although we at times 9 hear they are continuing that dialogue and that they were 10 somewhat ready, that EPA was ready to go forward and after 11 some further dialogue, they are further discussing issues, 12 and I can't project where they are going to go right now. l 13 I know that EPA feels very strongly about their 14 ground water protection and I think we maintain our strong 15 feelings about how we ought to regulate radiation. 16 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Do you think this will be 17 resolved at the congressional level? 18 MR. THOMPSON: Well, that certainly is a 19 possibility. It's a judgment as to what it would take to 20 get enough votes to override a presidential veto, threatened 21 veto, and what the industry really proposes. I can only -- l 22 NEI may be a better bellweather of providing information on l 23 that than I am. 24 Essentially, I think the efforts by the j 25 Administration would be to avoid a confrontation if they can i i i [
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135 1 get something that would be able to go forward and to do () 2 that. I don't know whether that will be possible or not. 3 I know there's still continued interest on getting 4 some legislation to address this, the overall aspects.
)
5 Obviously, I can't project how that would come out. I think 6 the majority of Congress would support legislation in this l 7 area. I just don't know whether it would be enough to 8 override a veto. 9 We are still lined up for the staff. As you said, 10 our own review of the viability assessment is not required 11 by law. It's something we think that would be appropriate 12 for us to do, the Commission, and certainly we would 13 anticipate using our best information from the Center and 14 from the staff to give our review as to what we believe the () 15 status of it.is. Part of that obviously would depend on 16 what the standard is going to be. 17 We are comfortable with an all pathway standard a i 18 and looking at how our dose assessment would be. That would 19 be one that we are continuing to do our performance 20 assessment views on. 21 DR. HORNBERGER: You are confident that the 22 standard will in fact be out before the -- l 23 MR. THOMPSON: That's another tricky issue. I 24 think the staff's guidance was if EPA issues a standard that
-25 is completely different from what we kind of have our
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136 1 current guidance of, we would need to go back to the (im) 2 Commission and say, here's an EPA standard, do you want us w/ 3 to go forward. 4 That's a decision that will have to be made at 5 that time and that the Commissioners would weigh, the 6 consequences of such a decision kind of in the face of the 7 Administration's -- if DOE and EPA have agreed on something, 8 NRC headed out in a different direction would be a decision 9 that obviously would have to be made by the Commission, l 10 I don't think the staff would go out without 11 consulting with the Commission on this issue. I don't think 12 we would. 13 I don't have anything else on the recent movement 14 of the fault plains out there. If anybody is going to bring i/%
- () 15 that up, you can just kind of hold that question for more 16 intelligent people than I.
17 We are continuing to have our budget requests for 18 oversight of DOE, supported by OMB at a level I think that 19 would let us look at all the ten key technical issues that 20 l we have identified and maintain our ability to conduct our ! l 21 viability assessment. l i I 22 Obviously that budget ramps up a bit in the year 23 2000, so somewhere along the line, we will probably be 24 forced to maybe make a hard look at the way we are headed j Y 25 and obviously we will be in dialogue with you as we go along j i [' ' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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137 1 and certainly welcome your wisdom and guidance and thoughts () 2 as to how best to. utilize the resources that we have. 3 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Good. Any more questions on 4 viability assessment? 5 [No response.] 6 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I think the viability 7 assessment is a time when the whole issue of performance 8 ' assessment and in a sense risk informed processes can be 9 tested considerably. 10 MR. THOMPSON: Certainly in the waste area. There 11 are other ones that always puzzle me. The one that puzzles , 12 me the most and maybe puzzles you is some of the concerns l 13 that sometimes we focus on and it's kind of like criticality 14 concerns at low level waste burial sites. ( 15 You know, this truly is a technical issue that's 16 very difficult to solve and it does evolve over tens of 17 thousands of years and how you go about doing the various [ 18 modeling to calculate, and then I kind of say so what. You 19 finally get a little bit of criticality and then what is the l 20 risk associated with that. Obviously, there is kind of a 21 regulatory format. We just don't want inadvertent 22 criticalities to occur, but you know, again in this process 23 of kind of risk informed, performance based, is this an area 24 that we need to be spending our limited resources on and 25 obviously I think the Commission is looking at that area for O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
138 1 us right now. () 2 That's kind of when we look at some of our areas,. 3- low level waste or'high level waste, where do we really need 4 to be spending our resources. We now need to be able to
.5 have some basis for making those judgments.
6 Certainly in the rulemaking activities, we aren't 7 in the materials area nearly as sophisticated in certain 8 aspects as we are in the reactors, just the databases and a 9 lot of that is just not there. 10 We do understand certain activities are riskier 11 than others and hopefully we put a general effort to be able 12 to have our decisions being risk informed, like in the new 13 Part 35. We obviously put a bit more focus on the therapy 14 aspect, the diagnostic medicine aspect. Those are ways we 15' try to make a lot of that risk informed. 16 We are looking at identifying increased support in 17 our budget for the year 2000 or even 1999 potentially for 18 supporting the NMSS area in this risk informed -- it ended 19 up kind of falling out in the past years because we really 20 weren't sure what we were trying to capture and what we were 21 going to achieve by putting those'FTE's in the materials 22 area. 23 We did have some transportation studies. You know
-24' we did the modal study in transportation, which was I think 25 probably the most traditional approach in using a kind of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 139 1 risk informed thinking process, but we haven't quite gotten 2 -down to being able to eliminate, you know, criticality I 3 events and burnt up spent fuel and spent fuel casks. We 4 still have some of those areas and I don't think any of us 5 right now would not say that we shouldn't continue to focus 6 and utilize it as best we can. 7 Certainly you, Dr. Garrick, have a bit of history. 8 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: A few scars, too. 9 MR. THOMPSON: We have all the scars and you have 10 the history and share the scars with us. 11 Anyway, we are there, but we are continuing to 12 push it and obviously the Commission and the white paper I 13 think you commented on last month is the effort right now /"% 14 the Commission has, to try to put all that together. They h 15 are obviously aware of the need to look at our regulatory 16 programs in toto, you know, not just reactor activities. We 17 will see how we are able to go to support all those 18 activities. 19 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yes. I think that was one of 20 our key concerns, that if we are going to go forward with 21 the white paper and try to establish some fundamental 22 definitions and concepts, we ought to take advantage of the 23 opportunity and make it as expansive as we reasonably can. 24 MR. THOMPSON: Right. 25 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I'm sure that's what will ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
140 1 happen. 2 ([ I guess one of the things on this risk informed l 3 i business that I'm a little curious about, we know that at 4 the level of the ACRS and the ACRS Subcommittee in 5 particular, there's a tremendous amount of activity in 6 trying to deal with what would eventually be.a strategy, how 7 do we implement the PRA policy statement, how to implement l 8 the new guidelines that have been developed. 9 There is even the dialogue going on relative to 10 what should constitute the risk measures. Should we elevate 11 things like core damage frequency and what have you. l 12 I guess I and the Committee would be interested in 13 looking at it from the executive suite, so to speak. It's 14 hard to know what the expectations are at that level, but I 15- that notwithstanding, is there a sense that there is 16- progress being made? We have observed some of the 17 frustrations of the presentations by the Nuclear Energy 18 Institute and other outside organizations. 19 I think the one aspect of the PRA policy statement 20 that's received a great deal of focus as far as industry is 21 concerned is that having to do with some hope for relieving 22 some burden to the licensee. Of course, during this 23 transition period, in the pilot project period, inevitably 24- it has to be the other way around in order to get the 25 experience and to do the testing and what have you that's O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
141 1 required. ( 2 I guess there is interest in whether there's hc,e 3 for some relief, if you wish, the kind of relief that woulJ 4 come from some major surgery on some of the regulations. 5 MR. THOMPSON: Well, I certainly support the 6 effort to identify areas where we can appropriately justify 7 relief. I'm also prepared to tell that I think Thandani is 8 the guy that basically has this area and this focus as his 9 primary focus. He took that with him when he moved from NRR 10 to Research and then to the Deputy EDO for Regulatory 11 Excellence. 12 We think the programs are moving slowly but are 13 moving in the right direction now and that we should I think 14 see some relief coming soon. I personally right now don't () 15 have -- it's not my key focus, and we can talk about things 16 that I don't know, the specifics of how we are pushing that, 17 I really don't know. 18 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I think we are kind of 19 optimistic, cautiously optimistic, because we don't have a 20 lot of the baggage that the reactor field has in terms of 21 the SFAR way of doing things and the design basis accident 22 approach to licensing. 23 In fact, much of the waste field is already 24 working against a performance based requirement and there is 25 the experience that's not directly NRC but certainly in the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington,' D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
142 1 waste field, of the waste isolation pilot plant, for () 2 example, where probably the best first application of the 3 EFA regulation, 40 CFR 91, where the risk measure was 4 basically a CCDF for relief fractions. 5 The waste field has had the opportunity to maybe 6 do a little bit of an end run here in terms of moving in the 7 direction of a risk informed approach and all of the 8 performance assessment work for Yucca Mountain adds to that, 9 even in the absence of a standard. There seems to be a 10 sense that there will be a standard, it will be dose based, 11 et cetera, and in the meantime, all the work is orogressing 12 on the basis that it will be risk based. 13 I think there is some optimism there. 14 Given this is not something that --
) 15 MR. THOMPSON: I would add on the other side is in 16 Part 70, the revision we are trying to do for the fuel cycle 17 facilities, which goes back to the waste tanks up at 18 Hanford. We are looking at having the innovative safety 19 assessment approach, which is kind of, you know, PRA may be 20 a subset of ways you do an innovative safety assessment.
21 I think we are still trying to do that and take 22 advantage of that thought process and being able to look at 23 the broader scope of activities and not trying to be just, 24 you know, too deterministic in our approach on that. 25 I think the industry has some concerns about how O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
143 l 1 ~ public the ISA's would really become, how much relief you l () 2 can get. They would probably like to have all the relief 3 they could get from an ISA without making it too public. 4 And then what happens to changes. You know, as 5 your system changes, do you have to go back and re-do your 6 innovative safety assessment evaluations to be able to do
- 7 that. Those are issues I think we are still in dialogue l 8 with the industry on right now for Part 70.
9 For the reactor side, I know there continues to be l 10 both a level of frustration, and we really had to divert a 11 -lot of our activities- and resources to continue the AP600 12 reviews and license renewal, which now that Calvert Cliffs 13 has their application in, we also have an application we 14 expect very soon from Duke for Oconnee. They will probably
) 15 come in in July sometime.
16 We are working very carefully to get those as high ! 17 priority activities. The standard tech specs review effort, 18 because a lot of effort has been on getting those standard l 19 tech specs in place, which will also be resource demands. 20 It continues to be an important element and we are 21 I think to the point where are proceeding to see some 22 results, and hopefully some benefits to the licensees who 23 are able to put that effort into it. 24 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you. Our favorite topic 25 -- O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W , Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
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i 144 1 MR. THOMPSON: It has to be everybody's favorite I () 2 3 topic, of how to have discussions with all the information you really want. It really is a communications dilemma that j 4 .I think we all face. Obviously, the framework in which you 5 operate prescribes very carefully the approach and I'm sure 6 there are clear reasons for that. 7 I think the efforts that we had to discuss I think 8 it was Part 63 or whatever it was, Commission paper, which 9 we were able to get released in order to be able to discuss 10 it. 11 The Commission, I think we just need to be smart 12 enough quite frankly ahead of time to find out those issues 13 that the Commission will be ccmfortable discussing in a 14 public forum. I don't think the laws are going to be () 15 changed any time soon. Obviously, the staff has the ability 16 to provide you information separately, individually, which 17 we try to do whenever you need it or request it. 18 I think to hold public meetings on it, it pretty 19 much is information that the Commission has to be 20 comfortable with being made publicly available. 21 I think the Commission is in most cases very open 22 to having information. I know we are working on a response 23 to DSI-13, which is kind of working with industry standards. 24 We are certainly encouraged to go out and work in a way -- 25 I'll be working with OGC to try to find out those avenues O ; ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
145 1 where there are difficulties in being able to work on () 2 . pre-decisional information. I think the Commission benefits l 3 quite frankly from having a wide range of views. I ! 4 There may be some where there are political 5 reasons, sensitive reasons, that they want to make sure we 6 have our dialogue with them within the Government before l 7 they become public. Actually, I think NRC is probably more l 8 open in my own view than almost any other agency. 9 We deal with the ISCOR committees, which is the 10 multitude of committees headed up by DOE, EPA and NRC about 11 radiation standards. We were pushing for public meetings, 12 at least frequent public meetings on that. We finally 13 convinced everybody we can hold a public meeting. The next 14 one is going to be held at NRC. Since it's going to be held () 15 here, we are going to have a public meeting for most of it. 16 Other. Government agencies really do take the 17 effort of pre-decisional much more closely. Obviously, even 18 letters, they are sent to the Hill when they get circulated 19 within the Government and clearance through OMB and the 20 White House. There's a Kabuki dance there that we probably 21 wouldn't believe that goes on, just to get the clearances. 22 They are done internally within the Government, so it is a 23 practice that frustrates advisory committees. I know that 24 it doesn't make your life any easier. 25 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: The principle is a very simple L ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Os Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 146 1 one. You have an advisory committee presumably to help you () 2 make better decisions. The information has to be timely in 3 order to do that. The other thing that complicates this, we 4 are fully aware that we can deal with issues that may be a
-5 part of a decision document, but on the other hand, this 6 committee and I think our sister committee preaches the 7 gospel of context and perspective and systems, systematic j 8 processes, which means that decisions are best made when 9 issues are in context.
10 Discussing them out of context is certainly 11 something we do and we will continue to do and provide 12 advice as best we can, but it's far from optimum in terms of 13 carrying the spirit of what we always try to make as a 14 fundamental part of our advice, mainly context and /~' I 15 perspective and harmony and what have you. , 16 We are struggling with that issue in our own 17 conscience because I think the committee members are very 18 conscientious about wanting to feel like their advice is 1 19 good and timely and that the advice is used. 20 I think probably the members might have some 21 questions on this topic. l 22 MR. THOMPSON: I may not have any answers. 23 DR. HORNBERGER: I may be asking the wrong person 1 24 the question. I think it was maybe two months ago that 25 there was a memo that came out I think from Mr. Callan, l h \~/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i i
147 1 which could have been read to indicate, being a directive to () 2 the staff, to not share any pre-decisional information with 3 anyone, and it could have been read to include the advisory 4 committees. Of course, that concerned us. This has nothing 5 to do with releasing it at a public meeting. It has to do 6 with sharing material with the advisory committees. 7 Do you know anything about that or the intent of 8 that? 9 MR. THOMPSON: I must know something about it. 10 I'm kind of blank on the particular memo right now. If you I 11 have a copy of it, maybe that would refresh my memory. 12 SPEAKER: I'll go get a copy. 13 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: It seems to be publicly 14 available. The memo's post-decisional. () 15 Hugh, this has especially been a bit of an 16 aggravation with respect to Part 60, and trying to 17 incrementally advise the staff on how to make Part 60 18 compatible with what appears to be a lot of tugging in terms 19 of requirements. 20 MR. THOMPSON: Sure. I think what will benefit us 21 is when we can focus on the particular area. I think Part , 22 60 was the one where we had -- I don't want to call it the 23 brou ha ha, but the ha brou brou. Unless there's some 24 unique reason that we shouldn't, you know, I think we would l 25 benefit for having it open. We just have to go through our h
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148 1 own process. () 2 Yes, I'm aware of this memo. This is a memo that l 3 quite frankly was: geared at ensuring there's improved 4 communication between the EDO and the Chairman, and in 5 appropriate ways, to have the communication between the 6 Chairman and the Commissioners, and that was the intent on 7 this quite frankly. It was an internal office procedure. 8 It's one we are trying -- you know, the Commission 9 right now I think is reviewing its overall policies and 10 practices and how they handle correspondence. This was kind 11' of put in place pending getting a revision to our normal 12 communication activities. l 13 It's not intended to -- it's intended for us to be 14 thoughtful on whenever we are making information and such () 15 that we don't find ourselves in dialogue with Commissioners 16 over issues that we have not even talked with the Chairman 17 on. The Chairman is the chief administrative officer. She 18 directs the policies. This was an effort to make sure we 19 get our lines of communications appropriately up to the 20- Chairman and then to the Commission. Then there are those 21 issues which are policy which go all to the Commission. 22 DR. HORNBERGER: That's of course what we were 23 hoping it was, but it strikes me that the staff may not have 24 interpreted it that way, and to a certain extent, I think we 25 have even seen some evidence that it's had a chilling effect i p L O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 l-(202) 842-0034
149 1 on'what they are willing to share with us. ( 2 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. 3 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: It's a sort of wait until we 4 are done syndrome. I think that is a little bit in 5 contradiction of an advisory function, an effective advisory 6 function. 7 MR. THOMPSON: We all learn and grow as we kind of 8 become tested. We felt it was important for us to give some 9 guidance to the staff as we were trying to get when we have 10 an unintended effect. I think we need to be conscious and 11 aware of what that is. If you can give me an example of the 12 times where you may have felt the staff felt uncomfortable, 13 then we can look at it and say, well, we intended for them 14 to feel uncomfortable that time, and that's exactly what we
) 15 intended or gee, we ought to be more clear in our guidance 16 when dealing with various advisory committees or whatever.
17 If that's acceptable, if you will give me an { 18 example or so, we will certainly look into it. 19 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I think our best example is 20 Part 60 and the status of Part 60. 21 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. 22 MR. LARKINS: I'm scheduled to meet with Mr. 23 Callan on Friday along with OGC to further talk about this ! l 24 and see if there aren't mechanisms that we can use to 25 alleviate some of the problems associated with this, j i () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 150 l l 1 MR. THOMPSON: Right, and if you are able to give 1 () 2 3 an example, like Part 60, and maybe one other one, that will kind of give a good -- 4 MR. LARKINS: It impacts both committees. We will 5 provide examples for both. 6 MR. THOMPSON: Right. I think that would be 7 useful. We may find we have wrote this exactly like we 8 intended to write it. On the other hand -- 9 MR. LARKINS: Since we didn't receive a copy, we 10 assumed it was not intended to impact the ACRS or ACNW. 11 MR. THOMPSON: Well, you know what " assumed" 12 means. I think a meeting with Joe will be very beneficial 13 in seeing where there are abilities to define any particular 14 issues that you have and hopefully -- those have usually () 15 worked out in the past. 16 I remember no discussion whatsoever in my mental l 17 history here of discussing, well, this is intended to impact 18 the advisory committees, although I can't say that it may 19 not have had some unintended effect on that. I 20 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Very good. We really 21 appreciate the candidness of your comments. I think the 1 22 main thing in dealing with thorny issues as they develop is I 23 to be able to have that kind of communication and we 24 appreciate it. 1 25 One of the things that we also want to invite your 1 f O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
151 1 thoughts on is that through the encouragement of the current () 2 chairman, chair lady, we, like so many other parts of the 3 NRC, have become much more conscious of the need for a 4 planning process that better exposes our role in life. 5 We have as a committee developed a strategic plan 6 that contains the usual kinds of things that you think of 7 when you hear about such plans, such as mission statements 8 and visions and priorities and objectives and what have you. 9 We as a result of all of this have elevated our 10 own consciousness about making sure that we are addressing 11 the issues that can really make a difference and ask you to 12 be open in your thoughts as much as you can about what you 13 expect from ACNW, either in terms of specific issues or 14 topics or what have you.
) 15 One of the things that has come up recently about 16 ACNW is that maybe ACNW should get a little more involved as 17 its sister committee has in the past in topics rather than 18 just technical issues, topical issues.
19 We want to be darn sure that all of the channels l l 20 of communication are open for us to receive suggestions, j 1 21 guidance, input, whatever, that would help us as we move 22 closer towards our own next planning event, at which time we 23 will establish what we believe to be our priorities for ! 24 1999. 25 Anything that you can offer either off the top of ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O-s Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
152 1 your head or otherwise in the way of what the EDO's offices () 2 3 would like to hear from us, we would appreciate. MR. THOMPSON: Well, I think that is important, to 4 look at what I think is the value added, and as I said 5 earlier on, value added comes from identifying problems. I 6 think there is also a value added from identifying potential 7 solutions or issues. 8 I really think that's the way I would see your 9 activities. I can't sit down and tell you the broad scope 10 of issues that we have because we have them from 11 transportation and from general license devices, which I'm 12 going to be putting a program together to find everybody's 13 little license device, all the way up to finally deciding on 14 the Yucca Mountain or those. 15 You end up with the same breadth of activities 16 that I do. We see ourselves almost often in a very 17 pressured environment, that is I have little time to 18 sometimes sit down and think, kind of detach myself and say, 19 well, are you really headed in the right direction or if you 20 are headed out in this other one, by the time a document 21 gets up to the EDO's Office, we had an one week turn around 22 time before it has to get up to the Chairman's Office for 23 clearance and review or whatever needs to be done. 24 By then, it's kind of late. As you say, early 25 input, early value and to identify those areas where you O 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250.I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l 1 I
153 i 1 know your own skills, you know where you most are () 2 comfortable with adding suggestions and adding what I would 3 call value, and I think those are the ones where you ought 4 to step forward and say these are the areas -- these are our 5 strengths. 6 You might identify the areas where you think these 7 are the areas we think we have some value. That doesn't i 8 mean all of a sudden we are asking you to write all the t 9 rules. I think that is one thing that I would suggest that 10 you kind of do, and then measure yourself as to how well 11 does your suggested changes withstand the whiplashes of 12 regulatory comment periods and everything else. That's 13 where it is. That's the end result of whatever the 14 Commission ends up adopting based on the best science that's
- ) 15 available.
16 I think we are all in the time frame where 17 resources are becoming more pressed. Obviously, the fees, 18 the restructuring of the electric utility areas. You will 19 find there is now a much higher pressure on an utility l 20 executive for a $5 million NRC fee makes a big impact on 21 their ability to potentially make money. 22 There's no reason quite frankly for them to be in 23 the business if they are not making enough electricity and 24 doing it profitably. Obviously, that's a real pressure for 25 us, not pressure, in a few years, only well run O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 842-0034 l
154 1' organizations are going to be around. () 2 They will be smart. They will be articulate. They 3 will be able to look us in the face and say this is no 4 problem, let me tell you what we are doing about X, Y and Z. 5 We have to be able to say -- the more sophisticated they 6 are, the more difficult it puts us in a role in 7 understanding whether or not that level of sophistication is 8 really addressing the issue. 9 Usually it's the poor operators we can spot pretty 10 easily. It's the others that are going to be more difficult 11 for us to look at. 12 It turns out one of the things we are finding is 13 that as streamlining is occurring, the plants are' operating 14 safer and better with smaller staffs. One time we were 15 worried about down sizing in that regard. They seem to have 16 now been able to really achieve -- a lot of those facilities 17 have been able to achieve improved operation and certainly
- 18. it doesn't appear to be at any cost in safety. I think 19 those are the facilities that are going to be around and be 20 around for license renewal and be around for a long period 21 of time.
22 They may in fact be the facilities who will become 23 the operators of the single unit plants. I don't know if 24 you heard Corbin McNeil. They are actively out there 25 engaged in looking for -- I don't want to say bargains -- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
155 1 that's kind of what he was looking for. They believe they (Gj 2 can use their skills and safely operating plants effectively 3 to make some maybe single unit plants or small utilities 4 attractive for them to buy the nuclear facilities. j 5 As they become larger, eventually you could see 6 the nuclear industry on the reactor side being operated by a 7 handful of reasonably large sized -- certainly not single 8 unit, maybe one or two unit plants -- facilities. 9 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yes. Any other questions, 10 comments, while we have this great opportunity? l 11 MR. THOMPSON: I blush at that statement. ! 12 MR. LARKINS: In regards to resources and having 13 more to do than you have the resources to handle. The ACNW 14 recently got a request from the Commission to take on some
) 15 additional tasks, mainly in the low level waste area, 16 depending on how we manage to do that, we will have an 17 impact on the staff. Obviously, we will need to interact 18 with the staff more.
19 MR. THOMPSON: We think we have one person working 20 on low level waste 24 hours a day. If you can get them to 21 work 25 hours a day, John, more power to you. 22 MR. LARKINS: We will have to work with the staff 23 to decide how we respond to the Commission on that. 24 MR. THOMPSON: I understand. Low level waste is 25 one of those areas where I think maybe even the committee's i l
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156 1 sage wisdom earlier of not to go down to zero was kind of a () 2 good guidance and certainly we appreciate that. Obviously, 3 it's still an area that's still in turmoil -- not turmoil. 4 It's still in a flux. We haven't got a new site yet. We 5 will see where that heads. 6 Anyway, I appreciate being here on the 100th 7 meeting. 8 CRAIRMAN GARRICK: We appreciate having you here. 9 Charles, did you have a question? 10 DR. FAIRHURST: No , I was just intrigued with this 11 $5 million fee. Could you say a little bit more about that? 12 What's our cut? 13 MR. THOMPSON: Well, there are two types of fees. 14 You have one that is kind of an annual fee. The other is an (D () 15 inspection fee, for each inspection that is done at a 16 reactor. Everything is kind of like an annual fee, that l 17 takes part of you or part of the annual fee as kind of 18 spread out. There's an art, it's not a science about the l 19 way fees are kind of established. 20 They establish fees for everything we do, except 21 there are certain people that don't pay fees. When we go to 22 an agreement state and do work with an agreement state, 23 there's no fees for that activity. There are no fees for the 24 international activity. Some of those costs, wa are still 25 obligated by Congress to essentially cover 100 percent of ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 1 I 157 l 1 our costs. l j
'~) 2 All of those types of activities are rolled into l 3 what we call an annual fee and that's kind of divided )
4 between reactors and material licensees. With material 5 licensees, it was such a complicated factor at one time, we 6 used to do inspections versus licensing, and that just got 7 to where it was some, you got a big fee because you had to 8 have a renewal license and some, you didn't get an 9 inspection, so they finally were able to construct an l 1 10 approach that just gave an annualized ree for material j 11 licensees, but for let's say the larga fuel cycle i 12 facilities, like the high enriched facilities, Babcock & l 13 Wilcox, and the reactors and the U.S. Enrichment 14 Corporation, they have multi-million dollar annual fees, ! b) (_ 15 plus whatever inspections that are done. 16 If you go like at Millstone right now, we are 17 probably having a significant amount of fees charged to the 1 18 inspection activities at Millstone. l 19 There are about 100 operating reactors and you 20 figure our budget is about $480 million, so it's not quite ; I 21 $5 million. I was using some general figure of merit there. ' 22 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Very good. 23 MR. THOMPSON: On the Hill this year, they have to 24 re-authorize the 100 percent fee or have some other fee 25 offsetting capability. When we looked at it a few years I \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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158 1 ago, we estimated something like $30 million would be a () 2 portion that would be offset from direct fee activities, 3 like the international programs or support to the agreement 4 states. 5 Whether or not the Congress will say, well, maybe 6 you should collect only 95 percent or 92 percent, that l 7 debate is ongoing right now. The Administration has l 8 supported the 100 percent fee process and certainly we 9 understand when they take us off the fee base, they have to 10 take monies -- that $30 million comes out of some other 11 agency because they are limited to the amount of the ceiling 12 or the budget they can approve. 13 It's in competition with DOE or EPA or HHS. I 14 With that, I guess we have moved onto -- '/] (_,/ 15 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I would say we have had a very 16 successful discussion and the committee appreciates it. 17 MR. THOMPSON: I avoided the questions I couldn't I
- 18 answer and answered the questions I could. I think that's 19 about as successful as I can be.
20 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: We will have some new ones on 21 our next list. 22 MR. THOMPSON: I think we will look forward to 23 working with John in a meeting on Friday. He's probably 24 gone to start writing more questions now. 25 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you.
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Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
159 4 1 MR. 1EOMPSON: Thanks. 2 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you very much. 3 All right. Remarkably, we are on schedule. We 4 now are going to move into the part of our meeting, our 5 agenda, that is the real working part, the preparation of 6 ACNW reports, but before we do that, I think we will take 7 about a ten minute break. 8 [Whereupon, a brief recess was held.] 9 [Whereupon, at 2:55 p.m., the public meeting was 10 recessed, to reconvene at 8:30 a.m., Wednesday, April 22, 11 1998.] 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22-23 24 25 i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings () before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: NAME OF PROCEEDING: 100TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) MEETING DOCKET NUMBER: PLACE OF PROCEEDING: Rockville, MD were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings. Y,3Vhcin 3 f (cM cL_ Gretchen Roese Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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