<DOC>
[108 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:87639.wais]
S. Hrg. 108-384
OVERSIGHT OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ACTIVITIES AT THE YUCCA MOUNTAIN SITE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before a
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SPECIAL HEARING
MAY 28, 2003--LAS VEGAS, NV
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
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COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
TED STEVENS, Alaska, Chairman
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky TOM HARKIN, Iowa
CONRAD BURNS, Montana BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama HARRY REID, Nevada
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire HERB KOHL, Wisconsin
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah PATTY MURRAY, Washington
BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
LARRY CRAIG, Idaho DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana
James W. Morhard, Staff Director
Lisa Sutherland, Deputy Staff Director
Terence E. Sauvain, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico, Chairman
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi HARRY REID, Nevada
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina
CONRAD BURNS, Montana PATTY MURRAY, Washington
LARRY CRAIG, Idaho BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
TED STEVENS, Alaska (ex officio)
Professional Staff
Clay Sell
Tammy Perrin
Drew Willison (Minority)
Nancy Olkewicz (Minority)
Administrative Support
Erin McHale
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Opening Statement of Senator Harry Reid.......................... 1
Statement of Senator John Ensign................................. 3
Statement of Robin M. Nazzaro, Director, Natural Resources and
Environment, General Accounting Office......................... 7
Prepared Statement........................................... 8
History of Actions Taken to Correct Quality Assurance Problems... 9
Status of DOE Efforts to Improve Quality Assurance............... 10
Preliminary Observations......................................... 11
Statement of Allison MacFarlane, Senior Research Associate,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.......................... 12
Prepared Statement........................................... 15
Brief Summary of Main Points..................................... 15
Politics and Science at Yucca Mountain........................... 16
Unresolved Technical Issues at Yucca Mountain.................... 17
Reason for Unresolved Issues..................................... 19
Lessons Learned.................................................. 20
Statement of William L. Belke, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(Retired)...................................................... 22
Prepared Statement........................................... 24
Additional Material Submitted Subsequent to Close of Hearing..... 39
Letter From Senator Pete V. Domenici............................. 39
Response From Margaret S.Y. Chu.................................. 39
OVERSIGHT OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ACTIVITIES AT THE YUCCA MOUNTAIN SITE
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development,
Committee on Appropriations,
Las Vegas, NV.
The subcommittee met at 1:12 p.m., in the Commission
Chambers, Clark County Government Building, 500 Grand Central
Parkway, Las Vegas, Nevada, Hon. Harry Reid presiding.
Present: Senator Reid.
Also present: Senator Ensign.
opening statement of senator harry reid
Senator Reid. The United States Senate Appropriations
Committee and the Subcommittee on Energy and Water is called to
order. The committee is meeting under the direction of Senator
Pete Domenici, of New Mexico, and the ranking member, which is
me. Senator Domenici has indicated that, with pleasure, he
invited Senator Ensign, as I have, to participate in this most
important hearing.
I would like to acknowledge the presence of the Attorney
General of the State of Nevada, Brian Sandoval. General, would
you stand, please?
General Sandoval runs the largest law firm in Nevada, about
150 lawyers. We are very glad that he has personally taken the
time to attend this. There has been a seamless transition from
Attorney General Del Papa to Sandoval, working with the
Governor and doing all the legal work that is necessary in this
most important project, the project being the legal efforts to
do what is necessary to make sure all Nevada's interests are
represented in the courts of this country in this Yucca
Mountain Project.
I am also happy to recognize the County Commissioner, Myrna
Williams.
Over the years, we have appreciated very much the support
of the Clark County Commission. We have had good support from
Washoe County and Clark County, the two counties that make up
about 90 percent of the population of the State of Nevada, and
we are grateful for that support that we have gotten.
I, first of all, want to thank the witnesses for appearing
today in Las Vegas. Two of the witnesses had to travel a long
distance to be here, and the third had to leave the golf course
to come here.
I have been working on problems dealing with Yucca Mountain
for more than two decades. Throughout all these years, I have
seen indications of problems with the program, and it seems
that each time, no matter who is in the presidency, Democrat or
Republican, the Department of Energy refuses to acknowledge the
problems and presses forward like a runaway train. Somewhere in
the bowels of the Department of Energy, there are people who
never leave, and they continue their undying efforts to push
this project that is flying.
For two decades, we have heard warnings throughout the
Nation about the dangers of transporting nuclear waste across
the country. Today's hearing is not going to deal simply with
that. And it appears that each time a person raises their
voice, the Department of Energy says the concerns are
unfounded.
When I state that the Department of Energy's own analysis
shows hundreds of thousands of truck shipments that would be
needed to move the waste to Yucca Mountain, DOE simply says,
``We will use rail.'' Well, we all know that we will never be
able to build a rail spur in Nevada and in other parts of the
country. It is too expensive, and it is certainly too risky.
When the General Accounting Office, responding to our
request, warned that the Department of Energy, that their site
recommendation was unfounded and premature, they pressed ahead
anyway. They simply ignored the General Accounting Office's
well-documented investigation.
Like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, the
Department of Energy just assumes ignoring these problems will
make them go away. But it has not, and it will not.
From the scientific standpoint, we have seen clear evidence
that the project will never meet the Department of Energy's own
requirements for groundwater movement through the repository,
among other things. Here, the DOE's response was simple, ``Get
rid of these requirements.''
All of these events make it clear that the DOE is intent on
pushing the project forward regardless of the risk it poses to
the health and safety of Nevadans and the rest of the country.
But all these actions by the DOE were just a drop in the bucket
when compared to what I have seen in the last few months.
Some of you have read the news reports about retaliation
against workers in the quality assurance program who have
raised concerns about the credibility of the scientific and
technical work being done there. As a result, Senator Ensign
and I requested an investigation by the General Accounting
Office into these problems. Several months later, more reports
surfaced about quality assurance auditors finding additional
problems with the quality of the Department of Energy's
management of the program and, most disturbing, the apparent
efforts to silence those witnesses. This represents a
disturbing pattern at the project. Instead of addressing
problems, the DOE seems more intent on investigating auditors
for simply doing their jobs.
So today we hope to hear from a number of witness who have
been involved in these incidents. Unfortunately--and I repeat,
unfortunately--many of these witnesses were unwilling to come
forward. We have two here who wanted to come and could not
come. The DOE instructed a number of these witnesses not to
appear today before the committee. And in a letter from Dr.
Chu, who is running the nuclear waste program, in her letter
she said, ``Well, he is not working at a job now that he would
know anything about that.'' Of course, he was transferred,
because of activities of the Department, from a job that he was
responsible for quality assurance at Yucca Mountain.
But I would say to Dr. Chu, if these witnesses had nothing
to offer, why not let them come forward and prove to the
American people that they had nothing to offer? The DOE has so
little regard for the quality of the work being done at Yucca
Mountain that the DOE would rather silence than support their
own employees. These are not disgruntled employees. These are
people who support the project--I repeat, support the project--
and simply want to make it better. They want the hundreds of
millions, and arriving now at $7 billion, of taxpayers' money
to be spent properly. These are brazen actions by a Federal
agency that is about as annoying and as arrogant as I have ever
experienced in my years of service in the Congress.
To those of you out there who have things to say about
Yucca Mountain, I would hope that you will listen to this
hearing and know what else needs to be said. I will do
everything I can to stop the intimidation at the project so
that your voices may be heard without fear that you and your
families will be made to suffer for simply telling the truth.
I want to thank those of you who were able to testify
today. We appreciate your not backing down in spite of the
pressure that has been placed on you.
This project is out of control. It is a multi-billion-
dollar boondoggle that is draining precious resources from our
economy. At a time when the Federal Government is running
record deficits and passing huge tax cuts, we need to stop
wasting money on a project that will never succeed. Most
important, we need to stop supporting a project that seeks to
intimidate its own employees for telling the truth. These
actions appear to be the desperate last efforts of a program
that is failing under the weight of its own mismanagement and
ineptitude.
So I hope today we can gain enough information to convince
our colleagues in the United States Senate that the time has
come to put an end to the fear and retaliation and put an end
to the project.
Senator Ensign.
statement of senator john ensign
Senator Ensign. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You are probably
not used to being called Mr. Chairman, being in the minority
now.
So I will give you the honor today, and thanks for----
Senator Reid. But I have fond memories of being in the
majority.
Senator Ensign. No, and I appreciate that, but I hope you
stay in the minority.
It is great to be here with you, and I want to extend my
thanks to Senator Domenici for allowing us to have this hearing
out here and to you for calling this hearing.
I also want to welcome our witnesses. I am disappointed
that we do not have all of the witnesses that we had hoped to
have at this hearing today. There are real concerns that the
Department of Energy's fierce commitment to its schedule for
submitting its application for an operating license to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission by 2004 and storing the Nation's
nuclear waste in our backyard by 2010 has allowed an
unrealistic time line to take precedence over quality control.
As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission management leader,
John Greeves, noted, ``quality is not being built into the
project. The bottom line is that behavior and safety needs
change. Right now, the schedule pressures are overrunning the
quality''.
Clearly, that is not acceptable. However, it is going to
keep on happening unless we blow the whistle on the failures of
the quality assurance program and the Department of Energy's
efforts to silence the program's critics.
Our Nation and our State cannot allow the DOE to cut
corners on the very program which has been set up to verify
that all scientific data and engineering designs submitted to
support a license for Yucca Mountain are accurate and reliable.
Senator Reid and I, as he mentioned, have asked the General
Accounting Office to look into the problems DOE's quality
assurance program is experiencing. We asked the GAO to answer
three main questions. One, has the quality assurance program
been effective in identifying and correcting quality
deficiencies? Two, have the deficiencies affected the progress
of the project? And, three, what efforts has DOE taken to
strengthen the program's effectiveness. Hopefully, the GAO can
shed some light on these matters today.
In addition, I am concerned that responsible workers who
uncover problems with Yucca Mountain procedures are being
retaliated against by DOE and its contractors. Just look at the
recent case, where three out of the four members of a Yucca
Mountain quality assurance review team, Don Harris, Lester
Wagner, and George Harper, contractors for Navarro Research and
Engineering, were reassigned after their audit resulted in a
stop-work order. Unfortunately, this is an all-too-familiar
story. It is reminiscent of the firing of Jim Matamo, another
Navarro Yucca Mountain quality assurance reviewer. Of course,
later the Labor Department determined he had been unfairly
terminated. And let us not forget the case of Bob Clark, former
director of the DOE Office of Quality Assurance, who was
transferred after raising concerns about possible wrongdoing at
the Yucca Project.
The two whistleblowers we invited to appear today, Bob
Clark and Don Harris, declined to attend. I, personally, chalk
that up to the fear of the DOE's and its contractors' culture
of retaliation that these individuals have personally
experienced.
I certainly believe that this hearing is an important
endeavor, and I want to thank Senator Reid for holding it and
for the witnesses for coming here to enlighten us. The
importance of a rigorous quality assurance program should not
be underestimated. If quality assurance is not in place, the
NRC could and should reject the license applications on those
grounds.
I thank you, Senator Reid, and look forward to hearing from
our witnesses.
Senator Reid. Senator, one of the things I forgot to
mention to you is I had to get permission from my son to have
this meeting here today.
Senator Ensign. Have you noticed also that the chairs in
their hearing chambers are a lot nicer than the Senate's?
I think they have a lot more money than we do.
Senator Reid. Yeah, I think that is probably true. I think
the Attorney General should investigate that.
We have here a couple of vacant chairs, and it is difficult
for me to understand how the Department of Energy could allow
anything like this to happen. These are people who wanted to
come and testify. They are afraid. And we will talk, just very
briefly, about what these people would have said had they been
able to be here. Now, keep in mind they wanted to come. And for
various reasons, they did not come. The most important reason
they did not come, they were afraid they would lose their jobs.
Robert Clark is someone who would provide a lot of
information. He has talked to other people. The DOE sent a
letter, as I indicated, saying that he had nothing to talk
about because he no longer worked in the quality assurance
program. This is outrageous, for lack of a better word to
describe the activities of the Department of Energy. Mr. Clark
no longer works in the quality assurance program because the
DOE moved him to a new position. According to press accounts,
Mr. Clark was told at the time, quote, to take one for the
team.
I can imagine, after being told that, after hearing about
the letter the DOE sent me, he would really be reluctant to
come forward to testify. The DOE should be afraid of what he
has to say.
But remember, this is an agency of the Federal Government.
It is not an independent entity set up to freelance on anything
they feel is important. Mr. Clark was a director of quality
assurance for the Yucca Mountain Project for 4 years. He is a
nationally recognized expert in quality assurance. As a leader
of the quality assurance program, he told the DOE to shape
their quality assurance program up. He would have forced the
DOE to make too many commitments, I guess, to the NRC, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, commitments that would slow down
the project; therefore, they just moved him. They cannot allow
anything to slow up this project, so they just simply, I
repeat, moved him.
Since they moved him from quality assurance, not a single
one of the problems that he flagged has been fixed, more
problems have been created, more people have been harassed and
intimidated, fewer people feel comfortable raising safety
concerns. So it is no wonder DOE does not want to justify why
they moved him.
I am disappointed that we could not hear Mr. Clark today.
He would have shed a spotlight on the recurring quality
assurance problems at Yucca Mountain. But most importantly, I
am disappointed that we could not hear from Mr. Clark today,
because what this says about Department of Energy concern for
honesty, integrity, and fairness speaks in volumes.
In testifying, Mr. Clark would have testified about the
quality of DOE's Yucca Mountain work. In not appearing, Mr.
Clark's absence speaks volumes about an agency that is
committed to pushing this project regardless of who gets fired
or intimidated or how taxpayer dollars are wasted.
This project is no longer about quality assurance. It is
about good, ethical, and safe Government that protects, above
all, the people who work for it and the people who it
represents, the taxpayers of America.
Senator Ensign, would you tell us a little bit about the
other vacant witness?
Senator Ensign. Yes. Donald Harris was another person that
we wanted to hear from today. Unfortunately it appears his
employer and the Department of Energy also would prefer him not
to speak. Based on several recent news reports, it appears that
he would have had a lot to offer to this hearing.
Donald Harris was reported to have been a member of an
audit team that uncovered problems with the quality assurance
program at Yucca Mountain. Based on his work, the Department of
Energy issued a stop-work order, a rare occurrence, even at the
Yucca Mountain Project. After completing the audit, we know
that he was temporarily reassigned and taken off the audit
teams. It seems that this is testimony that would be extremely
relevant today, since we are not only trying to figure out what
is going on with quality assurance, but also what is going on
with the treatment of workers.
Donald and all the other auditors on his team were simply
doing their jobs, and they were doing them well. Their job is
precisely to find problems with quality assurance, raise them,
and then have them corrected. Unfortunately, Donald's case
seems to be one more example of the DOE spending more time
trying to find out who raises concerns than actually trying to
fix the problems raised in those concerns. Donald is one of
many experienced auditors working on this project.
I am extremely disappointed he is not here today. The
people of Nevada, the Department of Energy, and the Nation have
missed a real opportunity to understand the problems with Yucca
Mountain.
Mr. Chairman, I think that it cannot be emphasized enough
that these are two witnesses who very much support the Yucca
Mountain Project, and that is why their testimony would have
been so valuable today, because no one could question their
motives. So it is very disappointing that they were not able to
testify today.
Thank you.
Senator Reid. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have
testimony from three witnesses at this time. Following the
statements of the three witnesses, which will take about 10
minutes each, Senator Ensign and I will begin asking questions
of the witnesses.
The first witness we are going to hear from today is from
the General Accounting Office. A little background of the
General Accounting Office, the General Accounting Office is the
watchdog of Congress. It is an agency that is set up on a
bipartisan basis, nonpartisan basis, to do investigations of
what is going on in this country, whether it is something in
the Defense Department, whether it is something in the Bureau
of Land Management, or, as we are looking here, something
within the Department of Energy. They are known worldwide for
their astuteness and their approach to finding, without any
political bias, a problem. And I have worked with them all
these years and been terribly impressed.
Today, we are going to hear initially from Robin Nazzaro,
who is the director of the Natural Resources Environmental Team
at the United States General Accounting Office. She is
currently the director, as I have indicated. She, for the past
10 years, has been responsible for overseeing GAO's work
assessing the results of the Federal Government's investment in
Federal science and technology programs. She has been with the
General Accounting Office since 1979. She has served as an
assistant to the deputy director for planning and reporting.
She has served as the division focal point for strategic
planning and human resources. She has been educated at the
University of Wisconsin. Among other honors from the General
Accounting Office, she received the Controller General's
meritorious service award for sustained leadership. She has
received two Assistant Controller General's awards for
exceptional contributions in strategic planning. So we are very
fortunate to have her here today to give us the information
that she has regarding Yucca Mountain.
Ms. Nazzaro.
STATEMENT OF ROBIN M. NAZZARO, DIRECTOR, NATURAL
RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, GENERAL
ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. Nazzaro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be
here today to discuss the Department of Energy's quality
assurance program for the Yucca Mountain Repository Project.
As you know, Yucca Mountain is intended to serve as the
Nation's permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. DOE
is currently in the process----
Senator Reid. Can everyone hear? No. So----
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. DOE is currently in the process
of preparing an application to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission for authorization to construct the repository, which
it expects to submit by December 2004. To ensure that DOE can
safely design, construct, and operate the repository, NRC
requires DOE to have a quality assurance program in place. This
program is designed to include procedures to assure NRC that
the information submitted is verifiable and well-documented.
Audits and management reviews are also built into the program
to monitor whether workers follow these procedures. In cases
where the procedures have not been followed, DOE must develop
and implement corrective actions and monitor their
effectiveness.
In this context, you asked GAO to investigate the
effectiveness of DOE's efforts to improve its quality assurance
program. Although we are still in the early stages of our work,
I am prepared today to provide the history of DOE's actions to
correct quality assurance problems, the status of DOE's efforts
to improve its quality assurance program, and our preliminary
observations on the effect of the quality assurance problems on
DOE's ability to successfully meet its 2004 milestone for
submitting its application to NRC.
In summary, DOE's track record for correcting problems with
its quality assurance program is less than favorable. Dating
back to the late 1980's, NRC identified many concerns at Yucca
Mountain. DOE was put on notice of these shortcomings, but the
problems continued. As a result, NRC reported that it had no
confidence that DOE's management plan for resolving quality
assurance issues related to the design activities would work.
In the late 1990's, DOE's own audits at Yucca Mountain
identified quality assurance problems in three areas: data
sources, verification of scientific models, and software
development. In response to the issues raised in the audits,
DOE issued a management plan in 1999 that prescribed remedies.
However, model verification and software-development problems
resurfaced again in 2001.
In July of 2002, DOE provided NRC with a revised plan to
correct its quality assurance problems at Yucca Mountain,
including the problems with scientific models and software
codes. Because DOE is still in the process of implementing this
plan, it is too early to determine whether these changes will
be effective. However, notwithstanding these changes, in April
2003 DOE again found data-related problems similar to the data-
verification problems identified back in 1998.
Whether DOE can correct its quality assurance problems in
time to meet its 2004 milestone for submitting an application
that NRC will accept is unclear. DOE's unsuccessful efforts to
address recurring quality assurance problems, the
identification of new problems since the issuance of this 2002
management-improvement plan, and NRC's recent comment that
DOE's quality assurance program has yet to produce the outcomes
necessary to ensure that this program meets NRC's requirements,
do not instill much confidence that the quality assurance
problems will soon be resolved. These problems could impede the
licencing process, leading to time-consuming and expensive
delays as the weaknesses are corrected, or ultimately prevent
authorization to construct the repository. Moreover, continued
reliance on data that are unreliable or inaccurate could lead
to adverse health, safety, and environmental effects in the
course of the 10,000-year licensing period.
However, now that the project has shifted from scientific
investigation to preparing the application, DOE may now have
the motivation and focus to correct recurring quality assurance
problems given the integral role that quality assurance plays
in the application process.
prepared statement
As we continue our investigation for you, we will further
validate our observation and assess the effectiveness of DOE's
efforts to improve its quality assurance program.
Thank you. That concludes my testimony. I would be pleased
to respond to any questions you may have.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Robin M. Nazzaro
Senators Ensign and Reid, we are pleased to be here today to
discuss the Department of Energy's (DOE) quality assurance program for
the Yucca Mountain repository project. As you know, Yucca Mountain is
intended to serve as the Nation's permanent repository for high-level
nuclear waste. DOE is currently in the process of preparing an
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for
authorization to construct the repository, which it expects to submit
by December 2004. To ensure that DOE can safely construct and operate
the repository, NRC requires DOE to have a quality assurance program.
The quality assurance program is designed to include procedures to
assure NRC that the information submitted to it is verifiable and well
documented. Audits and management reviews are also built into the
program to monitor whether workers follow these procedures. In cases
where they are not followed, DOE must develop and implement corrective
actions and monitor their effectiveness. An ineffective quality
assurance program could potentially impede the application process and
could precipitate potentially adverse health, safety, and environmental
effects.
In this context, you asked us to investigate the effectiveness of
DOE's efforts to improve its quality assurance program. Although we are
still in the early stages of our investigation, we are prepared today
to provide: (1) the history of DOE's actions to correct quality
assurance problems, (2) the status of DOE's efforts to improve the
quality assurance program, and (3) preliminary observations on the
effect of quality assurance problems on DOE's ability to successfully
meet its 2004 milestone for submitting an application to NRC requesting
authorization to construct the repository.
In summary:
--DOE's track record of correcting problems with its quality
assurance program is less than favorable. Recurring problems
have persisted in the program despite DOE's numerous attempts
to correct them. DOE evaluations and NRC oversight activities
have concluded that the program still falls short of
expectations.
--DOE's 2002 quality assurance improvement plan represents the
department's most recent attempt to correct quality assurance
problems, including those involving scientific models and
software codes that DOE will use to demonstrate the safety of
the repository. Because DOE is still in the process of
implementing this plan, it is too early to determine whether
changes included in the plan will be effective. However,
notwithstanding these changes, DOE has recently identified
further quality assurance problems, including recurring
problems with the data that will be used to support the NRC's
decision on whether to authorize DOE to construct the
repository.
--Based on previously identified weaknesses and recent indications of
new problems, we are concerned that DOE's current efforts to
improve its quality assurance program may not yield the results
it hopes for. Our observation is further supported by NRC's
recent comment that DOE's quality assurance program has yet to
produce outcomes necessary to ensure that this program meets
NRC requirements.
background
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was enacted to establish a
comprehensive policy and program for the safe, permanent disposal of
commercial spent fuel and other high-level radioactive wastes. DOE was
directed in the act to, among other things, investigate potential sites
for locating a repository. Amendments to the Act in 1987 directed DOE
to consider only Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as a potential site for a
repository. In 2002, the Congress approved the President's
recommendation of Yucca Mountain as a suitable site for the development
of a permanent high-level waste repository. The next step in the
process is for DOE to submit an application to NRC for an authorization
to construct the repository.
In order to ensure that the information submitted to NRC is
verifiable and well documented, NRC requires nuclear facilities to
develop a quality assurance program that includes a process to identify
problems, develop corrective actions, and monitor the effectiveness of
these actions. Among other things, such a quality assurance program is
required to: (1) train personnel in quality assurance; (2) inspect
activities that affect quality; (3) establish controls over testing
programs and test equipment, such as ensuring that this equipment is
properly calibrated; (4) establish and maintain records, including
records documenting the qualifications of personnel performing
repository work; and (5) verify compliance with the rules and
procedures of the quality assurance program to determine the
effectiveness of the program.
In carrying out its responsibility for the Yucca Mountain
repository to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA)
standards for protecting public health and safety, as well as its
standards, NRC provides consultation and advice to DOE in the project's
pre-application period. NRC officials are located onsite at the Yucca
Mountain project office where they conduct daily oversight of project
activities, including observing and commenting on DOE's quality
assurance audits and preparing bi-monthly reports on the overall status
of the program. Additionally, DOE and NRC hold quarterly quality
assurance meetings and conduct exchanges between staff on technical
issues.
history of actions taken to correct quality assurance problems
DOE's quality assurance problems at the Yucca Mountain repository
site date back to the late 1980's. In a 1988 report, we identified
significant problems with the quality assurance program, noting that it
failed to meet NRC standards.\1\ We found that NRC had identified many
specific concerns from the oversight activities it had performed at
Yucca Mountain. For example, NRC noted that DOE's heavy reliance on
contractors and its inadequate oversight of quality assurance
activities would increase the likelihood that DOE might encounter
quality-related problems. Furthermore, NRC said that the likelihood
that the State of Nevada and others would contest the licensing
proceedings increased the probability that DOE would have to defend its
quality assurance program and the quality of the work performed. NRC
noted that DOE's inability to properly defend its work could result in
additional expense and time-consuming delays as program weaknesses are
corrected. NRC also found that DOE staff and contractors exhibited
negative attitudes toward the function of quality assurance, noting
that participants appeared to lack a full appreciation for what it took
to get a facility licensed by NRC.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ U.S. General Accounting Office, ``Nuclear Waste: Repository
Work Should Not Proceed Until Quality Assurance Is Adequate,'' GAO/
RCED-88-159 (Washington, DC: Sept. 29, 1988).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOE was put on notice of these shortcomings, but the problems
continued. In its 1989 evaluation of DOE's Site Characterization Plan,
NRC concluded that DOE and its key contractors had yet to develop and
implement an acceptable quality assurance program. In March 1992, based
on progress DOE had made in improving its quality assurance program,
NRC allowed DOE to proceed with its site characterization work, noting
that DOE had demonstrated its ability to evaluate and correct quality
assurance program deficiencies. A year and a half later, however, NRC
raised concerns with DOE about the acceptability of facility design
activities requiring quality assurance. NRC reported that it had no
confidence that DOE's management plan for resolving quality assurance
issues related to the design activities would work because of DOE's and
the site contractors' inability to effectively implement corrective
actions in the past.
DOE renewed its efforts to correct problems with its quality
assurance program starting in the late 1990's when its own audits at
Yucca Mountain identified quality assurance problems in three areas:
data sources, validation of scientific models, and software
development. First, DOE could not ensure that all the data needed to
support the scientific models could be tracked back to original sources
or that the data had been properly collected. Second, DOE had no
standardized process to develop the scientific models needed to
simulate geological events. Finally, DOE had no process for ensuring
that the software being developed to support the models would work. In
response to the issues raised in the audits, DOE issued a management
plan in 1999 that prescribed remedies. Following implementation of this
plan, DOE considered the issues resolved.
Model validation and software development problems, however,
resurfaced in 2001. New quality assurance audits found that project
personnel had not followed the required procedures for model
development and validation or established a timeline for completing the
models. In addition, these audits identified that project personnel had
not followed the software development process, prompting a prohibition
on further software development without prior management approval.
According to DOE, the significance of these new observations was
compounded by their similarity to those problems previously identified.
status of doe efforts to improve quality assurance
In July 2002, DOE provided NRC with a revised plan to correct its
quality assurance problems at Yucca Mountain, including the problems
with scientific models and software codes. In constructing the plan,
DOE conducted an in-depth study of Yucca Mountain's management and work
environment. The plan outlined five key areas needing improvement.
Specifically, it noted the need for:
--clarifying roles, responsibilities, accountability, and authority
for DOE and contractor personnel,
--improving quality assurance processes and clarifying line
management's quality responsibilities,
--improving DOE and contractor written procedures,
--implementing more effective and consistent corrective action plans
to preclude recurring quality problems, and
--improving the work environment where employees can raise program
concerns without fear of reprisal.
To fully address issues raised in the plan, DOE identified a total
of 72 actions needed to correct the quality assurance program--35 to
address the five key areas, 12 to address model development issues, and
25 to address software development issues. DOE recently reported that
it had completed 41 of the 72 actions. The management plan also
included performance measures to assess the effectiveness of the
actions. DOE recently reported, however, that the Yucca Mountain
project still lacks complete and useful performance measures and stated
its intention to have the appropriate performance measures in place by
September 2003.
Since DOE began to implement its latest improvement plan, new
quality issues have emerged. In March 2003, DOE issued a ``stop-work''
order preventing further use of a procedure intended to help improve
DOE and contractor quality assurance procedures. According to DOE, they
cancelled the use of the procedure and reverted back to the existing
procedure. In April 2003, DOE again found data-related problems similar
to the data verification problems identified in 1998. For example, DOE
found that, instead of verifying data back to appropriate sources,
project scientists had been directed to reclassify the unverified data
as ``assumptions'' which do not require verification.
At the April 2003 quality assurance meeting with NRC, DOE
highlighted several recent improvements to the quality assurance
program. These improvements included: (1) management changes with DOE's
primary contractor at the site, including a new president and a new
director of quality assurance, (2) increased line management
involvement in quality assurance, and (3) the integration of quality
engineers with DOE line employees. Despite this reported progress, an
NRC official at the same meeting commented that the quality assurance
program had still not produced the outcomes necessary to ensure the
program is compliant with NRC requirements.
preliminary observations
Whether DOE can correct its quality assurance problems in time to
meet its milestone for submitting an application that is acceptable to
NRC is not clear. DOE's unsuccessful efforts to address recurring
quality assurance problems, the identification of new problems since
the issuance of its 2002 improvement plan, and NRC's recent comment
that DOE's quality assurance program has yet to produce outcomes
necessary to ensure that this program meets NRC requirements do not
instill much confidence that the quality assurance problems will soon
be resolved. An ineffective quality assurance program could impede the
application process, leading to time-consuming and expensive delays as
weaknesses are corrected, or ultimately prevent DOE from receiving
authorization to construct a repository. Moreover, continued reliance
on data that are unverifiable and thus could be inaccurate could lead
to adverse effects in the course of the 10,000-year period required by
EPA's health and safety standards. At the same time, now that the
project has shifted from scientific investigation to preparing an
application, DOE may now have the proper motivation and focus to
correct recurring quality assurance problems given the integral role
that quality assurance plays in the application process.
As we continue our investigation, we will work to validate our
observations and further assess the effectiveness of DOE's efforts to
improve its quality assurance program.
Thank you, Senators Reid and Ensign. That concludes my testimony. I
would be pleased to respond to any questions that you may have.
Senator Reid. We are now going to hear from Dr. Allison
MacFarlane, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. MacFarlane is currently a senior research associate at
MIT's security studies program. For the past 2 years, she has
been a Social Science Research Council MacArthur Foundation
fellow in International Peace and Security at the Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. She received
her Ph.D. from MIT in 1992. She has traveled around our country
considerably. She has been a professor of geology at George
Mason University. She has been a scholar at Radcliffe College
and Kennedy School Fellowship at Harvard. From 1997 through
1998, she was a science fellow at Stanford. And for the past 2
years, she has been serving on a National Academy of Science
panel on spent-fuel standard and excess weapons-plutonium
disposition. Her research focuses on the issues surrounding the
management and disposal of high-level nuclear waste and fissile
materials. We could not have anyone better qualified to testify
at this hearing today than Dr. MacFarlane.
Dr. MacFarlane.
STATEMENT OF ALLISON MACFARLANE, SENIOR RESEARCH
ASSOCIATE, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY
Dr. MacFarlane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Ensign,
ladies and gentlemen.
Senator Reid. Turn your mike back on.
Dr. MacFarlane. Aha, okay. Let me begin again. Technology
defeats me, even though I am at MIT.
Mr. Chairman, Senator Ensign, ladies and gentlemen, I
appreciate the opportunity to address the important issue of
quality assurance in the siting and development of a nuclear-
waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
To understand quality assurance and the quality of science
at Yucca Mountain, one must first understand what type of
science is being produced there. I will discuss that, and then
I will go on to discuss a selection of what I consider to be
the significant, unresolved scientific issues that bear on the
safety of the Yucca Mountain site as a nuclear-waste
repository. I will conclude with some suggestions for improving
the quality of the science.
The science done in support of siting a repository at Yucca
Mountain has clearly been influenced by politics. The science
produced by Department of Energy scientists or their
contractors is requested by and evaluated by managers at DOE
who must fulfill legal and regulatory obligations under the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Nuclear Regulatory Commission and
the Environmental Protection Agency rules. In this way, not
only are the managers at DOE seeking particular knowledge, but
the scientists themselves are required to gather data in a way
that fulfills DOE's political obligations.
The products of scientific inquiry at Yucca Mountain are,
for the most part, published as DOE reports without individual
authors, and rarely does this data find its way into peer-
reviewed publications. This is not to say that there is no peer
review at DOE, but it is an internal matter; and, thus, the
agency is in danger of appearing to review itself, which brings
into question the quality of their research. Peer review works
best when scientists outside a community review the research.
DOE's science would appear less politicized overall if it were
shown to pass muster with the larger scientific community.
Let me illustrate the influence of politics on Yucca
Mountain science with a brief example. I argue that DOE has
stressed some of the features of Yucca Mountain--in particular,
its deep water table and aridity--as positive, without
adequately exploring the negative aspects of these features.
DOE basically has a dry-is-good policy for Yucca Mountain,
but Yucca Mountain is not really dry. A cubic meter of rock, on
average, there contains 100 liters of water. And it turns out
that the United States is the only country pursuing a policy of
developing a repository above the water table. All other
countries are looking to store their waste below the water
table, which, in fact, is better for spent fuel. Spent fuel in
the presence of air and moisture, the conditions that will be
expected at Yucca Mountain, oxidizes or rusts like iron. But
due to their focus on the dry-is-good policy, the DOE has not
fully explored many of the important technical issues
associated with spent-fuel degradation in an oxidizing
environment.
Spent-fuel degradation is just one of the scientific issues
that remains unresolved but could affect the safety of a
nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Let me discuss a
few others that I consider significant for repository
performance.
First, DOE has underestimated, I would say, the future
infiltration of water into the mountain from precipitation,
because they have not adequately accounted for the effects on
the climate of Southern Nevada from the extreme carbon-dioxide
levels that the planet will likely experience in only a 100
years.
Second, DOE continues internal debates about the quality of
chlorine-36 data and its impact on transport of water above the
water table, while ignoring other significant unsaturated-zone
issues. The hydrologic community, in general, accepts the
chlorine-36 data and the current conceptual models of water
transport in the unsaturated zone, but DOE is in the process of
redoing the study and has done a poor job in doing so.
Remaining open are questions of how fracture flow occurs in
Yucca Mountain rock and which fractures are the ones that would
actually flow.
Third, DOE is relying heavily on the performance of Alloy-
22, a chromium-nickel molybdenum alloy, to provide at least
10,000 years of corrosion resistance for the waste packages.
This reliance stems from 2 years' worth of corrosion studies in
the laboratory. There are no natural analogs, no long-term
studies, and little understanding about the very complex and
poorly understood conditions that will evolve over time around
the waste package. These conditions depend on interactions
among the canister, the rock, the drip shield, other tunnel
equipment, groundwater, heat, and radioactivity.
Fourth, in the past DOE assumed that radio nuclides like
plutonium would move far from the repository because they are
not soluble in water. But it turns out that plutonium can
adhere to tiny particulate material called colloids and be
transported long distances. We know this from evidence
collected at the nearby Nevada test site. But very little work
has been done at Yucca Mountain so we do not yet know what will
form colloids in the repository--for instance, the waste, the
rock, the microbes--how far they can travel, and how much
material, like plutonium, would be available for transport.
Fifth, we know very little about how radio nuclides would
be transported in the saturated zone below the water table,
simply because we know very little about the saturated zone
itself. This stems from the fact that there are not many test
wells north of Route 95 and only one multi-well test location.
Sixth, and finally, the potential volcanism at Yucca
Mountain remains a contentious issue, with the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission arguing that there exists an order-of-
magnitude-higher probability for volcanism at the repository
than the Department of Energy.
Why do these issues remain, and why are there problems with
the quality of science at Yucca Mountain? One explanation is,
as I said earlier, that DOE has focused on some issues to the
exclusion of others. Furthermore, the results of their
performance assessment show that the performance of the
repository depends largely on the waste package and, therefore,
does not encourage further exploration of the concerns of
geology and geohydrology.
Another explanation lies in the quality assurance program
itself. In some cases, the quality assurance program is a
barrier to who can do science and what science can be used in
the assessment of Yucca Mountain. One rule of the quality
assurance program prevents DOE scientists from using data
already published in the literature as primary data. Published
data can only be used to corroborate DOE's own findings. Thus,
even if work has already been peer reviewed by the scientific
community, DOE requires that it collect its own version of the
data for input into modeling studies. Furthermore, the process
of actually using already-published data turns out to be an
onerous task that few DOE scientists attempt. Thus, they are
forced to repeat work already done.
Furthermore, the quality assurance program requires that
laboratories that produce data to be used in the Yucca Mountain
assessment be qualified by the Department of Energy before they
are allowed to produce usable data. This is a costly and
onerous task and limits the number of labs that can do
analysis.
What can we do to address these issues? First, in terms of
the quality assurance program, DOE should allow the free and
easy use of peer-review data gathered by academic researchers.
It should allow the use of laboratories that do not have the
imprimatur of DOE's quality assurance program as long as they
are respected within the academic community. It should continue
to encourage DOE scientists to publish their work in
academically peer-reviewed journals and, in fact, make it
easier for them to do so by reducing the number of internal
reviews required of the work. DOE scientists have begun to do
this more over the last few years, and it is essential that
they continue to do so to demonstrate the quality of the
research.
DOE could improve the quality of science produced for its
nuclear waste program by offering competitive grants to
academic researchers to complete scientific analysis essential
to the understanding of Yucca Mountain. In doing so, they must
not control the interpretation of data. The Office of Civilian
Radioactive Waste Management recently enacted a funding program
aimed at supporting academic research on these issues.
It should be viewed as a start of a larger process. And DOE
should allow an external panel of scientists selected in as
apolitical fashion as possible--for example, by a group of
members of the National Academy of Sciences or ranking members
of national scientific organizations--to produce an independent
review of the science done and to allow a mechanism for
feedback within DOE.
PREPARED STATEMENT
Finally, DOE might benefit by comparing the expected
performance of different existing waste repositories, such as
the WIPP site in New Mexico and the sites selected by Finland
and Sweden, to Yucca Mountain, instead of simply relying on
their performance-assessment modeling to evaluate the Yucca
Mountain site.
Thank you.
[The information follows:]
Prepared Statement of Allison MacFarlane
Mr. Chairman, distinguished senators, ladies and gentlemen, I
appreciate the opportunity to address the important issue of quality
assurance in the siting and development of a nuclear waste repository
at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
I am a Senior Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Security Studies Program. I hold a Ph.D. (1992) in geology
from the Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Department at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I have been studying and writing
about both the technical and policy issues associated with nuclear
waste disposal at Yucca Mountain since 1996, and am currently co-
director of the Yucca Mountain Project at MIT, an independent technical
review of the science done in support of a repository at Yucca
Mountain.
I have been asked to address issues of quality assurance at Yucca
Mountain, issues of the quality of science done to characterize the
site, and the long-term feasibility of the project. To understand
quality assurance and the quality of the science at Yucca Mountain, one
must first understand what type of science is being produced there.
Then I will discuss a selection of what I consider to be the
significant unresolved scientific issues that bear on the safety of the
Yucca Mountain site as a nuclear waste repository. I will conclude with
some suggestions for improving the quality of the science and the
implications for the long-term feasibility of the project.
brief summary of main points
To understand the quality of science done that supports the siting
of a repository at Yucca Mountain, it is important to evaluate both the
qualitative and quantitative aspects of the science. First, the science
done at Yucca Mountain is produced by scientists mindful of the
political goals of the agencies they work for, and the work they
produce is evaluated by managers trying to meet those goals.
Furthermore, Yucca Mountain science has been largely published in gray
literature, which limits scientific debate. Politics has even
influenced the kind of questions asked in the technical analysis of
Yucca Mountain. For instance, because the repository is to be located
above the water in an arid region, it is considered ``dry.'' The
Department of Energy (DOE) and others have promoted the dryness as an
advantage, though one can easily make a scientific argument that the
opposite is true. More importantly, this focus on the positive aspects
of a dry repository has caused DOE to overlook technical issues such as
spent fuel oxidation, and they have left this issue largely unresolved.
In evaluating the scientific analysis done to support the Yucca
Mountain site, it became clear that there are actually a number of
unresolved technical issues that may affect the performance and
therefore safety of the repository. These are issues of:
--surface infiltration rates based on climate change models,
--transport of water above the water table and the continuing debate
over the meaning of chlorine-36 data,
--the durability of Alloy-22, which forms the basis for the
resilience of the waste canister,
--colloidal-facilitated transport of radioactive materials like
plutonium,
--transport of water and radionuclides in the unsaturated zone, and
--the potential effects of volcanism on the repository.
The reasons that these issues remain unresolved are multiple, and
include those policies within DOE that lead to blind spots, such as the
emphasis on ``dry is good.'' The results of the total system
performance assessment, used to evaluate the repository, de-emphasize
geologic barriers and the need to understand them better. Finally, the
Quality Assurance program itself limits both the data that DOE can use
in its site evaluation and the people and laboratories qualified to
collect such data.
In summary, I suggest that the quality of science can be improved
by:
--adjusting the Quality Assurance program to allow the use of
published data and laboratories that do not have DOE's
approval,
--requiring DOE scientists to publish their work in peer-reviewed
journals,
--providing competitive grants to academic scientists to address the
unresolved scientific issues,
--allowing for completely independent scientific review of the work
done by DOE in support of the Yucca Mountain site, and
--ensuring that performance assessment is not the only tool used to
evaluate Yucca Mountain, but that a comparison of different
waste sites (in the United States and in other countries) be
completed.
politics and science at yucca mountain
To understand the quality of science being produced to support the
Yucca Mountain site, we must first understand the type of science being
done. At Yucca Mountain, scientific knowledge addresses the policy
question of whether the site is suitable for waste disposal. The
knowledge itself is being used to predict the behavior of the
repository over geologic time through complex computer modeling to
determine whether members of the public could be at risk over that
time. Most important for this hearing, the science produced at Yucca
Mountain is being evaluated equally by scientific peers within the DOE
and their managers, who are required to meet goals set by their agency.
It is the last point where politics appears to play a direct role
in the knowledge produced. The scientists producing the knowledge to be
used in nuclear waste policy must satisfy their managers at the DOE.
And these managers, in turn, must fulfill legal and regulatory
obligations under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules. In
this way, not only are the managers at DOE and its contractors seeking
particular knowledge--politicized knowledge, if you will--but the
scientists themselves are required to address questions, gather and
interpret data in a way that fulfills DOE's political obligations.
The quality of science produced in the U.S. nuclear waste policy
process can be difficult for scientists and others outside of the
process to evaluate. Much of the scientific research produced at Yucca
Mountain is published in the form of ``gray'' literature. Many of the
DOE reports are unsigned--``authored'' instead by the institution, not
an individual. Such authorship obscures accountability and decreases
scientific debate. In contrast, debate is often encouraged by
scientific journals, which publish reviews of papers that take issue
with the results or interpretations of data presented in previously
published work. The scientists themselves carry out public debates in
journals. In the case of the science produced at Yucca Mountain, the
scientists who produced the knowledge are only rarely accountable to
the larger scientific community. Furthermore, the results of this
research are not widely distributed because of the difficulty of
obtaining the reports. As DOE scientists themselves remarked in a 2001
National Academy of Sciences Report,
``It is important to note that the history of the characterization
of Yucca Mountain cannot be accurately reconstructed solely on the
basis of citable literature. To fully understand this history requires
reference to unpublished draft reports, memoranda, and rough notes.''
What constitutes peer review in the case of scientific knowledge
produced for Yucca Mountain? All DOE contractors require that completed
scientific research go through an in-house review that not only
considers the quality of science done, but also the implications of
making certain findings public. In this way, scientists are responsible
to managers who may or may not be scientists themselves, but who have
clear political agendas to meet the goals and requirements of the DOE,
NRC, and EPA. Some peer review comes in the form of public hearings,
though the impact of the feedback from public hearings and public
comment is negligible. These public comment exercises appear to be more
like ``rituals'' than serious venues to receive, process, and
incorporate input from the public. Finally, some peer review comes from
entities such as the National Academy of Science (when asked) and the
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, whose influence depends on the
members of the board and, since they are appointed by the President, is
politicized. Peer review works best when scientists outside a community
perform the review--as is done with work published in peer-reviewed
journals. DOE's internal review process appears to be a community
reviewing itself, and thus calls into question the quality of the work.
Now that we know that politics does indeed play a role in the
science produced to uphold the Yucca Mountain site, we can ask the
question, has politics limited some of the science done and the
questions asked about the site? I would argue that the answer is yes. I
will provide one example of such a bias.
The main technical reason DOE provides for regarding Yucca Mountain
as particularly appropriate for nuclear waste disposal is the low water
table, the thick unsaturated zone above the water table, and the arid
location. The plan is to store waste above the water table in a dry
region--a region where, it is hoped, conditions will remain dry due to
the arid environment. Actually, this was not always the case.
Initially, DOE considered using the saturated zone, below the water
table, for waste disposal at Yucca Mountain but changed its mind, in
part due to the discovery of the existence of rapid water transport in
the saturated zone. The key to nuclear waste disposal in the United
States has become disposal of waste in a setting that minimizes contact
with water. Put simply, the policy has become ``dry is good.''
Where does the dry is good policy come from? First of all, the
unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain is not really dry. On average, a
cubic meter of repository rock contains about 100 liters of water.
Second, although held up as a scientific criterion for nuclear waste
repository siting, there is no scientific basis for using the
unsaturated zone. In fact, most other countries, partly due to the
geological or hydrological conditions, are planning to dispose of their
nuclear waste in the saturated zone, below the water table. As long as
an isolated saturated zone can be found that does not communicate with
other aquifers, a saturated zone offers technical advantages,
especially if most of the high-level waste is in the form of spent fuel
(as will be the case for the United States). Reactor fuel is composed
of uranium oxide, UO<INF>2</INF>, which is stable and not prone to
corrosion under reducing conditions, where little to no oxygen is
present--conditions, in other words, that would be found in a wet
environment. Oxidizing conditions (circulating air), like those
expected at the Yucca Mountain repository, cause spent fuel to become
unstable and break down, just as iron rusts in air. The breakdown of
the spent fuel creates new minerals and increases the surface area over
which any water present can act to remove radionuclides from the spent
fuel. Sweden, for instance, plans to use copper as a canister material
to encase spent fuel. Copper, as we know from its existence in nature,
is highly resistant to oxidation and corrosion if it remains in a
reducing environment. Thus, Sweden will considerably reduce the
uncertainties in repository performance by emplacing its waste in a wet
environment.
As a result of the focus on a dry repository, DOE has done
insufficient analysis of issues associated with the rapid oxidation of
spent fuel. This is an especially important technical issue because
over 95 percent of the radioactivity in Yucca Mountain waste will
result from spent fuel. Thus, once the waste package corrodes and the
spent fuel is exposed to moisture and air in the drifts, based on
studies of natural analogues, it will rapidly alter to new forms. DOE
has a limited understanding of the spent fuel dissolution process due
to a lack of thermodynamic and kinetic data. Furthermore, there is
little information on whether the alteration products will retain
radionuclides or release them to the environment.
unresolved technical issues at yucca mountain
Spent fuel oxidation represents one of the scientific issues that
remains unresolved (and will likely remain so even after the DOE
submits the license application), but could affect the performance of a
nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. There are a number of these
issues, including surface infiltration, transport in the unsaturated
zone, durability of waste package materials, the role of colloids in
radionuclide transport, saturated zone transport, and volcanism.
Surface Infiltration
Assumptions about future infiltration of water into Yucca Mountain
are based on predictions of climate change. Because the EPA requires
compliance with their standards for 10,000 years, climate change
predictions must attempt to cover this span of time. To do this, the
DOE looked at the last 400,000 years (which encompasses the last 4
interglacial-glacial cycles) to predict wettest conditions that would
be experienced over the next 10,000 years at Yucca Mountain. They saw
at most a 5-fold increase in infiltration.
In fact, DOE may be underestimating climate effects because they
have not adequately accounted for the effects of increasing
CO<INF>2</INF> levels on climate warming. Over most of the Pleistocene,
the last 2 million years, atmospheric CO<INF>2</INF> levels ranged
between 200 ppm-280 ppm. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution
they have risen to the present level of 365 ppm. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has predicted that by 2100, CO<INF>2</INF>
levels will reach between 500 ppm-1,200 ppm. The last time
CO<INF>2</INF> levels were in the 1,000's of ppm was in the Eocene, 50
million years ago. At that time, there were no polar ice caps and
reptiles were found near the north pole. The climate was much wetter as
well as being warmer, even in the Nevada region.
Although Nevada's climate will presumably not become tropical in
the next few hundred years, clearly over the next 10,000 the impact on
surface infiltration will be significant and most likely much more
significant than a five-fold increase. Unfortunately, DOE has not yet
completed the necessary analyses to really understand the potential
impacts of anthropogenic climate change on the safety of a Yucca
Mountain repository.
Transport in the Unsaturated Zone
Our understanding of how rapidly water is transported through the
rock above the water table at Yucca Mountain has changed substantially
over time. Initially, geohydrologists assumed water moved slowly along
grain boundaries in the rock. Their models gave estimates of
infiltration rates from less than 0.5 mm/year to 4 mm/year in 1980's.
With the discovery of the presence of above-normal concentrations of
the isotope chlorine-36 associated with fractures at the repository
level in the mountain, DOE changed the old models. High-levels of the
chlorine-36 isotope are attributed to atmospheric tests of nuclear
weapons done in the 1950's. This material was carried in rain or snow
to Yucca Mountain and then transported 1000 feet through the rock to
the repository level within 50 years. Such rapid transport suggested
the existence of fast transport pathways--most likely the fractures
associated with the high level of chlorine-36. Thus, the current model
of water transport in the unsaturated zone is a mix of fast and slow
pathways with an average infiltration rate of 5-10 mm/year with some
locations receiving up to 80 mm/year.
The academic hydrology community largely accepts the results of
these studies on Yucca Mountain, but DOE does not. They are, in fact,
in the process of redoing some of the original data collection on
chlorine-36, but have not really addressed the problem properly--in
fact, they have addressed it so improperly that one wonders what the
Quality Assurance program is really all about, actually. For example,
in one approach to redoing the original study, workers collected
samples in the repository area, not at potential fast pathways, such as
fractures, but instead at systematically fixed distances along the
tunnel walls. These samples did not produce traces of bomb-pulse
chlorine-36, but that would be expected--and was consistent with the
earlier study. Furthermore, the sample preparation techniques that DOE
used in this ``redo'' study were not the same as in the previous
study--and therefore could not produce scientifically comparable
results.
Although DOE has embarked on this costly effort to redo the
previous study on transport pathways, it has neglected to address a
number of important issues that bear directly on the safety and
performance of the repository. DOE's current unsaturated zone models
use steady-state precipitation conditions, but in fact water transport
may instead be dominated by threshold events, such as thousand-year
storms. Moreover, DOE still does not have good models of fracture flow,
leaving open the questions of how much water could be carried in
fractures and which fractures would flow.
Durability of Alloy-22
The canister or waste package that will contain the spent fuel and
high-level waste will have two shells, an inner shell made of stainless
steel and a 2 cm-thick outer shell constructed of a nickel-chromium-
molybdenum alloy called Alloy-22. Current DOE modeling suggests that
waste packages will contain waste for at least 30,000 years. But these
results are based on large extrapolations of existing data. The current
corrosion data for Alloy-22 is from a 2-year long study. This is then
extrapolated out to tens of thousands of years.
The existing data suggests over the short-term that passive
corrosion rates under stable conditions at Yucca Mountain would be less
than 0.1mm/year. The assumption is that conditions will remain stable
at Yucca Mountain. It is not clear how groundwater chemistry near the
waste packages will evolve over time, although DOE is attempting to
model this. Groundwater chemistry, including its composition, oxidation
potential and pH (acidity/alkalinity) are dependent on temperature,
which will definitely change over time, interactions between the waste
package and surrounding rock, engineered items like drip shield,
concrete struts, and local groundwater. Radiation will also affect the
situation.
Other remaining uncertainties in the performance of the waste
package are: (1) the potential for stress corrosion cracking at lid
welds--the one certainly vulnerable location in the waste package
design; (2) the temperature of the repository initially--a ``hot''
(above 100C) design or a ``cold'' (below 85C) design; (3) the effects
on durability of the development of a mineral crust on the waste
package; and (4) the effects of de-alloying on corrosion resistance.
The fundamental problem in trying to predict the waste package's
performance over geologic time periods is the absence of natural
analogues for Alloy-22. The existence of natural analogues provide a
basis for understanding the behavior of material over time under
natural conditions. This is one reason why the Swedes will use copper
to encase their waste packages--pure copper deposits exist in nature
and provide hard evidence of the durability of copper in conditions
expected in their repository locations.
Colloidal Transport of Radionuclides
Initially DOE scientists assumed that because long-lived hazardous
radionuclides such as plutonium were relatively insoluble in water,
they would not be transported any great distance from the repository.
This assumption held until the 1990's, when DOE scientists found that
species like plutonium have the potential to attach themselves to
materials called colloids, inorganic or organic particles between 1-
1,000 nanometers in size that remain suspended in groundwater and
therefore are easily transported. Colloids can form from sediments, the
surrounding rock, the waste package or the waste itself, or microbes in
region.
Recently, colloids have been shown to facilitate the transport of
radionuclides. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
found evidence for transport of radionuclides via colloids at Nevada
Test Site. In particular, they found that colloids transported
plutonium, cesium, cobalt, and europium 1.3 km from the location of a
1960's-era test.
Very little information has been collected on colloidal-assisted
transport at Yucca Mountain. We still do not know the natural abundance
of subsurface colloids at Yucca Mountain or what will form them. We do
not know the long-term irreversibility of the radionuclides attaching
to them. Finally, we do not know what concentrations of these
radionuclides can be expected to be available for transport.
Transport in the Saturated Zone
Little detail is known about water flow in the saturated zone below
the water table. In general, it is known that water flows to the
southeast then south. The uppermost aquifer in volcanic rocks extends
10-15 kilometers south of Yucca Mountain and discharges into the
alluvial sediments in Amargosa Valley. The upper aquifer has high
permeability due to the existence of extensive fractures, but the
permeability and fracture networks are not well quantified. Overall
there is a significant lack of data on the subsurface geology, the
water table configuration, general hydraulic parameters, and the
division of flow between matrix and fractures. This is in large part
due to a lack of boreholes and borehole data. Many of the existing
boreholes are concentrated in the south, in the aquifer that exists in
the alluvial sediments near Amargosa. Clearly, more boreholes are
needed in the volcanic aquifer. Perhaps more important is the lack of
multi-well test sites--at the moment there is only one site located to
the east of Yucca Mountain. If DOE is to understand how radionuclides
will be transported away from the site in the groundwater, it is
essential that they complete this work.
Volcanism
Volcanism remains a controversial issue. Five Quaternary basaltic
volcanoes lie within 20 kilometers of Yucca Mountain. The youngest
volcanic cone in the region, about 80,000 years old, is the Lathrop
Wells cone, located at the southern end of Yucca Mountain. The question
that remains unresolved is whether a new volcanic center can form under
Yucca Mountain. There are two potential scenarios: the first is an
explosive eruption below the repository that would spew radioactive
material into the atmosphere; the second is that magma does not vent
but instead fills the open drifts. Associated with the hot magma would
be corrosive gases. The combination of thermal effects and corrosion
would rapidly degrade the waste packages and any waters associated with
the magmatic activity could accelerate the transport of radioactive
material into the accessible environment.
Currently the DOE and NRC do not agree on the probability of such
an event occurring. DOE estimates that the probability of a volcanic
event at Yucca Mountain over the next 10,000 years is 1 event in 20
million years to 1 event in 180 million years, while the NRC estimates
the likelihood to be 1 event in 10 million to 1 event in 100 million
years.
In addition to the probability of a volcanic event at Yucca
Mountain, there are a few additional unresolved issues. The first is
from ``buried'' basalts (from magnetic anomaly data), which suggest
that the number of young events in the area could be larger than
initially thought. If this is so, it increases the probability of a
volcanic event at Yucca Mountain. Secondly, the methods by which DOE
and NRC use tectonic models of origin of volcanic activity to estimate
the probability of a future eruption differ. DOE only uses three
models, weights them equally, and then takes the average. NRC looks at
all possible models and asks whether any would result in violation of
standards or regulations.
reason for unresolved issues
Why do these issues continue to remain unresolved? There are a
number of reasons. Earlier I offered an explanation for DOE not yet
resolving the spent fuel oxidation issue: because DOE is so focused on
the ``dry is good'' policy that they have lost sight of the negative
aspects of a dry repository. Some of these issues have not received
enough attention because DOE's performance assessment emphasizes the
superior behavior of the waste package material (even in light of the
question I raised above) over the geologic barriers to radionuclide
release. According to the performance assessment results, over 99
percent of the site's capability to preserve waste isolation is due to
the performance of its waste canisters over the 10,000 year compliance
period; only 0.1 percent is contributed by the geology of the site.
Originally, geologic disposal was considered the best option for
dealing with HLW because of the ability of the geologic environment to
contain the waste for substantial periods. Engineered barriers such as
the waste form and disposal casks were thought to be less reliable. DOE
has now reversed its previous thinking, so that in performance
assessment analyses, geologic barriers such as slow transport,
retardation of radionuclides, and distance of the repository from
aquifers have been replaced by a greater reliance on engineered
barriers such as the waste package and drip shield. DOE's Supplemental
Science and Performance Analyses of 2001 support this shift and show
that for the Yucca Mountain site, if the waste package were omitted
from the performance assessment model, the radiation dose to people
living near the site would reach 500 mrem 2,000 years after repository
closure. This dose would exceed the EPA standard of 15 mrem/year by
more than an order of magnitude. When the waste package is included in
the model, peak doses of 800 mrem/year are only reached 200,000 years
after repository closure. Furthermore, DOE's analyses of the effects of
individual barriers to radiation dispersal at Yucca Mountain suggest
the same conclusions: the largest dose increases result from failure of
the waste package itself, and not from increased water infiltration
into the repository nor increased transport of radioactivity in the
water table.
Another explanation for the unresolved issues lies in the Quality
Assurance program itself. In some cases, the Quality Assurance program
is a barrier to who can do science and what science can be used in the
assessment of the Yucca Mountain site. One of the rules of the Quality
Assurance program is that data already published in the literature
cannot be sued as primary data and can only be used to corroborate
DOE's own findings. Thus, even if the work has already been done by
others and peer-reviewed by the larger scientific community, DOE
requires that it collect its own version of the data to input into
modeling studies. Furthermore, the process of actually using already-
published data turns out to be an onerous task that few DOE scientists
attempt. Thus, they are forced to repeat work already done.
Furthermore, the Quality Assurance program requires that laboratories
that produce data to be used in the Yucca Mountain assessment to be
``qualified'' by the DOE before they are allowed to produce usable
data. This is a costly and onerous task and limits which labs can do
analysis.
lessons learned
What can we do to address the current issues? Clearly, it was a
mistake for Congress to select only one site to characterize. In doing
so, it put a great burden on the responsible Federal agencies and made
it virtually impossible to delineate politics from science in the
process. That said, what can the United States do given its current
predicament? Most likely, it will continue on course, and only time
will tell whether it will be a success. If the project is brought to a
halt from public disapproval, lawsuits, or failure of the DOE to get an
NRC license, there is no alternative plan, another legacy of the 1987
Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments. If that happens, the United States
will not be the only country to experience a huge upheaval in its
nuclear waste program: it will have good company with Canada, the
United Kingdom, France, and Germany. All these countries had repository
programs that they abandoned in the face of strong public protest. The
United Kingdom and Canada have yet to deal with the issue, while France
and Germany have revamped their repository programs, giving the public
a greater hand in site selection. Germany's new program may provide
some insights into how to proceed more fairly.
In Germany under the previous Christian Democrat government, they
had selected the Gorleben site for a nuclear waste repository, in a
strategy similar to that of the United States: decide on one site, do
some scientific analysis to see if it is suitable, and do not involve
the public in the decision. Under the new Social Democrat-Green
government, they ``threw out'' the Gorleben site and began with a
``white map'' to re-examine the entire country for appropriate sites.
The first ``cut'' at this project will only consider sites on the basis
of scientific criteria, not political ones. The scientific criteria by
which the site will be selected are divided into two steps--the first
step using general scientific criteria, the second step using a
weighting process that employs somewhat more detailed criteria. In
contrast to the criteria used initially in the U.S. site suitability
procedure, these criteria are not set up to qualify or disqualify
sites; they are all allowed, but weighted.
Once at least three sites have been identified as being technically
suitable, then the public enters the site selection process. At this
point citizens of the selected regions, who all along will have had
access to the scientific process that occurred previously, will be able
to vote on whether to allow the government to explore the proposed
site. Their vote will also be informed by socio-economic studies of the
positive and negative impacts of a waste repository on the region. Thus
the German process may have a better chance than the American one at
using a broader scientific view.
How does this apply to the current U.S. situation? First in terms
of the Quality Assurance program, it could:
--allow the free and easy use of peer-reviewed data gathered by
academic researchers,
--allow the use of laboratories that do not have the imprimatur of
DOE's Quality Assurance program as long as they are respected
within the academic community, and
--continue to encourage DOE scientists to publish their work in
academically peer-reviewed journals and in fact make it easier
for them to do so by reducing the number of internal reviews
required of the work. DOE scientists have begun to do this more
over the last few years. It is essential that they receive
support to continue to do so to gain the support of the
academic community.
DOE could improve the quality of science produced for its nuclear
waste disposal program by:
--offering competitive grants to academic researchers to complete
scientific analyses essential to the understanding of Yucca
Mountain science. In doing so, they must not control the
interpretation of data. The Office of Civilian Radioactive
Waste Management has recently enacted a funding program aimed
at supporting academic research on these issues. It should be
viewed as a start of a larger process.
--allow an external panel of scientists, selected in as apolitical
fashion as possible (for example, by a group of members of the
National Academy of Sciences or ranking members of national
scientific organizations), to produce an independent review of
the science done--and allow a mechanism for feedback within
DOE.
Finally, DOE might benefit by comparing the expected performance of
different existing waste repository sites (such as the WIPP site in New
Mexico and the sites selected by Finland and Sweden) to Yucca Mountain,
instead of simply relying of their performance assessment modeling of
Yucca Mountain.
Senator Reid. Thank you very much, Dr. MacFarlane. By the
way, I did not mention her Ph.D. is in geology.
We are now favored with the presence of William L. Belke,
former senior Nuclear Regulatory Commission on-site
representative of the Yucca Mountain Project. He retired from
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2002 after having worked
for the agency for some 28 years.
Most recently, he served as a senior NRC on-site
representative in Las Vegas. This position required interface
and oversight of the Department of Energy and Department of
Energy's contractors, including observing DOE audits, meetings
with DOE staff, DOE contractors, and Nevada State and local
Government officials.
Prior to working in Las Vegas, Mr. Belke had numerous
quality assurance positions at the United States Atomic Energy
Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In
particular, he developed and reviewed regulatory guides and
standards for quality engineering practices relating to safety
and health of the public for nuclear facilities. Mr. Belke also
conducted field inspections and audits to evaluate and verify
proper implementation of quality assurance programs at the
Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, Millstone Nuclear Power
Plant, and the Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear facilities.
Prior to working for the NRC, Mr. Belke worked as a quality
control specialist for Pratt and Whitney's jet-engine program.
He was educated at Central Connecticut and State College in
Connecticut, and his degree is in industrial technology.
Mr. Belke, please proceed.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM L. BELKE, NUCLEAR REGULATORY
COMMISSION (RETIRED)
Mr. Belke. Thank you, Senator. Thank you for having me
here. It is an honor and a privilege to be here.
There are handouts in the back of my testimony, so I will
kind of just highlight it, with your permission----
Senator Reid. We would like you to do that, please.
Mr. Belke [continuing]. In the interest of time, yes, okay.
Page 1, I would like to emphasize what quality assurance,
by definition, is. It is all those planned and systematic
actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that an item
will perform satisfactorily in service. It should be used as a
valuable management tool, as a means of improving, not to say
``I got you'' all the time, and that is the way it has been
used in the past. The Department of Energy has an excellent
top-tier document called the Quality Assurance and Requirements
document. That incorporates the appropriate quality assurance
Code of Federal Regulations, the nuclear quality standards, and
the NRC guidance.
You can have the best program described in place. But
unless you implement it properly, you have breakdowns. This has
repeatedly occurred with certain nuclear reactors. There is a
big study out in the 1970's, after Three Mile Island, I believe
it is new reg 1400, which showed the good plants and the bad
plants and what quality is.
NRC, at this time--DOE, rather--is not a licensee and they
are not subject to the NRC enforcement actions and/or
penalties, civil penalties, like the reactors are. What NRC can
do is look at anything anytime, and that is mandated by the
Waste Policy Act and also the Code of Federal Regulations. If
NRC notes deficiencies or inadequacies or shortcomings, they
are documented and carried generally as an open item until DOE
resolves them.
I have listed about nine of the significant deficiencies
that have occurred over the past years that I was with the
project, on page 2, and I do not have to go through them unless
you have questions on them. I would be more than happy to
answer that.
Senator Reid. We will have some, so please proceed.
Mr. Belke. Okay.
There have been several efforts and studies and independent
assessments of why these things repeatedly occur, from DOE. And
in part 63--this was a comment I had, ironically, when I was
doing the regulations--but we found--and I will read this
verbatim, ``The QA staff of DOE and their contractors have been
successful in identifying QA program deficiencies in the
various participants' programs and, in many cases, highlighting
the repetition of similar deficiencies. In the past, inadequate
corrective action was taken, and the DOE organizations
responsible for correcting deficiencies were not held
accountable.'' As I said earlier, implementation again.
I find the DOE contractor QA personnel the finest I have
ever encountered in all my years of quality assurance. They are
very knowledgeable. They are very well educated, trained; and
they do not surface Mickey Mouse deficiencies, or they only
surface the major deficiencies.
What I would like to do is maybe offer, based on my
background and experience with the program, is suggestions or
observations that should be considered to improve this program.
I think people should be held accountable for the activities
they are performing. I do not see that, and I did not see it
when I was with the project. I found schedules being met so
people could obtain their bonuses or whatever reason, but it
was trash on time. And it is obvious, from the deficiencies on
the page 2, this occurs again and again and again.
Another thing was, recent DOE management stated in the
March 24th, 2000, letter to its employees, in part, that, ``It
is a commitment to admit imperfections so that high-quality
work can be achieved. As individuals, it is essential that we
feel compelled not only to celebrate successes, but also reveal
mistakes and issues in our work when they occur. The NRC needs
to know that we can be trusted to do the job correctly, to
admit when there are problems, and demonstrate our commitment
to resolve issues.''
I find this kind of a paradoxical statement because of the
recent articles published in the media about retaliation taken
against their employees. This is what is known as a chilling
effect. It hurts the people, and it causes morale problems, and
they are afraid. They become afraid of their jobs, their
livelihoods. That, I think, should be changed. I do not believe
that people should have fear of retaliation in their jobs.
And you mentioned earlier, Senator, about backing down. I
smiled at that, because just before I left, I had an issue. I
was investigated by the DOE Concerns Program and also the NRC
Inspector General. I was totally innocent, and they proved me
that I did nothing wrong and so forth like that. I wanted my
name cleared. But, more so, I wanted the integrity of the
office cleared. I did my utmost to keep that office very
respected.
Well, long story short is, I got a letter issued to me
where I was told to ``suck it up.'' That was the word. But the
letter actually said, ``If you continue this, you will be
issued a disciplinary action.'' And I retired shortly
thereafter.
The third point, I think, is NRC management should be more
proactive and pay attention to deficiencies as documented in
the NRC On-site Licencing Representatives Report. That is
issued every 2 months, and it is also on the Web site, the NRC
Web site. And we discuss it--well, when I was working there, we
discussed these problems every week on a team meeting on a
conference call with Washington with the technical people and
NRC management.
You can see, if you look at these reports, that the same
deficiencies are carried again and again and again. And there
was no action taken to help these, by my management. The only
time they maybe get action, a lot of times, is if the State,
Bob Loux's shop, writes a letter to the chairman and says,
``Hey, what goes on here?'' That is when they get action.
I think--a very important point is, I think upper-echelon
management, the executive director, and maybe even the NRC
commissioners should initiate action to have the NRC regional
office participate in inspection activities on this site. NRC,
as you may know, is the headquarters of the technical people.
They do all the reviewing of the science and so forth. They are
not inspectors. We have four regional offices. The regional
officers that would fall under this project would be Region 4.
The regional people are trained in inspection activities. They
do the reactors, they do the fuel facilities. They are very,
very good. And I think that would be of great assistance to
this program. I understand--I do not have a copy of it with me,
but I understand Representative Berkley wrote a letter
requesting this to the chairman, which I think is an excellent
idea.
Lastly, when I was there in the 7 years as an on-site
representative, I had about over 25 allegations given to me.
Some of them were slipped under the door; others came in and
requested to remain anonymous. Many of these allegations were
of significant nature. Good computer stuff and so forth. By my
management's direction, I must turn these over to my
management, and, in turn, my management turns them over to an
allegation coordinator. In every one of these instances, the
allegation coordinator and management gave them back to DOE and
says, ``You fix them.'' NRC does not have the authority. I
grant you that. But they should be tracked and trended.
So essentially, these are the observations. I have no
bridges to burn as a retiree or anything like that, no grudges.
I think--for the betterment of the program, I think DOE should
provide confidence not only to the NRC, but to all the affected
units in the State of Nevada. I am a resident of the State of
Nevada, and I think they owe it to us.
Things have to be done correctly. If you cannot--right now,
they can come back and tell you, ``Well, we are not loading
fuel.'' That is true. There is no safety hazard at this point.
If they ever get a license, there will be fuel. But right now I
think they have got to prove, DOE has got to prove, that if--
they have got to do the little things right. If they cannot do
the little things right now, they are not going to do the big
things right in the future.
PREPARED STATEMENT
If you need further information, I would--I saw those--I
would suggest you contact the NRC, local NRC, on-site
representative. They will be allowed to come and provide you
maybe with an update of current activities. And I just think it
is a shame that these people were not here to give some more
different perspectives on it.
So I would be happy to answer any questions.
[The information follows:]
Prepared Statement of William L. Belke
On behalf of the Senate's Energy and Water Subcommittee, I have
been requested to provide written testimony regarding my observations
and experiences during my involvement with the proposed high-level
waste repository at Yucca Mountain. A copy of my professional
qualifications are attached.
I plan to address primarily, the activities I was associated with
up until my retirement in January 2002. Should this subcommittee seek
updates of current activities from a regulatory aspect, I recommend
contacting the appropriate local NRC Las Vegas On-Site
representative(s) if NRC management permits them to be interviewed. The
activities described below have been documented and should be a matter
of public record. I am retired and have no grudges or bridges to burn
and voluntarily wish to share my prior involvement with the Yucca
Mountain Project from my perspective now, as a private citizen and
resident of the State of Nevada.
From 1974-2002, I was employed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) in various functions pertaining to nuclear reactor
inspections, quality assurance program reviews, research, and rule
making. From 1987-2002, I was involved with the Yucca Mountain Project.
From 1995-2002, I served as the Senior On-Site Licensing Representative
in Las Vegas, NV. My primary functions were to observe and monitor
ongoing quality assurance and engineering efforts conducted by the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) and its contractors. The purpose of this
monitoring was to gain confidence, that should DOE ever apply for a
Construction Permit and ultimately a license, that sufficient
activities had been conducted by DOE to demonstrate that an acceptable
program is in place to protect the safety and health of the public for
the citizens of Nevada. This includes developing a program to produce
highly qualified data that will be defensible at any public adjudicary
hearings.
Quality Assurance by definition, ``. . . is all those planned and
systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that an
item will perform satisfactory in service.'' Quality Assurance should
be used as a valuable management tool to detect deficiencies, correct
them to prevent recurrence, and thus, improve the overall integrity of
the product or program. The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
Management Quality Assurance Program Description and Requirements
document is the top tier document reviewed and accepted by the NRC. It
is an excellent document that incorporates the Code of Federal
Regulations, National Standards, and NRC Regulatory guidance that DOE
has committed to implement. Any entity can have the best Quality
Assurance document plan in place, but if not implemented properly, the
result is a breakdown of the program requirements. This has been
demonstrated with several nuclear reactors resulting in reactor
shutdowns and costly civil penalties and legal enforcement action by
the NRC.
DOE at this time, is not a licensee and consequently, is not
subject to NRC enforcement action and civil penalties. Presently, there
is no high-level radioactive waste being stored at the site and no
threat to the safety and health of the public. However, during the
present site characterization phase, NRC by virtue of the Code of
Regulations and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, can observe and
investigate DOE activities and provide input as to acceptability from a
licensing perspective. Identified problems are documented and carried
as ``open items'' until fully resolved.
Some examples of deficiencies/shortcomings that I have either
witnessed or uncovered during my 15-year association with the Yucca
Mountain Project are listed below. These deficiencies and others have
also been documented in the U.S. NRC's On-Site Representative's bi-
monthly report to NRC management (and distributed to affected Yucca
Mountain participants) for appropriate management action as deemed
necessary.
--Geological core in the late 1980's was determined to be unusable
because of the lack of traceability/identification. The cost of
this mishap exceeded a million dollars.
--Numerous errors in the design process necessitated initiating a 2-
year corrective action program to correct and revise the design
process.
--Software, modeling, computer program errors detected resulted in a
multi-year corrective action program.
--Numerous and repetitive supplier deficiencies resulted in a
project-wide review of all data to determine whether this was
of sufficient pedigree to be used and entered into the database
for potential site characterization and ultimate license
application.
--Numerous and repetitive errors in scientific notebook entries
resulted in a review of all project scientific notebooks and
personnel training.
--Deficiencies were not being closed in a timely manner and were
remained open for 2 to 3 to 4 years.
--Erroneous or questionable calculations found in final technical
reports necessitated a multi-year corrective action program.
--Instances that certain personnel in technical positions did not
appear to possess appropriate qualifications/expertise.
--Examples of NRC not always being told the total truth. There was an
instance whereby I was admonished by NRC management and
threatened with disciplinary action after two independent
investigations determined I was totally innocent and that a DOE
employee had not revealed the true story!!
Efforts have been attempted to determine why deficiencies such as
noted above repeatedly occur. In the Part 63 of Title 10 of the Federal
Code of Regulations, it is stated, ``The QA staff of DOE and their
contractors have been successful in identifying the QA program
deficiencies in the various participants' programs and, in many cases,
high-lighting the repetition of similar deficiencies. In the past,
inadequate corrective action was taken, and the DOE organizations
responsible for correcting deficiencies were not held accountable.'' As
stated above, the problem is IMPLEMENTATION (emphasis added). In my 35-
plus years involved in the field of quality assurance activities, I
have never worked with such a highly qualified dedicated number of DOE
contractors, employed to provide technical and quality assurance
oversight to the Yucca Mountain Project to determine whether the
quality assurance program requirements are being effectively
implemented.
From my perspective in the involvement of the Yucca Mountain
Project, I have observed repetitive recurrences of deficiencies with a
questionable record of improvement. In summary, I conclude and/or offer
the following suggestions that may improve or enhance the Yucca
Mountain Project activities.
--People should be held accountable for the activities they are
performing. Too often schedules are met and the net result is
``Trash on time'' with no penalties.
--Recent DOE management has stated in a March 24, 2003, letter to its
employees in part, that, ``. . . it is a commitment to admit
imperfections so that high quality work can be achieved. As
individuals, it is essential that we feel compelled not only to
celebrate successes, but also reveal mistakes and issues in our
work when they occur. The NRC needs to know, that we can be
trusted to do the job correctly, to admit when there are
problems and demonstrate our commitment to resolve the
issues.'' I find this to be a paradox in light of recent
articles reported in the media where employees surfaced
problems and were admonished. This attitude causes a ``chilling
effect'' and must be changed to improve the Yucca Mountain
project, not dampen it. Personnel should not have fear of
retaliation when they find a deficiency.
--NRC management should be more proactive and pay more attention to
deficiencies as documented in the NRC On-Site Representative's
bi-monthly report and also discussed at the weekly meetings
between the NRC ON-Site Representatives and NRC management. As
documented in the bi-monthly reports, many deficiencies are
carried as open items for extended periods without any support
from NRC management to initiate closure or until an outside
unit (i.e., State of Nevada) writes a letter to the NRC
Commissioners requesting action for closure.
--NRC upper tier management should consider action to have the NRC
Regional Office to participate and be involved in providing a
more structured inspection approach for Yucca Mountain. The NRC
Regional Office personnel are specifically trained and
qualified in inspection techniques as opposed the NRC
Washington Headquarters personnel having the necessary
expertise to review and evaluate the scientific aspects of site
characterization.
--Reported allegations should be given more attention by both the NRC
and DOE and taken more seriously for the purpose of improving
the Yucca Mountain Project.
Briefly, these are my observations and insights during my
employment in the Yucca Mountain Project and I will try to answer any
questions this subcommittee may have. As stated above, there is at
present, no radioactive waste being stored at Yucca Mountain and no
danger to the health and safety of the public. However, at this time,
DOE needs to provide confidence not only to the NRC but all affected
units, that the little things can be done correctly and down the road,
the big things will be done correctly. Again, for more accurate insight
to current Yucca Mountain Project statue, I would recommend contacting
appropriate NRC and DOE involved individuals.
Senator Reid. We will proceed with some questions.
Now, as I understand, what you have told us is that if you
have a game plan, to make it effective, you have to work the
game plan. You just----
Mr. Belke. Absolutely.
Senator Reid [continuing]. Cannot have it on paper. I mean,
you can have the greatest game plan that a coach puts forward
in a championship game, but if his team does not execute that
playbook, so to speak, it does not work----
Mr. Belke. Absolutely.
Senator Reid [continuing]. No matter how ingenious that
playbook may have been. Is that not right?
Mr. Belke. Yes.
Senator Reid. And so what you have told us, in layman's
terms, is that there is a good playbook out there, but it just
needs to be implemented properly. Is that what you have said?
Mr. Belke. Yes, sir.
Senator Reid. And I am terribly disappointed. You know,
there is a pattern here that is developed--``Take one for the
team,'' ``Suck it up''--as if we are dealing with something
that is unimportant. You know, this is not building a freeway.
This is building a nuclear repository that is supposed to be
good for thousands of years. And it would seem to me that
everyone would benefit with openness. But that has not been the
story.
Dr. MacFarlane, there appears to be a persistent problem
with political pressure affecting the work of the technical
scientific staff at the project. Recent news reports focus
primarily on problems with retaliation against quality
assurance engineers and staff. It is my understanding that you
have heard from scientists who have been pressured in their
work. Is that true?
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes, that is true.
Senator Reid. Tell us a little bit about that.
Dr. MacFarlane. It has to do with the chlorine-36 data. Are
you familiar with that?
Senator Reid. With what?
Dr. MacFarlane. The chlorine-36 data. Are you familiar with
that issue?
Senator Reid. It is the water stuff?
Dr. MacFarlane. It has to do with the unsaturated zone,
the----
Senator Reid. I was hoping there was not a follow-up
question. I may have had to answer it.
Dr. MacFarlane. Let me give you a little background. The
area under study that we are talking about is the region
between the surface--you know, the Yucca Mountain surface,
earth's surface--and the water table. That is what they call
``the unsaturated zone.'' And the question was, How quickly is
water transported----
Senator Reid. Yes.
Dr. MacFarlane [continuing]. From the surface down to the
repository? So that is 1,000 feet. And it used to be thought
that it was transported really slowly and so it would not be an
issue. And then, in the 1990's, there were some scientists who
did some collection of data and found--there was this one
isotope called chlorine-36, and they found high amounts of it
associated with fractures at the repository, you know, in the
5-mile-long--or 5-kilometer--no, 5-mile-long access tunnel. And
chlorine-36 is not naturally occurring in large amounts.
Senator Reid. I see.
Dr. MacFarlane. It comes from nuclear weapons--above-ground
nuclear-weapons tests. So it was clear that it was transported
by rain and snow precipitation down that thousand feet in 50
years or less. Okay? Because that is when the nuclear-weapons
tests were. So that meant there was fast transport at Yucca
Mountain, fast water transport. And this was a problem for the
Department of Energy in saying that this site was good. Okay?
Now----
Senator Ensign. Will you just clear up--excuse me for
interrupting----
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes, go ahead.
Senator Reid. Please. No, please proceed.
Senator Ensign [continuing]. Will you clarify why it is
important whether there is water present in the repository?
Dr. MacFarlane. Sure. Excellent question.
It is important because the assumption was that not much
water is going to get down and attack the canister. And water
is the enemy of these canisters, because the idea is that it is
supposed to be this dry repository where water will not rust
the canisters, essentially. And it turns out that that is--it
is a lot more complicated than originally thought. That clarify
it?
Senator Reid. Yup.
Dr. MacFarlane. Yup?
So this data, my understanding of it is that it was well
done, well collected, well analyzed, published in the peer-
reviewed literature, accepted by the hydrologic community as
reasonable, but the Department of Energy did not like it. They
did not like the results, because the results meant the site
was a lot more complicated than they had originally planned.
So they have been redoing this work. And in redoing it, and
in their first analysis of the quality of this work, some of
the scientists who originally collected this data sort of took
a bashing.
Now, I cannot tell you details, because I do not know----
Senator Reid. Well, the problem that we have, Dr.
MacFarlane, with this, though, is that these scientists are
most, most unlikely to speak out----
Dr. MacFarlane. They are.
Senator Reid [continuing]. For fear----
Dr. MacFarlane. And I do not want to identify them.
Senator Reid [continuing]. For fear that they will never
get another grant.
Dr. MacFarlane. Exactly. And I do not want to identify
them, because--for the same reasons.
Senator Reid. So we have danced this tune before.
Dr. MacFarlane. Right.
Senator Reid. Ms. Nazzaro, one of the main issues raised by
so-called ``insiders'' at the project is the emphasis on
adhering to the program time line over ensuring quality
engineering and science. It is a problem. Push. Keep pushing.
We have heard, in various ways, all the witnesses talk about
this. The General Accounting Office's primary conclusion at
this point would appear to support this claim that there has
been emphasis on pushing the program time line rather than
looking at quality. Have you found evidence that supports this,
in your investigation?
Ms. Nazzaro. Well, while--as I stated, we are in the
preliminary stages of this particular investigation. We do have
some indications that that may be true. You have, certainly,
recurring problems, and yet the time lines have not changed.
Another issue that is rather curious is that, as you know,
in fiscal year 2003, for this particular project, DOE's budget
was cut $130 million. Well, what was that money going to be
spent on? You know, was this excess funds that they had
available? You would think if you have less money, there is
something that is not being done, and that is going to affect
your ultimate time line. Our concern is are there quality
assurance things that are not being done and what is pushing it
is the time line rather than the quality of the project? So
this is something we will be following up on in the next few
months.
Senator Reid. One of the things that was interesting in
your testimony is that there has been a pattern of problems
with quality assurance with this project.
Ms. Nazzaro. Right.
Senator Reid. And the other thing that I think I heard you
say is that this is not through all Federal Government that you
have these problems. I mean, there may be--I mean, my point is,
for long periods of time with Department of Energy and Yucca
Mountain, it appears to be a pattern of not dealing with the
problems that occur. And my point I want to make is, this is
not happening through all areas of Government. It is unique to
DOE. Is that as extensive as it has been?
Ms. Nazzaro. I guess it would be hard to say that it does
not happen at all----
Senator Reid. No, I----
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. For the rest of the Federal
Government----
Senator Reid [continuing]. No, I recognize that----
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. Because, I mean, there certainly
are recurring problems throughout the Federal Government that
we see, you know----
Senator Reid. That is part of your responsibility----
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. In the course of our audit role,
but----
Senator Reid [continuing]. Is to look into that.
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. But we certainly do see recurring
problems at DOE in a number of areas. I mean, some of the areas
that we highlight is their high-risk area, as far as contract
management, that this is a pervasive problem.
I think where we are going, though, in the near future with
our work, is to try to identify are there any root causes for
these--you know, that we see these recurring problems, DOE does
not seem to be able to correct them, and----
Senator Reid. And the answer is----
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. We need to really----
Senator Reid [continuing]. The question is why.
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. What we really need to get at is
why. Now, there are some problems that are pervasive across the
complex that we are beginning to see some indications that
Yucca Mountain is no different than the rest of the Department
of Energy. And certainly one of the things that was developed,
you raised, and Dr. MacFarlane, is the accountability issue,
and that has been a pervasive problem throughout DOE as far as
the accountability of contractors. Another----
Senator Reid. Yes, the--I want to make sure that I have
stressed this point, and I want to phrase the question
differently than I did before, but----
Ms. Nazzaro. Okay.
Senator Reid [continuing]. Is not it unusual that you would
have these recurring problems over such an extensive period of
time with a Government agency? This is a Cabinet-level agency.
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes. Well, I would say, certainly, through the
audit work that we have done, we do see corrective actions. I
mean, once a problem has been identified, we do see corrective
actions. Here, you have a situation where after 20 years you
are still seeing the same problem. As I highlighted, you know,
in 2001, we are seeing the same problems with software
verification that you saw in 1998. You know----
Senator Reid. Thank you.
Ms. Nazzaro [continuing]. You would think by now there
would be some corrective actions taken, that you would not see
that kind of a problem.
Senator Reid. Senator Ensign?
Senator Ensign. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Back in Washington, DC, when we meet with people about some
of the things that we are talking about today and some of the
Yucca Mountain scientific reports, a lot of it is written off
as, ``Well, that is just the Nevada folks,'' you know, ``being
biased against the project and not wanting nuclear waste to
come to their State, and they are just politically posturing.''
I want to get something on the record from the witnesses
here today. Question one is, Are you for or against nuclear
power? And question two is, Are you for or against the nuclear
repository at Yucca Mountain?
Mr. Belke.
Mr. Belke. I think nuclear power is a good, viable source
of energy. As a Government employee, I think, the high-level
waste site, I was to be neutral. My personal opinion is that I
think burying the waste out at Yucca Mountain is not the best
of ideas. Why I say that is a little over 100 years ago, we did
not have a light bulb. And you can see how much technology has
evolved. I think we could store this at the site in these
canisters, which are accepted by NRC. They are approved. More
so, you could put them in a concrete bunker and monitor from
the sites. The nuclear power sites are all investigated by NRC,
seismic and flooding and tornados and that jazz. So it would
cut the costs down. And I think, in the future, that they would
develop a technology to use this again for nuclear power.
Senator Ensign. For those skeptics out there, though, as
far as your personal beliefs, you are pro-nuclear power----
Mr. Belke. Yes.
Senator Ensign [continuing]. And you think that we should
be able to deal with the waste. You are just concerned that
Yucca Mountain needs to be built the right ways if we are going
to build it--is that correct?
Mr. Belke. It has got to be built safely, yes.
Senator Ensign. Okay.
Dr. MacFarlane, same questions. Are you pro or against
nuclear power? And do you have any bias against the actual
site, aside from some of the problems that we have heard? ``If
these problems can be cleared up, are you against the site?'' I
guess is the best way to say it.
Dr. MacFarlane. Okay. The first question, on nuclear power,
I am not against nuclear power. It is a viable source of
energy. As long as the problems are solved, and one of the
problems is nuclear waste.
Second question, nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, I am not,
a priori, against Yucca Mountain. It may be an okay site. I
think that we are very far from saying that it is an okay site,
though.
I will go on the record as saying, though, I do think some
kind of geologic repository is needed. It is not clear to me
that Yucca Mountain is the right location.
Senator Ensign. Okay, but you do not come in with a
prejudice against Yucca Mountain.
Dr. MacFarlane. Nope.
Senator Ensign. Thank you.
Ms. Nazzaro, obviously, you answer to the Congress. GAO is
a reporting arm that answers to the Congress. The people that
are doing this investigation, are they on the pro-Yucca
Mountain side, on the anti-Yucca-Mountain side or----
Ms. Nazzaro. To answer that, I think you have to go back to
some of the comments that Senator Reid made in my introductory
remarks. GAO is certainly on record as being an accountable
agency, one with integrity and a lot of reliability behind the
data that they present. And we go through stringent review
processes, not only of the products, but also of the
individuals that do the work, to make sure that we do not bring
any biases toward the work. So, I mean, we have certainly
reported, similar to, as Dr. MacFarlane says, that nuclear
energy is a viable source of energy.
And as far as Yucca Mountain, I mean, we do have to deal
with nuclear waste somehow. So, I mean, we are not saying that
Yucca Mountain is a bad idea. In fact, we have not said that
the science is bad. What the problem is, is that they have not
been able to prove that the assumptions that they are making
are the right assumptions.
Senator Ensign. Well, I thank each of you. I think that the
reason it was important to get that on the record is, something
can look incredibly bad or incredibly good, depending on bias.
And what I wanted to establish is that we do not have anybody
here who is testifying today--let us say, that is from an
environmental group that would be totally anti-nuclear power.
We have unbiased witnesses who are pointing out some serious
discrepancies. There are some serious quality assurance
problems at the Yucca Mountain Project, and it is important
that the public understand this. And not just the public in
Nevada, but the public in America.
Cost estimates are, according to the General Accounting
Office, as high as $58 billion by the time that Yucca Mountain
is supposedly complete. And so we are talking health and
safety. We are talking a lot of money.
The majority of us here in Nevada would love to see nuclear
waste never come here. But if it is going to come here, we want
to make sure that the DOE is conducting themselves in a proper
manner. The DOE should not be afraid of light shining in on the
Yucca Mountain process if they are doing it right.
We have a lot of good people working on the Yucca project.
I have met a lot of these scientists, a lot of good people--who
truly believe that they are trying to do the right thing. And
unfortunately, when negative results come out and they try to
do the right thing, they are shut down, they are intimidated,
they are fired.
And that is why so many of us have such a huge problem with
the way that DOE is acting. As Senator Reid talked about
earlier, there is something deep in the bowels of the
Department of Energy that just says, ``We do not care what
information is being shown. We are going forward with this
project regardless of what is shown.'' For example, the DOE
finds the water problem, and decides, ``Oh, that doesn't
count.''
If you study the history of Yucca Mountain the repository
was to be, as you said, Dr. MacFarlane, a geologic repository.
This is no longer a geologic repository; this is a man-made
repository. It was supposed to be the earth which protected us
from all this nasty stuff. Well, the earth cannot protect us
because of all the faults with Yucca Mountain.
So we appreciate your being here. I will have some more
questions, but I will turn it over to Senator Reid so we can go
back and forth.
Senator Reid. John, that was extremely good. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Belke, we have stated that we appreciate your being
here today. It was not easy for you to be here. As you know,
there are press reports released the last few days indicating
that DOE was reluctant to encourage their employees and
contract employees to testify at today's hearing. But as a
former NRC Commission employee, why do you think the DOE's
response was this? I still have trouble comprehending this. I
cannot understand it.
Mr. Belke. Senator, my immediate reaction when I read that
in the paper was kind of twofold. I think it is atrocious. I
respect your positions as Senators and I honor them. And if a
Senator asked me to do something or respond, I think I am
obligated to. And I feel DOE should be here, without question.
And especially when you have a hand on the purse strings. I do
not know why they are doing this. I really cannot answer that.
And the other thing, the twofold part, is, it was about 5
years ago, NRC had a study performed about their response to
outreach of the public, and this was under Chairman Meserve,
and he initiated a program, and it is even out here, of the
local office, the NRC office goes out to the public every 3 or
4 months and hands out the literature and everything. DOE does
likewise with tours of the site and everything. To me, they
should be outreach to the public. We have this openness in
Government. And I see this, this is just--I do not understand
it. I really cannot answer the question. I am just shocked by
it.
Senator Reid. And for Dr. Chu to write a letter back to us
saying, in effect, ``Well, he would testify, but he does not
work there anymore.'' I mean, it is like----
Mr. Belke. I could pull the same tack, as retired in 2002.
I mean, you know--Bob was very good, and so is Don, by the way.
I enjoyed them.
Senator Reid. Dr. MacFarlane, in your written testimony--
and I have read every word of it, and I appreciate, all three
of you, the depth of your testimony; it will be made part of
the record--you state that Germany has scrapped its own ``Yucca
Mountain'' program because of public concern about the safety
of the site.
And then we have just heard Mr. Belke say what Senator
Ensign and I have been saying for 3 years now, ``Leave it where
it is. Why do we have to deal with the transportation problem?
Leave it where it is. You do not have to worry about terrorists
trying to sabotage these trains or trucks traveling across the
country. Leave it where it is, in these dry-cask storage
containers.''
Do you agree with Mr. Belke that dry-cask storage
containment is a safe alternative? For 100 years, not forever.
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes, for 100 years, the NRC has said that
it is a safe alternative. I think, certainly, dry casks would
have to be monitored. They may have to be changed out after 40
or 50 years. But I think it is quite a safe alternative. In
fact, I think, in terms of the terrorism question, it would be
much better if we would take most of the spent fuel out of the
pools at nuclear power plants and put it into dry casks at the
nuclear power plants.
Senator Reid. No question about that.
Dr. MacFarlane. So----
Senator Reid. And is not it true that Germany has gone to
hardened dry-cask storage at the present time?
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes, they actually have a couple of
centralized facilities, storage facilities, where they move
some of the spent fuel off site and store it.
Senator Reid. You, Dr. MacFarlane, mention in your
testimony about DOE's research being published gray literature.
I had not heard that term before. Explain what this means, for
those of us who are not scientists. And what does gray
literature have to do coming up with a positive result?
Dr. MacFarlane. What do you mean by a positive result?
Senator Reid. Well, what I mean is a scientifically
validated response.
Dr. MacFarlane. Right. Most scientists would not consider
gray literature to be scientifically valid.
Senator Reid. And what is gray literature?
Dr. MacFarlane. Gray literature is literature that is
basically reports. People who have published reports, the
Department of Energy reports, all of the Department of Energy
reports are gray literature. Any contractors' reports are gray
literature. These are pieces of scientific analysis that have
not been offered to a scientific journal----
Senator Reid. Dr. MacFarlane, let me interrupt and say
this. That is part of the problem that some of us have, is
that--you know, when I used to practice law, and you had a
trial, you had to make very sure that your witness could not be
impeached with cross-examination, that he used to work for the
plaintiff or, you know, whatever it might be. And here is a
situation where the bias is so obvious. These contractors who
have jobs--when I say contractors, I mean the corporation that
has a contractor out there--those are huge bucks.
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes.
Senator Reid. And I have heard--I do not know if this is
valid--but large amounts of money are paid to these people. One
of these witnesses here is a man over 70 years old. So you can
understand--he is 71 years old--you can understand why he is
concerned about his job. He makes over $100,000 a year. Where
is this man going to go, at 71, 72, 73 years old, to find
another job? I mean, I think that we all, being understanding
of human nature, no matter how much you want to do the right
thing, and you need this job--I have also heard--this could be
checked by others--that he lost a tremendous amount of money on
the stock market, as a lot of people have done, and he is
desperate to keep working at the--at his advanced age.
Now, if this person were testifying in a trial, his
testimony would not be credible. And that is what gray
literature is all about, is it not?
Dr. MacFarlane. In----
Senator Reid. I am not saying----
Dr. MacFarlane [continuing]. A sense.
Senator Reid [continuing]. I am not saying they are all
lying or cheating. But if--you cannot have any confidence in
what they are saying. It has not been peer reviewed.
Dr. MacFarlane. Right. It has been peer reviewed, but it is
an internal peer review. It is DOE reviewing itself. And that
is----
Senator Reid. But doesn't----
Dr. MacFarlane [continuing]. You know, they have a lot of
scientists there----
Senator Reid [continuing]. Does that not answer----
Dr. MacFarlane [continuing]. And that is okay.
Senator Reid [continuing]. Though?
Dr. MacFarlane. But in general, peer review, in the
scientific community, the larger scientific community, works
when somebody sends in an article to a journal, and an editor
at that journal sends that article out to two or three
individuals who may not know the person who wrote the piece,
and then they say, ``This is good work. This is bad work. These
are the problems. Do it over. Revise it. Trash it. It is
okay.'' And this is the kind of review that is not happening at
DOE.
Senator Reid. As I said before, this is not people out
there trying to determine the best way to build a freeway
across the deserts of Nevada. We are dealing with the most
poisonous substance known to man: plutonium, nuclear waste. And
it would seem to me that the Department of Energy would be well
served to have what they are doing held up to the scrutiny of
at least a congressional hearing. And I think that it is fair
to say that Senator Ensign and I are going to return to
Washington and do what we can to compel the testimony of these
witnesses. This is not right, that a Government agency,
Cabinet-level agency, can, in effect, just thumb their nose at
a congressional committee. I do not think Senator Stevens, I do
not think Senator Byrd, the chairman and ranking member of the
full committee, are going to put up with this.
Senator Ensign.
Senator Ensign. Thank you.
I want to get back to this whole idea, Dr. MacFarlane, of a
peer review. How would it be received in the scientific
community--let us say, for a pharmaceutical company to develop
a drug, to complete an in-house study which had really nice
results about the drug's benefits, and to have some of their
other scientists, within their company, do the only peer
review. What would the FDA say in that case?
Dr. MacFarlane. Well, I do not know about this FDA, but----
Senator Ensign. I guess we will not go there.
Dr. MacFarlane. But the larger scientific community would
say that is trash.
Senator Ensign. Yes.
Dr. MacFarlane. And they would not believe that, of course.
Senator Ensign. I mean, it would be a joke.
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes. Of course. It would be.
Senator Ensign. I do not know of any place in the
scientific community where internal peer review is adequate, if
you want your research accepted by the general scientific
community. And as Senator Reid talked about, we are talking
about nuclear waste that is going to be around for hundreds of
thousands of years.
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes.
Senator Ensign. So the more people that look at this
information, in as objective a manner as possible, the better.
Dr. MacFarlane. I agree completely.
Senator Ensign. It would seem to me that the purpose for
external peer review is to make sure that there is not an
agenda, that you are as objective as possible. No one is ever
100 percent objective. We know that. Everybody goes in with
some kind of a bias. But you want objective people looking at
the data to say, ``Oh, there was a mistake made there, there
was a procedure that was not good scientific procedure,'' or
something along those lines. And it seems to me the Yucca
Mountain Project has not been subject to nearly as much
external peer review as should be.
Dr. MacFarlane. I agree. I would say that, just for the
record, the Department of Energy would probably argue that it
is intensively peer reviewed. It has--you have the Nuclear
Waste Technical Review Board, which--with members appointed by
the President----
Senator Ensign. By the way, though, the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board has said that the science is weak.
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes, I agree.
Senator Ensign. Okay?
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes.
Senator Ensign. I mean, so their peer review has said they
have had weak science.
Dr. MacFarlane. Yes, that is right. So they have not gotten
a good peer review----
Senator Ensign. Yes.
Dr. MacFarlane [continuing]. Even from the Nuclear Waste--
--
Senator Ensign. And----
Dr. MacFarlane [continuing]. Technical Review Board.
Senator Ensign [continuing]. And the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board is composed of scientists trying to come
up with objective concerns.
Dr. MacFarlane. Well, they are a----
Senator Ensign [continuing]. The best that they can.
Dr. MacFarlane [continuing]. Very few--the point I would
like to make is that they are--the Yucca Mountain Project, the
science being done there, is incredibly complex. It encompasses
many, many subdisciplines. And with the few members on the
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and other peer-reviewed
panels that DOE has gotten together, these people, although
they may be eminent scientists and well qualified in their
particular areas, they cannot be expected to understand and
review the entire Yucca Mountain Project science. And so the
whole project would be better served by going to those specific
sub-communities and asking them to peer review particular
pieces of science.
Senator Ensign. Well, Mr. Chairman, we have a lot of very
talented scientists working on the Yucca Mountain project. We
all know that. There are some just brilliant minds working out
there, and there are some people who believe in the project who
are trying to do the right thing. The unfortunate thing is that
there is a culture at the DOE that says, ``We are going to
build this thing.''
Secretary Abraham told me that Yucca Mountain is going to
open by 2010. I think that there is no chance that it is going
to open by 2010--so I have asked a lot of people who are
associated with this project, ``What do you think of that
statement?'' Recently I spoke to an expert who said,
``Technically you could overcome a lot of the things if you put
enough money into it, except for the problems associated with
transportation.'' Well, that is a little bit of an issue, the
issue of transportation.
So there are so many unanswered questions, and to have
people going full steam ahead with this project is ridiculous.
Scientists use double-blind studies so that you do not know
what the result is going to be; you just let the facts prove
out what is going to happen. There is no chance that this is
anywhere close to a double-blind study. As a matter of fact,
the DOE has blinders on, because they want to go forward to
make sure the science shows what they want it to show.
It is a shame. It is too important a project for this kind
of shoddy science to be going on. I hope that--with hearings
like this, that we can shine some more light on what is going
on at DOE and let the DOE know that we are not going to let
them get away with shoddy science.
So I want to thank all three of you for having the courage
to come today. We know that it is risky. There are chances of
losing grants. Unfortunately, anytime you are a Government
employee, you always take a risk by doing these things. And,
sir, enjoy your retirement, and thanks for your service.
Senator Reid. John, I have just a few more questions.
Ms. Nazzaro, in a 1988 report, you found the culture within
the Yucca Mountain Project did not promote safety and a safety-
conscious work environment. In your preliminary work, have you
found that culture persists today? And would you say that the
failure of two witnesses to appear today is a reflection of
that culture?
Ms. Nazzaro. Our preliminary work certainly shows that
there is a problem, as far as culture and attitude. And I
think, again, it was Mr. Belke who raised the issue, as far as
the culture and attitude.
The issue is not whether they have a plan in place or not.
Consistently, we see DOE having a lot of plans, a lot of
rhetoric. But what we do not see is implementation of those
plans. And I think that goes back to, certainly, the culture
and the attitude, and it is probably reflective today as to why
we do not see certain witnesses here.
Senator Reid. In your December 2001 report, the General
Accounting Office found that there were 293 key technical
issues at Yucca Mountain that had not been resolved. And how
has this progressed, as far as you know? How many DOE--how many
of these specialized reports have been completed since then?
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes, there were 293 key technical issues. As
of March 2003, 77 of those have been closed. Now, none are
classified as open. The remainder are classified as ``closed,
pending,'' meaning that there is a strategy, what they are
calling a ``path forward,'' that they have identified what the
problem was and they have developed a strategy. Again, we do
not see implementation. NRC has not closed them. That there is
a plan in place, and, again, we are waiting to see
implementation.
Senator Reid. Dr. MacFarlane, when you talked about the
chlorine-36 studies, I want you to tell me why you believe DOE
refuses to accept this result and continues to conduct
experiments to disprove what appears to a lot of us to be
pretty good science.
Dr. MacFarlane. Well, I suppose if I were DOE, and I were
tasked with what I was tasked, I would be alarmed by the
results of the original chlorine-36 study, and I would probably
want to check it. So that is reasonable, I guess, even though
it appears, on the surface, that the science, the original
science, was good.
The problem comes with how they have checked it. They have
done a number of studies, and I will just give you one example.
The original study found the high concentrations of
chlorine-36 associated with fractures in the rock. What the DOE
did in redoing one of the studies was, instead of sampling
again near those fractures in the exploratory studies facility,
they just drew up a grid and sampled along the grid. Now, the
grid missed the fractures. So, guess what? No high chlorine-36
signal. Problem solved. So that is bad science.
Senator Reid. Mr. Belke, in your written testimony, you
stated, quote, erroneous or questionable calculations found in
the final technical report necessitated a multi-year
corrective-action program.
Would you, as my final question to the panel today, expand
on this statement and include how it was corrected and what
changes needed to be made and how it affected the integrity of
the project as a whole?
Mr. Belke. That was ongoing as I was retired. It is
probably a 2-some-odd-year program. But we would meet with DOE
and the contractors, probably on a weekly basis, about that
problem, specifically, and they would show us that they revised
the review process, the procedures, to make it better. I do not
know if that has been completed yet.
As far as the effect on the project, the way these
calculational errors were found is our technical people back
East looked at a random number of reports, and they basically
found missing--erroneous calculations, missing references,
things like that. And it affects the overall integrity of the
report, itself.
Whether or not that is going to have an outcome on the
project, you have got to--for licensing and/or construction,
you have got to submit data of a very high pedigree. DOE has to
make that case. I do not know if that data--I mean, they went
back and corrected it--I do not know the ultimate outcome of
that.
Senator Reid. It seems to me when you are doing something
scientific, and certainly something scientific as complex as
this, and you miscalculate the beginning, it is hard to catch
up. It slows down what you originally started to do. Well----
Mr. Belke. Yes. My contacts--and I do not know this for
sure. That is why I think it would be very valuable to have
NRC-ongoing people here also. They could tell you that. But
what I hear--and I cannot prove this--I hear that--my contacts
say they are not very happy with the program at this time. It
is not as effective as it should be. It is still ongoing.
Senator Reid. Well, let me say this. I am not very happy
with the program. And I want all--as Senator Ensign said, we
appreciate your educating us here today. And I think that
John's initial question really said a lot. We do not have here
a bunch of people who are out to prove that nuclear power is
bad, that Yucca Mountain was bad to begin with. We have people
here who have been involved in science and the project for many
years.
The panel here is about as unbiased as anyone I could find.
And the two vacant seats would only have complemented the fact
that we were trying to get people who had no prejudice against
the project.
We are talking--I repeat, for the third time today--about a
multi-billion-dollar project. Senator Ensign said it could go
as high as $58 billion. There are some who say it will top $100
billion before this is over. $100 billion. You know, we are
talking about building railroads and all kinds of things like
that.
So we are--we have not stopped. And again, I appreciate a
representative from the County Commission being here. I
appreciate, more than words can say, that the Attorney General,
himself, has spent time here this afternoon.
We, in Nevada, believe that this is a wrong thing for
Nevada. But we also believe it is a wrong thing for the
country. And we hope that good sense will prevail, and there
will come a time in this country where the Department of Energy
and the Administration, whoever is in power, will say, ``You
know, we have wasted a lot of money. Let us just leave it where
it is until we come up with a better answer.''
And we are going to continue working on this as a team, the
State of Nevada team, to do what we can to exert whatever
influence we can to complement the very, very important
testimony that we have heard here today.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED SUBSEQUENT TO CLOSE OF HEARING
[Clerk's Note.--The following letter was written to the
Secretary of Energy to request written responses from the
Department to the specific issues and questions resulting from
the May 28, 2003 Yucca Mountain field hearing held in Las
Vegas, NV.]
Letter From Senator Pete V. Domenici
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC, June 18, 2003.
The Honorable Spencer Abraham,
Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave., SW,
Washington, DC 20585.
Dear Mr. Secretary, The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on
Energy and Water Development's May 28 hearing in Las Vegas, Nevada,
addressed the Department of Energy's management of the Yucca Mountain
Repository. At that hearing, Senators Reid and Ensign joined three
testifying witnesses in suggesting certain concerns pertaining to the
Yucca Site's operation. Chief among the issues raised at the hearing
were the Department's alleged silencing of employees wishing to speak-
out on quality assurance matters and the alleged discounting of
credible health and safety questions in the interest of maintaining
project schedule.
Because the Subcommittee has a great interest in the consolidation
and permanent disposition of waste currently located at approximately
131 sites in 39 states around the country, I am writing to request that
the Department respond specifically and in writing to the issues raised
at the hearing. Such a response should address the particular concerns
noted in the above paragraph, as well as those similar to them
appearing in the hearing record. The responding statement should also
be prepared with the knowledge that it will be included in the complete
hearing record.
Sincerely,
Pete V. Domenici,
Chairman.
______
Response From Margaret S.Y. Chu
Department of Energy,
Washington, DC, July 8, 2003.
The Honorable Pete V. Domenici,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Committee on
Appropriations, United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510.
Dear Mr. Chairman, This is in response to your June 18, 2003,
letter to the Secretary requesting that the Department of Energy
respond to issues raised at the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on
Energy and Water Development field hearing that was held on May 28,
2003, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I appreciate the opportunity to provide you
with more complete information and to set the record straight.
Three witnesses testified at the hearing: Robin Nazzaro of the
General Accounting Office; Dr. Allison Macfarlane of the Security
Studies Program of MIT; and William Belke, a retired Nuclear Regulatory
Commission On-Site Representative. Two Senators, Senators Reid and
Ensign, were present for the hearing. No member of the Department of
Energy management either in Washington or Las Vegas was invited to
testify.
accusation of witness intimidation
I have been particularly concerned about the serious allegations of
witness intimidation that were made at the hearing. I have looked into
those accusations, and I am confident that they are entirely unfounded.
I am not aware of nor would I tolerate any effort by the Department or
its contractors to intimidate DOE or contractor employees from
testifying or otherwise coming forward to share their views.
Here is my understanding of what happened. I am informed that
Senate staff approached Mr. Robert Clark, an employee of the Office of
Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) Office of National
Transportation, and Mr. Donald Harris, an employee of Navarro Research
and Engineering, a Yucca Mountain Project contractor, to urge them to
testify, and that one of the Nevada Senators also spoke to each of them
about testifying at the field hearing. A few days before the hearing,
Senator Reid also wrote me a letter requesting that I ``compel'' the
testimony of Mr. Clark, and that I ``encourage'' the testimony of Mr.
Harris.
I thought it was important that the Department and Navarro make
clear to Mr. Clark and Mr. Harris, respectively, that DOE would not
pressure them one way or the other and that whether they testified in
this circumstance was their personal decision to make.
Accordingly, in the week before the hearing, Mr. Joe Ziegler,
Acting Director of the Office of License Application and Strategy,
spoke to Mr. Clark about the matter and assured him that the decision
on whether to appear at the hearing was entirely his. Mr. Bob Hasson,
Navarro Program Manager, sent a memorandum to Navarro employees,
including Mr. Harris, conveying a similar message prior to the hearing.
I am enclosing a copy of that memorandum. I likewise responded to
Senator Reid on May 23, 2003, informing him that this was the
Department's view. A copy of the correspondence is enclosed. Both Mr.
Clark and Mr. Harris chose not to testify.
At the hearing, it was alleged that the Department had
``instructed'' Mr. Clark and Mr. Harris not to appear before the
Subcommittee. As you can see, there is no truth to that allegation at
all. To the contrary, DOE and contractor management took action to
assure these employees that the decision on whether to appear at the
hearing was entirely theirs, and they made their own decision on the
matter.
At the hearing, Senator Reid raised the possibility that
``intimidation at the project'' could result in employees feeling
``fear that [they] and [their] families will be made to suffer for
simply telling the truth.'' This suggestion is not an accurate
representation of the environment at the Yucca Mountain Project. At the
Federal, Departmental, and Program level, policies exist to encourage
employees to voice concerns, and significant protections are in place
to shield DOE and contractor employees who raise health and safety
concerns from retaliation or reprisal. I am continuing my efforts to
ensure that everyone understands that we take seriously any allegations
of employee intimidation. Following the hearing, my deputy, John
Arthur, sent an e-mail message to all Yucca Mountain Project employees
to reaffirm our long-standing commitment. In that e-mail, he stated,
``I am committed to seeing to it that all of us know and believe we
work in an open environment where people are free to raise concerns
without fear of retaliation.''
allegations that doe has discounted credible health and safety
questions in the interest of maintaining schedule
Senator Reid stated at the hearing that ``DOE is intent on pushing
the project forward regardless of the risk it poses to the health and
safety of Nevadans and the rest of the country.'' Senator Ensign stated
that, ``There are real concerns that the Department of Energy's fierce
commitment to its schedule . . . has allowed an unrealistic timeline to
take precedence over quality control.'' Neither the Senators nor the
three witnesses participating in the hearing presented evidence that
substantiated these allegations.
It is true that the Department is working very hard to submit the
license application for a repository at Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) by the end of next year. In striving to
meet this objective, however, there has been no compromise in our
commitment to quality work and protection of health and safety. OCRWM
is committed to submitting a license application that complies with 10
Code of Federal Regulations Part 63 and in which data, software, and
models used in our safety analyses meet or exceed applicable quality
assurance requirements. During the licensing proceeding, the license
application will be subject to intense scrutiny from NRC staff, the
State of Nevada, and other parties, and ultimately the NRC
Commissioners must judge its adequacy.
concerns on quality assurance (qa) program
At the field hearing, Ms. Nazzaro and Mr. Belke expressed their
views on QA. Efforts to improve quality assurance have been a primary
focus of our transition from site characterization to preparation for
licensing, and the Program has been open about quality assurance
problems and the work needed to correct them. While Ms. Nazzaro and Mr.
Belke did discuss issues that are very important to the Program,
neither revealed any new facts on this topic. Both witnesses' view of
the program is limited and they have not had the benefit of seeing all
of the changes we have been working hard to implement over the past
year or so and continue to make. We agree that improving QA compliance
is critical to our efforts. For over a year, we have focused on
improving individual accountability for work and strengthening line
management ownership of procedures so that quality is reflected in our
work products. I described our ongoing efforts in a May 29, 2003,
letter to the NRC (which is provided as an enclosure). Over the coming
months and years, the GAO will have the opportunity to observe and
assess our improvements. Of course, the success of our efforts in this
regard ultimately will be judged by the NRC in its assessment of our
license application.
scientific integrity
The testimony of Dr. Allison Macfarlane also calls for some
comment. At the hearing, Dr. Macfarlane indicated her dissatisfaction
with a wide range of political and procedural determinations underlying
the current repository program. She considers Congress's direction for
DOE to characterize the Yucca Mountain site ``a mistake,'' takes issue
with procedures put in place to ensure that only qualified data are
used, and specifically questions the objectivity of the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board and the National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps
most important, Dr. Macfarlane asserted that ``[t]he science done in
support of siting a repository at Yucca mountain has clearly been
influenced by politics.'' However, she produced no actual evidence for
that sound-bite allegation.
Dr. Macfarlane does not claim that any scientist doing work on
Yucca Mountain has in fact sought to tailor his or her scientific
efforts to reach a particular result or that any DOE manager has in
fact sought to persuade any scientist to do so. Rather, her ``science
influenced by politics'' accusation rests entirely on a word game built
around the deliberately idiosyncratic misuses of the words ``politics''
and ``political.'' Specifically, the entire foundation for the
accusation is Dr. Macfarlane's observation in her testimony that Yucca
Mountain science ``is requested by and evaluated by managers at DOE who
must fulfill legal and regulatory obligations under the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act and Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental
Protection Agency rules.'' This, she argues, means that ``not only are
the managers at DOE seeking particular knowledge, but the scientists
themselves are required to gather data in a way that fulfills DOE's
political [read: statutory and regulatory] obligations'' (emphasis
added). In other words, because the science at Yucca Mountain is
directed to assisting DOE in making a determination pursuant to
criteria set by law, the science is ``influenced by politics.''
All Dr. Macfarlane is really saying is that any time any scientist
is asked to produce scientific work for the government, or for that
matter anyone else, that will be used to help evaluate a particular
project or approach that must meet legal or regulatory requirements,
the work should be dismissed because it is ``influenced by politics.''
That assertion answers itself.
The scientific reputations of the DOE National Laboratories and the
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and their scientific staff are
impeccable. Dr. Macfarlane's innuendo, that because these scientists
were doing scientific work on a project that must meet particular
statutory and regulatory requirements their work has therefore been
tainted by political considerations, is entirely unfounded.
One example discussed by Dr. Macfarlane to support her allegation
was chlorine-36 studies. She stated that DOE ``did not like the
results'' of the original study related to the possible existence of
fast paths for water flow inside the mountain and therefore had them
redone. There are numerous problems with Dr. Macfarlane's account of
this matter, however.
First, Dr. Macfarlane fails to take note of the fact that this
study whose results DOE supposedly ``did not like'' was produced by DOE
science. Yet this fact, it seems to me, undermines the core of Dr.
Macfarlane's suggestion that the Yucca Mountain Project's science is
result-oriented, since it demonstrates that our science is directed not
to finding ``results we like'' but rather to going wherever science
leads us.
Dr. Macfarlane also fails to take note of the fact that, far from
ignoring this study's results, DOE incorporated them (and not those of
the later studies of which Dr. Macfarlane complains) into its
calculations for the Site Recommendation models. These models provide
the key scientific information underpinning the Secretary's conclusion
regarding the suitability of Yucca Mountain for the siting of a
repository. The use of the original study's results demonstrates our
commitment to making regulatory judgments based on the best available
data, regardless of whether that information is favorable or
unfavorable to Yucca Mountain's suitability.
Further, based on models and data incorporating the results of the
original study, DOE concluded that Yucca Mountain is in fact a suitable
site for a repository because a repository there is likely to meet the
stringent health and safety standards that EPA and the NRC have
established. Thus, as it turns out, the original study's results do not
undermine the proposition that a repository can safely be sited at
Yucca Mountain--a third key point of which Dr. Macfarlane also fails to
make any mention.
Finally, Dr. Macfarlane suggests that there is something suspicious
about the fact that DOE has continued to examine the results of this
study. That is not suspicious. It is good scientific practice. We have
also continued to examine the results of numerous other studies, as it
is our responsibility to do, to make sure that the models and data
underlying our conclusion that the repository can operate safely are
well-founded and meet NRC data quality requirements.
I am confident in the quality and integrity of our scientific work,
which project scientists and external peer reviewers have affirmed. It
is unfortunate that none of these scientists or engineers was invited
to testify on the topics discussed during the hearing. Had they been
invited, I believe interested members of the public would have been
given a more accurate view of the Project. The testimony of individuals
with an understanding of the current status of DOE's actions to
continue to improve our QA program also would have contributed to a
more balanced understanding of this program. And, had testimony been
sought from any of the DOE or contractor senior managers, we would have
testified about our efforts to ensure our employees were not
intimidated with regard to their personal decision on whether to
testify at the hearing.
I hope that this information will assist the Subcommittee in
understanding more fully some issues raised at the field hearing.
Please let me know if I can provide any additional information or if
you have any further questions.
Sincerely,
Dr. Margaret S.Y. Chu,
Director, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
Enclosures.
memorandum from navarro research and engineering, inc./navarro quality
services (nqs)
TO: ALL NQS STAFF
FROM: Bob Hasson, Program Manager
DATE: May 23, 2003
As you know, I am in the process of meeting with each of you along
with your manager. I have already met with several of you in the past
few days and I will continue these meetings in the near term. These
meetings are to determine what concerns or suggestions for improvement
you may have. It is very important to me and our company to hear any
concerns and address them appropriately. I have been trying very hard
to create an environment where everyone understands that they are free
to raise concerns without any fear of retaliation. I am committed to
this and I have that as one of my highest management priorities. I am
open to any suggestions for improving our environment and welcome any
comments.
I also want to clarify that in a recent NQS all hands meeting I
requested that you behave professionally in meetings and be factual
when you speak. Also, I requested that when the client makes a decision
and you have a professional difference of opinion, that you support the
decision of the client. Clearly, if your concern is not just a
difference in professional opinion, but constitutes a technical or
safety concern, please bring it forward so your manager or I can
address it. I requested that you raise any concerns and refrain from
off-the-cuff remarks and unprofessional behavior. I have stated this
several times whenever I've had the opportunity.
Lately, you have seen in the newspapers claims that some of our
employees were retaliated against for participating in a surveillance
that caused a stop work order on Bechtel SAIC, Company LLC (BSC). I can
assure you that I have not retaliated or intended to retaliate against
anyone. I responded to concerns based on BSC claims and through my
investigation did not substantiate those claims. I believe the steps
that I took show you that I will not take employment actions without
closely investigating the matter. NQS management will not permit anyone
to retaliate or harass any employee who raises concerns. As always,
each one of us must do everything possible to avoid even the perception
of a hostile working environment.
Additionally, as you may know, the Senators from Nevada will be
conducting a field hearing on Yucca Mountain. Navarro Headquarters and
NQS management takes no position on whether an NQS employee
participates in the field hearing. Each of you should know that your
decision to participate will not affect your employment status.
I know that each and every one of you is working very hard under
these stressful conditions. I personally appreciate your dedication to
your work.
As I stated earlier in this memo, and I can't stress this enough,
it is important that you continue to raise concerns about any aspect of
your work.
As always, my door is open to all the staff.
______
United States Senate,
Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC, May 22, 2003.
The Honorable Margaret Chu,
Director, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, U.S.
Department of Energy, Washington, DC 20585.
Dear Dr. Chu: I am writing in regard to a pending field hearing of
the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations committee on the
recently reported quality assurance problems of the Yucca Mountain
Project.
The Subcommittee intends to accept testimony from two witnesses who
are currently employed by the Department of Energy or as a contractor
to the Department of Energy. Recent news articles about potential
quality assurance problems indicate that Robert Clark, former Director
of Quality Assurance for the Yucca Mountain Project, and Donald Harris,
quality assurance auditor with Navarro Research and Engineering, Inc.,
have unique knowledge of these reported quality assurance deficiencies.
The Subcommittee does not intend to subpoena their testimony, but
believes that they will provide important information regarding the
reported quality assurance problems. I am writing to urge you to compel
Robert Clark and to encourage Donald Harris to testify on May 28, 2003.
I expect that you will promptly inform the witnesses of their
obligations to appear before the Subcommittee and appreciate your
willingness to work with the Subcommittee to obtain important
information regarding the status of the Yucca Mountain Project. If you
believe these witnesses will not be able to testify or have any
questions about this request, please contact me or have your staff
contact Drew Willison.
Sincerely,
Harry Reid,
United States Senator.
______
Department of Energy,
Washington, DC, May 23, 2003.
The Honorable Harry Reid,
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Committee
on Appropriations, United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510-
6025.
Dear Senator Reid: Your May 22, 2003, letter requested that I
``compel'' Robert Clark, and ``encourage'' Donald Harris, to appear and
testify at your field hearing scheduled for May 28, 2003, in Las Vegas,
Nevada. We have given no direction to Mr. Clark or Navarro, Mr.
Harris's employer, regarding this hearing. As for Mr. Clark, the
subject matter for which his testimony is sought is not within the
scope of his current duties as an employee of the Department, and
therefore I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to order his
appearance. Similarly, as you know, Mr. Harris is an employee of a
Departmental contractor rather than the Department, and we are not in a
position to instruct or otherwise pressure him to testify at your
hearing.
Sincerely,
Dr. Margaret S.Y. Chu,
Director, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
______
Department of Energy,
Washington, DC, May 29, 2003.
Mr. Martin J. Virgilio,
Director, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Two White Flint North,
Rockville, MD 20852.
Dear Mr. Virgilio: I am submitting this letter in response to the
request made during the April 30, 2003, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC)/U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Quarterly Management
Meeting. The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM)
leadership team is pleased to provide details of the actions being
taken to ensure that our license application meets NRC expectations for
completeness, accuracy, and compliance with quality assurance
requirements. My team and I strongly believe that the management
improvements currently underway--in areas such as procedural
compliance, corrective action programs, individual accountability, and
safety conscious work environment--are means to that end.
I have recognized the need to change our focus and improve our
processes to meet rigorous NRC licensing requirements. The elevation of
the Project Manager position at the Office of Repository Development in
Las Vegas to a Deputy Director position vests greater authority and
accountability directly into this line organization. This change, along
with a Program wide functional realignment and the implementation of
our Management Improvement Initiatives, establishes the conditions in
which our objectives can best be achieved. The Federal and contractor
leadership team has shared our vision, expectations, and commitments
with all employees to help us achieve the desired improvement.
license application
OCRWM is committed to submitting a license application that
complies with 10 Code of Federal Regulations Part 63 and in which data,
software, and models used in our safety analyses meet or exceed
applicable quality assurance requirements. To that end, my leadership
team and I will continue to aggressively work to establish metrics and
management processes to aid in accomplishing our goals.
The Office of Repository Development conducts Monthly Operating
Reviews, in which progress is assessed and managers are held
accountable for performance. The NRC onsite representatives observe
these meetings. At these reviews, a progress assessment that
encompasses the five major components of our pre-licensing technical
work is used to describe performance:
--Key technical issue (KTI) agreement closure
--License application document production
--Preclosure safety assessment
--Total system performance assessment
--Design for license application.
Reporting the status and percentage complete allows each component
to be assessed independently and forms an integrated picture of overall
performance. This assessment methodology ensures that the rate of
progress is measured against consistent indicators over time.
We are also tracking the current state of completion of data
qualification, computer code qualification, and model validation.
Progress in these areas is monitored and reported at the Monthly
Operating Reviews, where management attention is focused on areas of
concern. The enclosure to this letter provides an example of
information prepared for the Monthly Operating Review, showing both
percentage-complete status by component and the status of data
qualification, computer code qualification, and model validation.
In addition to strengthening the management processes needed to
assess status and focus on problems, we are improving the approach to
completing the technical work called for in the KTI agreements. I
believe that the commitments embodied in these agreements and further
enhancements of the KTI analyses are keys to facilitating NRC review of
our license application. For example, one enhancement under
consideration is to group related agreement items, identify common
threads and underlying questions, and develop integrated, in-depth
responses to related issues. Such an approach should result in better
products and accelerated resolution of KTI agreements. We will present
our planned approach, showing the grouping of KTI agreements and the
reschedule for submittal of agreement responses, to NRC by June 30,
2003.
procedural compliance
Procedural compliance is a critical element of our continued
improvement process. We are working to strengthen line management
ownership of procedures in the spirit of building quality in as opposed
to inspecting it in. We are establishing performance indicators and
trend reporting to support our improvement efforts. We are committed to
responding to instances of non-compliance with timely and effective
corrective action, and will evaluate the types and significance of
violations and take actions to address recurring problems. We will have
an effective trend report by September 30, 2003, that will allow us to
monitor procedural compliance trends, identify causes of non-
compliance, and take prompt corrective action as necessary.
We are currently streamlining the review and revision process for
procedures through enhancements to the governing Administrative
Procedure 5.1Q, Procedure Preparation, Review, and Approval. This will
be completed and implemented by July 30, 2003. When this procedure has
been updated, we will screen other procedures for needed improvements,
starting with a prioritized mission-critical subset.
corrective action program
We will have a single, improved Corrective Action Program
implemented by September 30, 2003. The Corrective Action Program
includes self-assessment and lessons-learned components as well as
methods to identify and correct adverse conditions. Goals under this
improved program will be to prepare and approve 90 percent of
corrective actions within 30 days of initiation for deficiency reports
(DRs) and corrective action reports (CARs); to complete the corrective
actions for DRs in fewer than 60 days on average; and to complete the
corrective actions for CARs in fewer than 100 days on average.
Based on ongoing tracking, there has been a decrease in the average
age of open DRs and CARS. The monthly number of deficiency report
closures has increased, and the numbers of DR and CAR weekly late
actions has decreased.
safety conscious work environment (scwe)
Our goal and responsibility is to create an environment in which
employees freely raise safety issues without fear of harassment,
intimidation, retaliation, or discrimination (HIRD) and receive a
timely, effective, and respectful response. In March and April 2003, an
internal, limited-sample survey was performed to monitor progress to
date in developing a safety conscious work environment. This has
established an initial indicator against which improvement can be
measured. These internal surveys will be performed on a quarterly basis
and the results will be made available to NRC.
The OCRWM and the BSC Concerns Programs are improving the
timeliness of investigating concerns. Based on nuclear industry
practices, targets of 30 days to investigate routine concerns and
respond to the concerned individual and 90 days for complex or HIRD-
related issues were established. Currently, the concerns program is
averaging 17 days to investigate and respond to routine concerns and 63
days for complex and HIRD concerns. The overall average time to
investigate and respond to an employee concern in calendar year 2003 is
27 days, a significant improvement over the 111-day average for
calendar year 2002.
We have conducted Program-wide management and employee training to
build a common understanding of SCWE. The recent survey found that
employees now have a much improved understanding of SCWE and its
importance to the Program. However, the results indicated that
continued effort is needed to fully instill this culture. We are
planning to implement additional training to increase managers'
effectiveness in receiving and acting upon concerns. SCWE is also a
topic for continuing discussion in quarterly meetings jointly led by
DOE and contractor senior management. Supervisors and staff are
encouraged to continue these discussions and to return with feedback
for senior management. I believe that sustaining internal discussions
of this crucial aspect of nuclear culture, coupled with the formal
mechanisms that have been put in place, are the most effective way to
instill and maintain a safety conscious work environment.
The Management Improvement Initiative recognized the need to
measure progress more systematically. Therefore, in addition to
quarterly internal surveys, we plan to have external experts conduct
annual Program-wide surveys, the first of which is planned for this
summer.
The results of these activities will be evaluated and applied to
foster continuous improvement in SCWE.
accountability
Individual accountability is the key to achieving the outcomes
identified in the preceding sections of this letter. OCRWM has
responded to performance problems with appropriate action and has
recognized good performance. The Monthly Operating Review is a good
tool for measuring progress and ensuring managers are accountable for
performance in their work areas.
We are continuing to strengthen mechanisms to hold individuals
accountable for the quality, timeliness, effectiveness, procedural
compliance, and safety of their work products and processes.
Individuals and organizations will have performance criteria for these
elements built into their appraisals and evaluations. Demonstrated
actions that exceed these expectations will be recognized. Failure to
meet these expectations will be addressed vigorously. We will provide a
report to employees semi-annually to highlight successes, communicate
lessons learned, and underscore our commitment to accountability.
We now have a stronger organization whose fundamental objective is
to demonstrate that a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain will meet
NRC's requirements. We will continue to report our progress to NRC at
Quarterly Meetings. Please feel free to request additional details
about the actions described in this letter. We look forward to
continuing our pre-licensing interactions and appreciate NRC's ongoing
feedback on our progress.
Sincerely,
Dr. Margaret S.Y. Chu,
Director, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
enclosure.--monthly operating review progress assessment materials
Percentage-complete status for five major pre-licensing components
Status of data qualification, code qualification, and model validation
MANAGEMENT ASSESSMENT OF PROGRESS TOWARD LA
[Percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Percent
Component Complete Weight
------------------------------------------------------------------------
KTI Agreement Closure................... 26 10
LA Document............................. 5 20
Preclosure Safety Assessment............ 12 10
TSPA-LA................................. 25 30
Design.................................. 12 30
-------------------------------
TOTAL PERCENT COMPLETE............ 16 ..............
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: ORD MOR Report as of 4/28/03.
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CONCLUSION OF HEARING
Senator Reid. So, again, thank you very much. And this
Senate subcommittee stands recessed.
[Whereupon, at 2:39 p.m., Wednesday, May 28, the hearing
was concluded, and the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene
subject to the call of the Chair.]
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