Protecting People and the EnvironmentUNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
1
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
3 OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
4 ***
5 MEETING WITH STAKEHOLDERS ON EFFORTS REGARDING
6 RELEASE OF SOLID MATERIAL
7 ***
8 PUBLIC MEETING
9
10 Nuclear Regulatory Commission
11 One White Flint North
12 Building 1, Room 1F-16
13 11555 Rockville Pike
14 Rockville, Maryland
15
16 Tuesday, May 9, 2000
17 The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
18 notice, at 9:00 a.m., the Honorable RICHARD A. MESERVE,
19 Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
20 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
21 RICHARD A. MESERVE, Chairman of the Commission
22 GRETA J. DICUS, Member of the Commission
23 NILS J. DIAZ, Member of the Commission
24 EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., Member of the Commission
25 JEFFREY S. MERRIFIELD, Member of the Commission
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1 STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE:
2 ANNETTE L. VIETTI-COOK, Secretary
3 KAREN CYR, General Counsel
4 BRIAN COSTNER
5 CRAIG CONKLIN
6 WILLIAM (BILL) KENNEDY
7 DIANE D'ARRIGO
8 DAVID ADELMAN
9 STEVE COLLINS
10 JEFF DECKLER
11 LYNETTE HENDRICKS
12 VAL LOISELLE
13 MIKE MATTIA
14 JOHN WITTENBORN
15 DAN GUTTMAN
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2 P R O C E E D I N G S
3 [9:00 a.m.]
4 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Good morning. Why don't we get
5 started. I'd like to welcome you all to the NRC's public
6 meeting with stakeholders to deal with the issues concerning
7 the control of release of solid materials that have slight
8 amounts of contamination associated with them and in
9 particular, on the staff's recommendations as to how the
10 Commission might deal with this matter.
11 This is the second of two related briefings we've
12 had on the staff's recommendation. Last week, the
13 Commission was briefed by the staff on the status of its
14 efforts on the paper that it submitted to us. The paper, of
15 course, is SECY 00-0070, Control of Solid Materials, which
16 was an effort by the staff to discuss what they had learned
17 through the public outreach process that they had engaged in
18 with regard to this matter. The paper, of course, was made
19 available to the public.
20 Today's meeting is intended to provide an
21 opportunity for stakeholders and the Commission to engage in
22 a dialogue on this complex issue in an open forum and also
23 to discuss the suggestions that the staff has made for us as
24 to how the Commission might proceed.
25 We have had the benefit of an extraordinarily
4
1 large number of comments. The comments express a
2 substantial diversity of views, and we have reviewed those
3 materials and have some sense of the broad range of issues
4 which this issue raises before us.
5 We recognize that there are many individuals and
6 groups that have filed comments, and what we have attempted
7 to do is to select participants for this meeting that
8 provide us a sampling of the spectrum of views. It is not
9 to suggest that others have not submitted comments that were
10 not influential to us. We've had the benefit of those in
11 writing and through interactions with our staff. Today's
12 intended to provide an opportunity to deal with a range of
13 different people who have -- reflect the diversity of views
14 on this issue.
15 The briefing has been set up in a format where
16 we'll have three different panels. Each of the panel
17 members will be given an opportunity to make an opening
18 statement. I would request that the opening statement be
19 kept to five minutes. Most of the panel members have
20 submitted information to us about their presentation in
21 advance of today's meeting, and we have had an opportunity
22 to review that material.
23 The reason we would like to keep the statements
24 brief is that I think for me and my colleagues, some of the
25 most helpful aspects of the Commission meetings are the
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1 opportunity to have an exchange with the panelists, and we'd
2 like to leave ample time in order to have question and
3 answer opportunity.
4 We'll hold our questions to each of the panels
5 until each of the participants on a given panel has had an
6 opportunity to make a statement, and then we'll open it for
7 questions and then move on to the additional panels.
8 Let me turn to my colleagues, to see if they have
9 any opening comments.
10 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Mr. Chairman, I would
11 like to make a couple of comments. The first thing is I
12 would like to express my thanks to all the participants, not
13 only in the meeting today but in the various meetings that
14 our staff conducted in four or five cities around the
15 country.
16 I had an opportunity to review many, if not all,
17 of the transcripts of those meetings. Obviously, a lot of
18 hard work went into that by a variety of people, and
19 certainly we want to recognize that.
20 This is a public process. I think the direction
21 that the Commission is taking, before we are even putting
22 out any kind of a proposed rule, we're asking for and we
23 made advance notice of an intention to look into this issue.
24 I think the Commission has attempted to make clear that it
25 does not have a set position, but it did want to solicit a
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1 variety of comments, and we certainly have received a
2 variety in response to that request.
3 This, as any review of the transcript as well the
4 review of the prepared materials we're receiving today,
5 demonstrates that this is the issue which causes strong
6 feelings. It raises a number of scientific and economic
7 issues which individuals feel very highly charged about and
8 one which will take a lot of consideration on the part of
9 this Commission, to determine how most appropriately to move
10 forward.
11 To clarify one issue that has come before us, at
12 least in some of the materials we received today, there is
13 the impression upon some that this Commission has already
14 made a decision about how it intends to move forward, and
15 that we are merely going through this process in a pro forma
16 manner.
17 Speaking only on my own behalf, I would say that
18 I, in particular, have not made a decision in terms of what
19 I believe is the best way to move forward on this issue,
20 whether it is relative to setting a zero standard or setting
21 a 1 millirem standard or somewhere in between. I have not
22 made that determination for my own part and certainly will
23 carefully weigh all the material today as well as other
24 materials we've received in making that determination.
25 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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1 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Any other comments?
2 (No response.)
3 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: If not, let me turn to our
4 opening panel. The opening panel consists of Brian Costner,
5 who is a senior policy advisor in the Office of the
6 Secretary of the Department of Energy; Craig Conklin, who's
7 the director, the Center for Radiation Emergency
8 Preparedness, Prevention and Response for the Environmental
9 Protection Agency; and William Kennedy, here representing
10 the Health Physics Society and the chair of an ANSI
11 committee that has worked on a relevant standard.
12 Why don't we proceed. Mr. Costner?
13 MR. COSTNER: Thank you. Good morning.
14 The Secretary of Energy is very supportive of your
15 efforts to pursue the question of a rulemaking and more
16 particularly thinks that a rule, a national standard, is in
17 the best interest of the Department and really the country,
18 because as decisions are made about how to deal with
19 facilities, whether it's at a discrete Department of Energy
20 facility or a commercial facility, it's important to realize
21 that once any material is released from a DOE site or a
22 commercial facility, it's out into general commerce and
23 isn't just within the control of a particular state's
24 policies, for example, and so it's far more appropriate to
25 have some kind of national rule, so that we're all playing
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1 by and according to the same set of standards.
2 In January, recognizing the lack of national
3 standards in one area in particular and that is for
4 volumetrically contaminated material, the Secretary
5 instituted a moratorium, that we would not release any
6 material that was contaminated volumetrically.
7 And also the Secretary established a task force to
8 review the Department's policies broadly associated with the
9 issue of release of materials. I'm co-chairing that task
10 force, and we've been working now for about four months,
11 with the goal of making recommendations to the Secretary by
12 this summer.
13 Obviously, we're very interested in learning and
14 taking advantage of the process that the Commission has
15 established, and we've reviewed the report by your staff and
16 will continue to closely watch what you do as we're
17 formulating these recommendations.
18 Since we're still in the process of just
19 collecting information and reviewing options, there's
20 nothing specific to report today. I do want to make it
21 clear to you all that we are looking, as I believe you are,
22 at a very wide range of options. Essentially, at least to
23 some degree, everything is still on the table still at this
24 point.
25 One of the things that we have come to recognize
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1 over the last four months is that this is, indeed, a very
2 interesting issue to work on. We think that ultimately
3 whatever path the Department takes is going to have to
4 address a wide array of factors, everything from protecting
5 the public health to considering the direct economic costs
6 and indirect costs on the program, as well as costs more
7 broadly, socially, such as costs associated with
8 externalizing some of the Department's costs and placing
9 them on other industries.
10 We have to look at the perceptions and the
11 preferences of consumers and of the people that would
12 potentially buy the material. We have to look at issues
13 like the trust and the confidence in the Agency as well as
14 in various corporations that would be involved in these
15 enterprises and, frankly, many other issues.
16 And so, like I say, at this point, we are
17 gathering that information, trying to come up with a way to
18 at least frame some options and recommendations for the
19 Secretary by this summer.
20 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Good. Thank you very much.
21 Mr. Conklin?
22 MR. CONKLIN: Thank you. We appreciate the
23 opportunity to come here today and participate in this
24 meeting, and we just have a few brief comments.
25 As you know, in the mid-1990s, EPA studied the
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1 risk associated with recycling the slightly irradiated
2 materials from both DOE facilities and NRC licensees. At
3 that time, our investigations demonstrated or revealed to us
4 that the most significant risk, in our opinion, was from
5 orphan sources, lost sources, that showed up in the public
6 and presented a hazard, as well as the importation of
7 radiation materials from foreign countries, as a result of
8 them being lost out of their control systems.
9 So we redirected our efforts within the EPA, with
10 our resource problems and issues that many agencies face and
11 departments face, and decided to attack those issues back
12 home at the EPA.
13 We agree with the staff recommendation to defer
14 the establishment of a standard, so that the issue can be
15 submitted to the National Academy of Sciences, so that they
16 can examine alternatives to the issue. We believe that with
17 their input and then with following on what's going on in
18 the international arena over in Europe especially, that that
19 additional data can help us make better recommendations and
20 a better decision.
21 And we recommend and encourage the NRC to keep
22 using an open process for the selection of the study panel
23 and for soliciting all the information that may come from
24 that panel elsewhere.
25 Given that the NAS will be studying the issue, we
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1 don't think it's appropriate at this time for EPA to comment
2 on the best approach to address this issue. We believe that
3 we should wait until that study is completed and that any
4 additional information is gathered.
5 We appreciate the NRC's efforts to engage in a
6 continuous and open dialogue on the issues. It is a
7 significant issue facing the NRC, DOE, and the public, for
8 that matter, and we recommend that you maintain an open
9 process, just as you had with your public meetings around
10 the country and the meeting such as today.
11 We're going to follow the issue closely and
12 participate where appropriate and provide our input, when
13 and where appropriate. Thank you for the opportunity to
14 speak to you today.
15 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
16 Mr. Kennedy?
17 MR. KENNEDY: Yes. I have some viewgraphs, if I
18 could have the first one shown, please. These are simply to
19 keep my train of thought going here.
20 Thank you for the opportunity to address you today
21 on this important subject. As you know, the Health Physics
22 Society is an independent scientific professional
23 organization, whose mission is radiation safety.
24 If I could have the second viewgraph, please --
25 We applaud your efforts to obtain information on
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1 the control of solid materials, the process that you've gone
2 through to encourage public involvement, and to obtain
3 background information. We've reviewed the SECY 00-0070
4 document that the staff prepared, that summarizes the public
5 meetings that you all held.
6 The Health Physics Society had representatives at
7 several of those meetings and were very interested in the
8 exchange of ideas that occurred. We think that that
9 document provides useful information for your consideration
10 as you proceed.
11 We agree that the National Academy of Sciences
12 study would likely provide essential information that could
13 be very useful in the decision-making process here in the
14 future.
15 We understand the depths of emotions that surround
16 this issue, but the Society believes that uniform criteria
17 for the release of solid materials are needed to increase
18 the credibility of the whole operation of the nuclear
19 industry and to assure ourselves that harmful sources won't
20 be diluted in commerce by having criteria against which the
21 decision about release can be made.
22 If I could have the next viewgraph, please --
23 We recommend that the regulations be based on
24 consensus standards wherever possible, and in that light,
25 the ANSI standard N13.12, which I chaired, is, in fact, a
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1 standard that we think you all should be looking at as you
2 decide how to proceed.
3 Our standard recommends a primary dose criteria,
4 and we suggest that that should be adopted, and we've
5 derived screening levels, so that radiation survey programs
6 can be established to make decisions in the field. We
7 believe that N13.12 is consistent with the emerging
8 consensus with international commerce, as I'll demonstrate
9 in the next set of viewgraphs, so if I could have the next
10 viewgraph, please.
11 Here I've conducted a comparison of the ANSI
12 standard numbers with the values -- the range of values
13 proposed by the International Atomic Energy Commission on
14 Clearance. It's true that each of the European countries
15 currently has standards and policies that they are
16 deriving,b ut there are two unifying factors in Europe that
17 you need to be aware of.
18 The first is the effort of the International
19 Atomic Energy Agency on Clearance, and the second is the
20 efforts of the European Commission to develop EC-supported
21 standards to recommend to their member states.
22 I won't go into a lot of detail here, but what I
23 simply want to emphasize is that when I say that the ANSI
24 standard is consistent with international commerce, you can
25 look at the range of values for the IAEA and find that for
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1 each radionuclide, the ANSI standard is within the range,
2 typically at the lower end of the range that was set in the
3 IAEA draft document.
4 If I could have the next viewgraph, please --
5 The European Commission has looked at both
6 volumetric and surface contamination numbers. I've shown
7 here again a comparison of ANSI N13.12 values with two
8 columns from the European Commission. The first is for
9 metal recycle, and the second is for rubble following
10 demolition of a building.
11 The values here differ by the EC use of scenarios,
12 which scenarios drove the limiting exposure conditions at 1
13 millirem a year, and as you see again, for most of the
14 radionuclides, the ANSI standard compares quite favorably
15 with the range and most often reflects the most restrictive
16 of the range for volume contamination.
17 And if I could have the final viewgraph, please --
18 This is simply a comparison of the ANSI standard
19 with surface contamination values proposed in the draft
20 European Commission recommendations. Again, the ANSI
21 standard compares quite favorably for most all of the
22 radionuclides in this set. All of these three standards or
23 recommendations are based on a dose of 1 millirem per year.
24 As I've shown, the ANSI standard is quite
25 comparable with the draft values shown by IAEA and the
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1 European Commission, and therefore, we believe that the ANSI
2 standard is protective and consistent with international
3 commerce.
4 And with that, I thank you very much.
5 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: I'd like to thank you all for
6 your helpful presentations.
7 Let me turn to Commissioner McGaffigan and see if
8 he has any questions.
9 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Let me start with Mr.
10 Conklin. You all have participated, I know, significantly
11 in the IAEA process. You and Bob Meck of our staff seem to
12 be a duo that goes off to the IAEA meetings routinely.
13 Do you agree with Mr. Kennedy that the technical
14 bases for whatever standard we choose are getting there,
15 that the range -- that there's growing agreement about
16 scenarios to use and growing -- less and less disparity in
17 the ranges between the EC, the IAEA, and ANSI?
18 MR. CONKLIN: I would agree that's true. We have
19 been working with the IAEA and our contractors, along with
20 Bob Meck and your folks. As the years and months have
21 progressed, the scenarios and the parameters which we used
22 to develop the scenarios and come up with these figures has
23 been getting closer and closer.
24 In fact, as you know, one of our main points in
25 this was to make sure that when we went to the IAEA, the
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1 U.S. had a very unified position and the scenarios and the
2 numbers that both the NRC and the EPA had were within close
3 agreement, and I think for practically every radionuclide,
4 we were within a factor of 3, so we've worked very hard to
5 come to agreement on the scenarios and the parameters.
6 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: One of the points that
7 Mr. Meck makes in his written testimony is that the
8 technical bases in the ANSI standard, the IAEA work, and the
9 EC work were largely independent, and so there's a lot of --
10 the fact that they used different methodologies, at least
11 initially, and yet there isn't very much range even to start
12 with is a good place to be, as we go forward in trying to
13 get the technical basis for whatever standard we come up
14 with.
15 You'd agree with that?
16 MR. CONKLIN: Uh-huh.
17 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: One of the issues you
18 said in your opening statement was, Mr. Conklin, that -- and
19 I agree -- that orphan sources and possible importation of
20 highly contaminated materials is a place to start.
21 But I understand also that the things that trigger
22 monitors at our various steel mills or whatever, in large
23 part 90 percent of them come from the oil and gas industry,
24 from, you know, contaminated materials, contaminated with
25 T-NORM. When you deal with orphan sources, are you
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1 dealing -- we think of orphan sources in NRC space as our
2 devices that get in the wrong hands or get disposed of
3 improperly. We don't have any control over the oil and gas
4 industry. Is that something you're looking at in EPA space?
5 MR. CONKLIN: It's not something within my center,
6 but there is another center within our office that is
7 looking at T-NORM and investigating what to do and whether
8 or not we need to set regulations or guidance in that area.
9 Most of the orphan source issues that my center
10 deals with deal with the discrete sources, the lost sources
11 that were at one point owned by a licensee and got lost or
12 were generally licensed-type sources.
13 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: How do we deal with the
14 oil and gas industry at some point? I guess you just --
15 it's not your area.
16 MR. CONKLIN: That's not my area. True.
17 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: But that's where the
18 heart of the problem is, as I understand it, in terms of
19 what's today causing problems at steel mills, and some of
20 the stuff can be very, very contaminated, as you know.
21 Mr. Kennedy, one of the things -- I think it's in
22 your prepared remarks, but I'd just as soon you say it
23 publicly. The National Technology Transfer Act of 1995 is a
24 congressional mandate that we adopt consensus standards
25 where we can, and it is the law of the land that we at least
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1 have to start looking in that area. Is that not correct?
2 MR. KENNEDY: That's correct, and I'm certainly
3 that the Commission is aware of that. We, in the Health
4 Physics Society and people that develop ANSI standards, are
5 very aware of that, and that's why it takes so long for us
6 to deliberate, evaluate all of the opinions possible, and
7 develop what we think are concise and comprehensive
8 standards.
9 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Could you describe briefly who
10 participated in the process of developing the ANSI standard,
11 because that's obviously one of the issue that comes up.
12 MR. KENNEDY: This particular standard began in
13 1964, and so there was a lot of work between 1964 and the
14 early 1990s when I assumed the chairmanship of the panel.
15 Over that period of time, there were a wide variety of
16 individuals, starting with people at National Research
17 Laboratories, people in the Atomic Energy Commission and
18 then later the NRC and DOE, and EPA participated in terms of
19 reviewing and assuring ourselves that the material was
20 technically consistent and represented the best scientific
21 information that we could bring to bear on this subject.
22 In the standard itself, it lists the people that
23 contributed. Again, there were contributors on the writing
24 panel who were consultants from a very wide --
25 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: I'll look at that.
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1 And finally, Mr. Costner, just to give you a
2 chance, you weren't here last week, but I think Commissioner
3 Diaz, at last week's briefing, established that with enough
4 detection equipment and enough time, he'll detect volumetric
5 contamination anywhere, including the table or obviously
6 ourselves. We're highly contaminated with potassium-40
7 among other things.
8 So when you say you have a moratorium on
9 volumetric -- on releasing volumetrically contaminated
10 materials, do you have a definition of volumetrically
11 contaminated that you can use, because everything's
12 volumetrically contaminated. The earth is volumetrically
13 contaminated.
14 MR. COSTNER: Yes. We tend to prefer not to go
15 too far down the path of unrealistic and unproductive
16 discourse in either of many different directions. It's
17 fairly obviously from the nature of a nuclear facility what
18 the equipment is you're talking about, based on --
19 obviously, here we're talking about really when the
20 volumetrically contaminated radiation is created as a result
21 of the operation, and so by knowing the design and the
22 operating history of a facility, one can distinguish that.
23 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: My understanding is some
24 of the steel at the K-25 plant, which was, you know, built
25 prior to World War II or built during World War II, prior to
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1 atmospheric testing, is among the cleanest steel that you'll
2 find on the face of the earth, because it doesn't have the
3 fallout that gets mixed in with everything, once we and the
4 Russians start testing.
5 So I'm just wondering. Is that considered
6 volumetrically contaminated, because it happened to be at
7 the K-25 plant?
8 MR. COSTNER: No.
9 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Okay. Thank you.
10 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner Dicus?
11 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Kind of a general question to
12 maybe all three of you, and you can all three answer or one
13 of you can answer or none of you answer, I guess.
14 But it's the issue that was brought up about the
15 European Commission, European Union, and ICRP-60, which does
16 require -- which, I've learned -- I didn't realize it, but
17 I've learned does require the countries of the European
18 Union to have a clearance rule. And, I think, four
19 countries have or are in the process of establishing a
20 clearance.
21 And I want to back up. I said this last week. I
22 said, you know, if the NRC -- and I want to make this very
23 clear. If the NRC makes a decision to go with a clearance
24 rule, and if we do in whatever level we choose, including
25 zero millirem and we go forward with this, I'd like kind of
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1 your input on how you see the United States, whatever we do,
2 being impacted by what the European community is doing,
3 because they do have and are going forward with a clearance
4 rule.
5 Could you -- would one of you like to attack that?
6 MR. KENNEDY: Well, certainly with the ANSI
7 standard, we were very concerned with that. We didn't do
8 formal comparisons with the draft information from Europe
9 until after the fact, because we didn't think it would be
10 technically credible to be overly influenced by what they
11 did. In fact, our decision to go with 1 millirem was only
12 made during the last round of review of the standard itself.
13 We think that there are several key issues. One
14 of them is how national authorities tend to regulate within
15 their countries, and we, for one, recognize that that is
16 something that is within the purview of each of the national
17 authorities. What the IAEA and the European Commission are
18 attempting to do is to provide recommendations to serve as
19 guidance to those member states, as they develop their
20 policy.
21 Now, specifically, how would their policies impact
22 us? One simple way is to interrupt commerce. Suppose
23 somebody didn't like the trans-boundary transfer of
24 materials from a country that had lesser restrictions than a
25 country that had more significant restrictions? Well,
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1 certainly that would be an issue.
2 In recent history where that came to bear was
3 post-Chernobyl, where different countries received different
4 levels of fallout and put in different policies and programs
5 to assure that their public was protected by their own
6 regulatory authorities.
7 This caused some trans-boundary problems in Europe
8 where milk or other items were not readily transportable
9 among the countries, and I believe that the efforts of IAEA
10 and the European Commission are to avoid that situation for
11 other areas of commerce dealing with, for example, recycled
12 or other materials that come from nuclear power. So I
13 believe it's founded on a wise common sense consideration of
14 past history.
15 COMMISSIONER DICUS: How would that impact us?
16 Let's say that we don't move forward, for example, with any
17 kind of rulemaking on clearance, but we will have material,
18 particularly possibly recycled metal, being shipped into the
19 United States. But if it's below what the European Union
20 has set as a millirem reading, we won't know that it's
21 potentially radioactive, because it's cleared. It won't
22 have this label it's possibly radioactive.
23 How's that going to impact us? I mean, how -- do
24 you have any comments about this, particularly EPA?
25 MR. CONKLIN: There's -- it could impact --
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1 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Because you've got to -- you
2 know, this is something we're going to have to address.
3 MR. CONKLIN: Exactly. And that's why we were --
4 one of the main reasons we've been involved with the IAEA
5 folk is we're looking at it from the trans-boundary issues
6 in an intervention-type aspect, because under the Federal
7 Radiological Emergency Response Plan, EPA is on the hook for
8 responding to events --
9 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Exactly.
10 MR. CONKLIN: -- that have an impact here in the
11 U.S. And there have been several incidents over the last
12 six or seven years that I've been at the EPA involved in
13 this issue, in which we've actually had material imported
14 into the U.S. through various shipping channels. Then it
15 gets to a facility that has the detection equipment. It
16 sets off their alarms, and we have to convene NRC, DOE, the
17 state folks and all that, to figure out what we're going to
18 do with the material and exactly what kind of hazard it is.
19 So it does create a situation in which you could
20 have, quote/unquote, emergency situations in which
21 everybody's wondering, What do we do with the material, and
22 that will eat up resources, because then we'll have to do a
23 case-by-case analysis of the material, what's in it, how
24 much is in it, where's it going, what's it being used for,
25 to determine what we're going to do with it, and whether or
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1 not we're going to send it back, and that creates --
2 COMMISSIONER DICUS: So I think this creates
3 another problem for us then to deal with.
4 MR. CONKLIN: Uh-huh.
5 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: I'd like to follow up on that
6 question. Do you have -- your response. Do you have a
7 trigger point you're using or threshold you're using, above
8 which you consider the material to be contaminated and below
9 which you tolerate its import to the United States?
10 MR. CONKLIN: No, we don't. That's one of the
11 things we're looking at, and that's one of the reasons why
12 we're being involved with the IAEA is to take a look at the
13 scenarios and parameters, and depending on how things
14 progress over in Europe and here, maybe establishing an
15 intervention level that we would then use with the Customs
16 agents to determine when we would respond and when we would
17 suggest that the Customs folks hold the material until it
18 can be looked at in more detail.
19 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Is it your intention that if
20 the material that is shipped here complies with the EC or
21 the IAEA standards, that that will be acceptable? Or is
22 that a matter that's still up in the air?
23 MR. CONKLIN: It's still up in the air.
24 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Did you have --
25 COMMISSIONER DICUS: I was just going to follow
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1 up. Are you working with Customs on these issues?
2 MR. CONKLIN: We have worked with them in the
3 past, and what we're trying to do is work with them on the
4 local, regional levels about these issues. We do know that
5 they're getting pagers -- well, not pagers, but detectors or
6 pager-sized detectors and things.
7 COMMISSIONER DICUS: We're aware of that. Yes.
8 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Mr. Chairman, there's
9 just one thing. I remember a story about two years ago
10 where the nuclear -- I think the Navy found some pots and
11 pans that had slight contamination in them. I remember an
12 EPA official being quoted in one of the trade presses,
13 saying that this was trivial and not to worry about it, so
14 at least as regards the Navy pots and pans, EPA seemed to
15 have a de minimis level.
16 Do you recall the incident?
17 MR. CONKLIN: I recall the incident. I don't
18 recall the individual right off hand. It may have been one
19 of our regional folks who --
20 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Yes. You can't control
21 those -- we know about that.
22 MR. CONKLIN: Because of their autonomy there,
23 but --
24 COMMISSIONER DICUS: But Navy pots and pans are
25 okay.
26
1 MR. CONKLIN: I would just -- my best
2 recollection, it was based on what was in those pots and
3 pans and what they're being used for, not based on an
4 explicit level that we had set.
5 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Okay.
6 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: And this is you. One of --
7 some of the people who have written to us have suggested
8 that we ought to impose some sort of a barrier where there
9 would be no contamination in material imported to the United
10 States should be allowed. In your deliberations, have you
11 looked at the implications of that, in terms of our
12 compliance with our international trade obligations?
13 MR. CONKLIN: No, we haven't. We are doing some
14 economic studies right now, gathering information on what
15 countries export and how much they export and the value of
16 that, and if values were set at different levels, what would
17 that mean as far as restriction of imports. But we have not
18 come to any conclusions or come to any final reports on
19 that. But it's something that we're going to have to
20 consider as we go forward in even thinking about
21 establishing an intervention level.
22 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: I know that there are many
23 cases in which the United States has been -- or other
24 countries have been trying to ship into Europe, and there
25 are barriers that have been imposed against the import into
27
1 Europe, and that there are international trade cases that
2 result from that, to the extent that those barriers cannot
3 be justified on health and safety basis.
4 There's a case, for example, I'm aware of where
5 British beef has been denied import into France on the basis
6 that there had been the mad cow scare. And once that had
7 been -- they had sufficient control over the British beef
8 that the health and safety concern had been resolved, that
9 is, that it was safe to be able to transport this material
10 internationally, there were issues that arose as to whether
11 a state that was a participant in various of the
12 international trade agreements was complying with the law in
13 barring the admission of that material. It does seem to me
14 this bears on this issue as well.
15 MR. CONKLIN: I would think so. It's something
16 that we haven't gotten into a whole lot of detail yet. It's
17 something that we're going to have to be looking at, though.
18 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: You indicated you're going to
19 be collecting data on these various imports. What's the
20 time frame within which you're going to be doing that?
21 MR. CONKLIN: Well, we're doing it right now,
22 actually. We have some work assignments with our
23 contractors on place right now. At the end of this fiscal
24 year, we're looking to have a draft report, which gives us
25 some information from which to determine where we go from
28
1 there.
2 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Mr. Kennedy, I'd like to get
3 your advice on a matter. It has struck me, as I reviewed
4 the comments that have been submitted on this issue, that
5 where there is a significant disconnect between or among our
6 various commenters is on the issue of the scientific
7 foundations for where -- what levels actually present the
8 meaningful risk and the public perceptions of the levels at
9 which risks are presented. And those, based on some of the
10 comments, seem to be a huge gulf in the viewpoint the people
11 bring to bear on that issue.
12 And I'm curious as to whether you have any
13 suggestions for us as to whether or how we should fold in
14 these perceptions of risk in our approach to this problem.
15 MR. KENNEDY: Perceptions of risk are always very
16 difficult to deal with. One can always say, education, but
17 education deals very little when emotions are involved. I
18 think what the American people would like to feel that the
19 regulatory system protects them from risks in a manner that
20 seeks a balance between what's technically possible and
21 what's emotionally demanded.
22 We recognize, as the Health Physics Society, that
23 that's very difficult to accomplish. However, we think
24 that, you know, the deliberations such as this by the
25 Commission and by our agencies are a healthful step in
29
1 bridging that gap, if you will, between perceived risks and
2 actual risks associated with any event in life.
3 I'm not sure I have anything much more to say on
4 this. I mean, it's a very complicated emotional issue, and
5 I believe allowing all sides to be aired as you make a
6 decision is a very wise path to go.
7 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
8 Commissioner Diaz.
9 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
10 Mr. Costner, I just want you to know that the
11 Commission appreciates the fact that the Department believes
12 that we should look at this issue, that it's an important
13 national issue, and I also believe that if you look at the
14 potential users of any type of standard or regulation, I
15 think the primary beneficiary in the short-term will be the
16 Department of Energy, so that certainly correlates with
17 itself, and it's a good thing.
18 Since you have so much of these materials that
19 might eventually be considered for disposal, for storage,
20 for controlled release, and since, you know, we are
21 primarily a health and safety agency, has the Department
22 looked at all of these materials and come to some
23 preliminary conclusions at what levels is public health and
24 safety going to be affected either from volumetric or
25 surface contaminated materials, at what dose level, at
30
1 what --
2 You know, do you have any inclination now, say,
3 between zero -- because zero is, you know, not very
4 reachable -- between zero and a thousandth of a millirem or
5 between a thousandth of a millirem and 1? Have any dose
6 base or any other levels, have you come up with some
7 internal recommendations? Which areas are you looking at?
8 MR. COSTNER: On the issue of the relative health
9 consequences at variable levels of radiation exposure, it's
10 certainly something that is very important to the
11 Department's operation and has been for decades, since the
12 establishment of the whole project that ultimately led to
13 the Department.
14 But it's an area that typically the Department
15 looks to outside entities, such as the Commission, to do
16 that work, or such as the EPA or the NCRP and the ICRP.
17 We're supportive of those roles, but it's not typically the
18 Department's responsibility to make the decision about how
19 to correlate an exposure to a dose or to a health effect.
20 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: So you don't have any
21 particular target areas in which you would suggest or
22 recommend that, at this level, this material might not be
23 considered, quote, radioactive, because it's at a level that
24 it's, you know, so little above background that it has no
25 public health and safety --
31
1 MR. COSTNER: That's correct. We're not making
2 any recommendation along those lines at this point.
3 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And I'm not trying to
4 oversimplify the problem. I understand this is just one
5 part of the issue. There are many multiple issues,
6 including, you know, the fact that we need to be not only
7 protective, but people need to feel that we are protective,
8 and also the economic issue. Okay. Thank you so much.
9 Mr. Conklin, at the beginning, you make a
10 statement that EPA had essentially focused on two public
11 health and safety issues, which you thought were the most
12 important ones, and you mentioned orphan sources and
13 imported materials, meaning that you were really not putting
14 any significant efforts into the area of release of
15 materials or clearance of materials, as the Europeans call
16 them.
17 Was that decision made because there was little
18 materials or little issues, or was it because you felt that
19 at the very low levels that these would be released, that
20 there was no significant public health and safety issue?
21 MR. CONKLIN: It was made for two reasons. One,
22 we though the risks associated with the orphan sources and
23 the imported materials was greater than the risk associated
24 with the recycling issue, and we have, like a lot of us,
25 limited resources.
32
1 We didn't have enough money and people to spread
2 around to cover everything we would want to cover, so we had
3 to make basically a business decision on where we wanted to
4 put our efforts and get the most bang for the buck, if you
5 will, and we thought that, with our role in the Federal
6 Radiological Response Plan and the level of risk that we
7 were seeing, that we'd be better off going with the orphan
8 sources and the import issue.
9 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: But you did not see the issue
10 of release of solid materials as a significant public health
11 and safety issue, as compared to the other ones.
12 MR. CONKLIN: That's correct.
13 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Thank you.
14 And, Mr. Kennedy, you're a practicing health
15 physicist. Now, a lot of people don't know what health
16 physics is. We'll call it, for the time being, you're a
17 practicing radiation protection specialist, which probably
18 fits more, so you dedicate yourself to the, you know,
19 protection of people from radiation hazards.
20 From your direct experience, at the levels that
21 you indicated, 1 millirem or less in those concentrations,
22 how do you think the potential public health and safety or
23 health hazards to members of the population of this country,
24 which is where we're dealing now with, from the release of
25 solid materials, compared to other radiation hazards, NORM,
33
1 T-NORM, you know, going to the dentist, you know, going to
2 the doctor?
3 Could you give me an idea from your perspective at
4 1 millirem level. Can you distinguish the potential health
5 hazards at 1 millirem, from having, you know, a procedure at
6 the dentist's office or, you know, whatever else.
7 MR. KENNEDY: Yes. I always like to answer that
8 question by saying that I got about five times more dose
9 flying to and from this meeting from my home in Washington
10 state than if I were exposed to a 1-millirem-per-year
11 source, so --
12 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Excuse me. Somebody would say
13 that that is because you wanted to; it's voluntary. And,
14 you know, I think one of the issues that comes in here is
15 that in society, we all get risks that are not voluntary.
16 When you get onto an expressway to go to work, you might
17 think that's voluntary, but if you don't go on the
18 expressway, you might not have a job.
19 But people make the difference between being
20 voluntary and being involuntary, and that is from the public
21 perception. I think it's a very important point, because
22 people say, you know, I don't have to have this, or you
23 selected to go onto the airplane.
24 But from the radiation protection viewpoint, at
25 the dose level, do you think that anybody could determine
34
1 there is any deleterious health impact?
2 MR. KENNEDY: No, sir, I do not.
3 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Anything else you want to add
4 to that?
5 MR. KENNEDY: Well, yes. The 1 millirem, I
6 started to say, is not only a low dose compared to a lot of
7 other activities whether they're voluntary or involuntary,
8 but it's also well within the natural fluctuation of
9 background sources and is, therefore, very difficult to
10 quantify in terms of lifestyle decisions that people
11 knowingly or unknowingly make in terms of their radiation
12 exposure. And I don't believe that the 1 millirem dose
13 level can be reflected in terms of cancers or other types of
14 health effects in any population.
15 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Okay. Thank you, sir.
16 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner Merrifield.
17 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
18 Mr. Costner, the first thing I want to ask you
19 about is: How much of the material the Department of Energy
20 has an expectation it needs to deal with that is allegedly
21 contaminated, how much of that do you anticipate is going to
22 be volumetrically contaminated, such as the materials from
23 K-25, that have to be melted for security reasons versus
24 that portion of the material on which there's surface
25 contamination that can be dealt with?
35
1 MR. COSTNER: Current projections are -- and these
2 numbers are certainly --
3 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Won't hold you to them.
4 MR. COSTNER: -- not certain, so -- the total
5 amounts of metals that are presumed to be in the DOE complex
6 range from about a million to about 1.4 million tons,
7 depending on the estimates you use.
8 And, like I say, at this point, based on how those
9 were created, I don't consider any of them to be sort of the
10 current numbers, if we were to go out and look at the total
11 number of surplus facilities, et cetera, but something
12 that's more like a million-plus tons. The amount of that
13 that's volumetrically contaminated is probably on the order
14 of 50,000 tons or less total, primarily nickel, some copper,
15 a little bit of other stuff.
16 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you. I was going
17 through my DOE news clips yesterday, and I noticed there was
18 an article on a proposal by British Petroleum -- I guess
19 it's now called BP Amoco -- to build the world's longest
20 undersea pipeline in the Beaufort Sea, up in Alaska. That
21 pipeline would be buried under the sea floor, under cover of
22 about nine feet.
23 The theory, although it doesn't state it in the
24 article, is that once that pipeline completed its use, that
25 it would remain in place; it would not be taken back out. I
36
1 don't know that for certain, but that's my expectation.
2 Has the Department of Energy looked at restricted
3 uses of radiologically contaminated metals for uses such as
4 this, that would be -- and I know we've talked about
5 obviously containers for low-level waste and things of this
6 nature. But are there other uses of steel in an industrial
7 capacity that would not involve direct human use, but would,
8 in effect, be like this, where that material would not be
9 recycled, where it would be a closed cycle?
10 MR. COSTNER: Well, the oil and gas industry is
11 looking at some options that are at least probably
12 comparable to that kind of scenario for reusing its own
13 piping. The Department is also looking at the issue of
14 restricted reuse, and at this point, we're focusing
15 principally on waste container activities, things that are
16 going to stay within the confines of a federally controlled
17 facility.
18 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Mr. Conklin,
19 obviously -- and this probably falls somewhat outside your
20 area, and it is a philosophical question. But the EPA, for
21 example, under the Safe Drinking Water Act, has to deal with
22 a couple of issues, one of them being the "how clean is
23 clean" standard.
24 Our ability as a society not only in the
25 radiological area but in the chemical area as well, we're
37
1 able to measure contamination much greater than our ability
2 in many cases to either remove it or to otherwise deal with
3 it.
4 And so, in part, under the Safe Drinking Water Act
5 and through congressional action, we have made a
6 determination that our drinking water, which is considered
7 safe to drink, can include specified standards for things
8 like arsenic, which is, obviously in the wrong
9 concentrations, bad for us. Some arsenic occurs in nature.
10 In my home state of New Hampshire, we have high
11 levels of arsenic in water naturally, but some arsenic is
12 introduced. The Safe Drinking Water standards don't make a
13 determination, a difference between the two, between that
14 which is naturally occurring and that which is not.
15 Do you see any analogies here in what we're
16 grappling with or not, as it relates to radiological
17 contamination of these materials?
18 MR. CONKLIN: In all honesty, I haven't thought a
19 lot about that, and I'm probably better off not jumping
20 right into that.
21 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Okay. That's fair;
22 that's fair. I think it's -- I mean, obviously the EPA has
23 significant amounts of experience in this area, and
24 obviously you can supplement your comments later on. It
25 might be useful for us to gain an understanding of how EPA
38
1 grapples with similar issues but in a dissimilar manner.
2 Mr. Kennedy, I -- you made a very clear
3 presentation about the scientific basis for why you feel
4 that clearance standards that have been discussed would be
5 the appropriate way to go and how your standards compare
6 with the direction that the Europeans are going.
7 In the testimony that we're going to receive later
8 on today from the next two panels, we're going to have some
9 folks who have some very strong feelings. Part of those
10 feelings are based on public perceptions and concerns about
11 things that are radioactive, and some of those concerns are
12 based on an economic basis, a concern by some of the steel
13 industry folks, for example, that if they have to have their
14 steel -- if they have to be involved with radiologically
15 contaminated materials, that the public perception will make
16 their products less saleable, that people won't want to buy
17 their products because of a fear of that contamination.
18 I was struck a little bit by some of this by my
19 childhood, you know, the old issue of cod liver oil. My
20 parents always wanted me to take cod liver oil and told me
21 how good it was for me and there were no health
22 consequences, but it just didn't taste very good going down,
23 so I didn't want to take it. And it strikes me --
24 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: This demonstrates you
25 grew up in New England.
39
1 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: It does, indeed. And so
2 I'm -- some of this conversation strikes me as similarly
3 analogous, that one can make a scientific argument that this
4 is okay, but, you know, the public feels differently. They
5 just don't feel comfortable with that.
6 How do we deal with -- what's your reaction to
7 that? How do we deal with the public concern aspects and
8 the economic consequences, aside from sort of the pure
9 scientific discussion that one might want to enter into?
10 MR. KENNEDY: You know, reflecting on past
11 history, when there's been a problem of contamination of
12 consumer products or of resource stream, it's been because
13 there has been a gap, shall we say, in the regulatory
14 process, where a control might have existed that would have
15 prevented that situation from occurring.
16 I think that regulations in this area are very
17 much akin to that, where making case-by-case determinations
18 and approach the problem in terms of nondetectable or zero
19 release sometimes aren't the most prudent path in terms of
20 public radiation protection.
21 I think my viewpoint is that having a regulation
22 that balances these issues and arrives at a consistent and
23 credible method for making decisions is far wiser than
24 allowing a continuation of a case-by-case situation that can
25 be highly variable and highly influenced by near-field
40
1 conditions, if you will, without a perspective of the
2 broader issues that are really involved.
3 And one of those issues is public confidence, that
4 the public is being adequately protected from harmful
5 sources of radiation. The question is: How do you
6 determine if a source is harmful or not if you don't have a
7 consistent regulatory basis within which to make that
8 decision? Clearly, in terms of metal recycle, what we would
9 see is a regulation -- what I would envision would be a
10 regulation that would make that decision-making process
11 somewhat streamlined.
12 If the metal is in excess of a criteria and it is
13 proven uneconomical to further decontaminate it, then it is
14 clearly radioactive waste and should be handled as such.
15 Sometimes those decisions can be made very simply, as DOE
16 likes to say, in terms of process knowledge. We know the
17 origin of the material, and we can make a simple decision
18 without committing resources in terms of surveys or records
19 or other sorts of things.
20 In other cases, it's not so straightforward and
21 having a clear, consistent policy and a decision framework,
22 I think, would be very beneficial, and in the long run,
23 would increase consumer confidence because they would know
24 that there is a due process that's being followed
25 consistently in every area.
41
1 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
2 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: I'd like to thank the panel for
3 a very helpful and interesting presentation.
4 And we'll now turn to our second panel.
5 Participants on the second panel include Diane D'Arrigo,
6 who's the director of the Radioactive Waste Project for the
7 Nuclear Information and Resource Service, or NIRS; David
8 Adelman, who's a project attorney with the Natural Resources
9 Defense Counsel; Steve Collins, who is assistant manager,
10 Office of Radiation Safety for the Illinois Department of
11 Nuclear Safety. He's appearing here on behalf of the
12 Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors,
13 Incorporated, and the Organization of Agreement States.
14 And then finally we have Jeff Deckler, who is the
15 remedial programs manager for the Department of Public
16 Health and Environment for the State of Colorado, and he's
17 here, representing the Association of State and Territorial
18 Solid Waste Management Officials.
19 Robert Holden of the National Congress of American
20 Indians was scheduled to appear this morning, and we've just
21 gotten notice that he is ill and unable to participate.
22 So why don't we get underway. Ms. D'Arrigo?
23 MS. D'ARRIGO: Yes. I wanted to see if it would
24 be possible if I spoke a little shorter, if Wenonah Hauter
25 from Public Citizen could have a minute or two also.
42
1 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: What we'd like --
2 MS. D'ARRIGO: It's her birthday.
3 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: It's her birthday? Well, we'd
4 like to keep it to five -- as I indicated, I think -- I
5 don't know if you were here beforehand. We like to keep all
6 of these presentations to five minutes, and if the two of
7 you can keep it within five minutes, that would be fine.
8 MS. D'ARRIGO: Plus Robert's not here. All right.
9 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is asking the
10 public's opinion, and I have the Commissioners with
11 opposition statements from over 100 organizations. We
12 repeat that we do not want any more exposure from nuclear
13 power and weapons fuel chain.
14 That means we want the source byproduct and
15 special nuclear material that's now under control of
16 governments and companies to remain regulated and monitored
17 and isolated from general commerce as long as it's
18 radioactively and chemically hazardous.
19 We're asking that the Nuclear Regulatory
20 Commission require that these materials remain in regulatory
21 control, because it is your job to prevent exposures to the
22 public and the environment, not to convince us that it's a
23 trivial amount.
24 And I apologize for being a few minutes late, but
25 the multiple exposures of how many times we're going to get
43
1 a millirem or up to a millirem is something of concern, the
2 lack of verifiability, the multiple and synergistic effects,
3 the effects on the fetus and genetic instability, these are
4 real.
5 These are not just public perceptions, and it's
6 frustrating that it's couched as just a public perception of
7 a problem that you who know better or the scientific people
8 who are putting together the risk estimates know better,
9 that this is just a trivial risk. So we ask that the
10 Commission take their job seriously and develop workable
11 scenarios to prohibit the release of more source byproduct
12 and special nuclear material from the fuel chain into the
13 marketplace.
14 We believe that punting the public attention to
15 the National Academy of Sciences is a waste of tax dollars.
16 It was admitted at your briefing last week that part of the
17 reason for that is to divert attention from the NRC while
18 you're continuing to develop a technical basis, and we have
19 problems with how the technical basis has been and is being
20 developed.
21 We wanted to forewarn you that the National
22 Academy of Sciences does not have the prestigious reputation
23 that you might hope regarding radioactive waste and
24 radiation issues. There have been at least four or five
25 studies in the past and ongoing that have been documented to
44
1 be biased, secretive, imbalanced, and we have a fear that,
2 of course, this will be repeated again.
3 There were letters from federal and state
4 officials and National Academy members themselves to NAS
5 president on the Yucca Mountain review, the Ward Valley
6 review, the review of low-level waste sitting in New York
7 State, 1995, criticizing those points.
8 And the ongoing NAS study on the biological
9 effects of ionizing radiation is under serious international
10 review and criticism right now. There is not one person on
11 the panel that we can identify who believes that the risks
12 are greater at low doses than currently estimated. Yet
13 there is a field of science, legitimate field of science,
14 for that belief, and it's not at all represented on this
15 panel that's reassessing low doses.
16 The NAS board that's proposed to carry out this
17 study, the Board on Energy and Environmental Studies, in
18 their report, Affordable Clean-up, in 1996, actually has
19 already recommended that DOE and regulatory authorities set
20 free release standards quickly and permit recycling of
21 recovered materials within the DOE complex or for sale to
22 the commercial market where economically feasible.
23 At another location, they state that a DOE
24 commitment to permit such release, once the new criteria
25 have been approved, is essential. This does not bode well
45
1 for those of us who want a review of whether or not there
2 should be release at all. This was why the organizations
3 and a lot of the public boycotted your public participation
4 process earlier or last year.
5 The NAS procedures are highly secretive. They
6 refuse to share information that the public needs to know
7 during this kind of process, so we oppose the contract
8 that's being proposed and ask the NRC to move directly to
9 prohibiting releases.
10 It's unconscionable that the NRC is attempting to
11 justify standards to release nuclear waste into commerce and
12 pointing to international efforts to do so, when, in fact,
13 the NRC is one of the biggest motivators of the
14 international standards being set in the first place.
15 And the agencies that we're looking at, the
16 International Atomic Energy Agency, the European
17 Commissions, URATEM section and the Nuclear Energy Agency of
18 OECD are comprised of nuclear promoters, nuclear industry
19 representatives, and thus to look at them as if they are
20 some kind of impartial protector of the public is misguided.
21 And then to send -- ask the National Academy of
22 Sciences, which we've already had serious and have serious
23 problems with to review the work of those agencies and be
24 very specific to that is not going to assuage public
25 concerns or help to build credibility. The way to get
46
1 credibility is to actually protect from the radioactivity
2 and to at least develop a scenario by which the materials
3 would not be released, and we would not be exposed.
4 I have just one more point. I think it's ironic
5 that the -- that recycling, which has a very positive
6 connotation and it took a while for that to happen, is now
7 being threatened by the contamination from the nuclear
8 industry. Recycling's a great idea, but not when you're
9 going to contaminate it with any level of poison that
10 doesn't need to be there.
11 And there is a distinction between that which is
12 already there and that which you've already got under lock
13 and key, and are going to deliberately release because you
14 believe that it's a trivial dose and you believe that
15 somebody is going to develop tables that give levels that
16 somebody's going to actually measure accurately with the
17 proper equipment and the proper training and the proper
18 oversight into the marketplace where the results will never
19 be verifiable; they are not enforceable.
20 Therefore, even if I was to accept a millirem,
21 which I am not, from any number of different sources, I
22 could never be guaranteed, I could never be shown, that I'm
23 actually only getting that amount, and so that's a
24 frustration.
25 We're frustrated by the refusal of the Commission
47
1 at every level to do what it's charged to do to protect us
2 from ionizing radiation, from source byproduct and special
3 nuclear materials. It's not your job to deal with naturally
4 occurring. If you want to take that job on, let's talk
5 about that, but just because it's already happening, just
6 because it's already out there does not justify adding to
7 it.
8 And, finally, we do support the rights of state
9 and local governments to be more protective and stringent
10 than the Federal Government, not less.
11 MS. HAUTER: I'll be very brief. Public Citizen
12 has been a very outspoken critic of the World Trade
13 Organization and its chilling effect on democracy. Rather
14 than being able to hold our elected representatives and
15 agencies accountable, it punts this to an international
16 organization where there's no accountability.
17 The NRC directive to the NAS to look at the
18 international proceedings and the discussion this morning is
19 a really good example of what we have been talking about.
20 The NRC's charge to the NAS to look at the international
21 perspective is just further tainting this process.
22 Even the language used by the staff, saying that
23 the alternatives for slightly contaminated radioactive
24 materials, doesn't consider some of the problems that we've
25 been pointing out, like the Department of Energy's inability
48
1 to assure us that plutonium has not been released in a
2 case-by-case basis in the past.
3 And it's very clear that the NRC is not just
4 punting this difficult issue, but using the international
5 trade issue as a way to move along setting a standard that's
6 going to allow releases.
7 And what we would like to ask is that we have a
8 real debate in this country as to whether it's appropriate
9 to have any international trade of products that have
10 radioactive contamination, much less to be importing and
11 exporting those products.
12 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
13 Mr. Adelman?
14 MR. ADELMAN: First I'd like to thank the chairman
15 and the members of the Commission for giving me the
16 opportunity to speak today.
17 I want to start by saying that I've generally been
18 dismayed by the kind of debate that has surrounded the issue
19 of setting a de minimis standard, and I believe that the DOE
20 and NRC officials bear particular responsibility for the
21 dynamic because of their inability or unwillingness to do
22 more than assert the correctness of their position without
23 first attempting to explain the basis for it in a meaningful
24 way to the public.
25 In my testimony, my hope is to identify some of
49
1 the sources of the public's concern more specifically; that
2 is, to try incrementally to move beyond a stalemate, towards
3 a broader discussion that will promote a fuller
4 understanding of the issues and the bases for public
5 concern.
6 I think a central issue that people among the
7 public interest groups have raised is just this general lack
8 of credibility of the nuclear industry, generally DOE and
9 NRC in particular. Both NRC and DOE have a long history of
10 poor relations with the public and of failing to safely
11 control radioactively contaminated materials, and this
12 continues today.
13 The NRC, for example, was caught flat-footed when
14 it was brought to its attention that the contractor
15 conducting the technical analysis for its proposed rule,
16 SAIC, had a direct conflict of interest for its work with
17 B&FL;, a major DOE contractor.
18 For its part, the DOE ha avoided the open public
19 engagement recommended by 1996 National Academy of Sciences
20 study it sponsored when it chose to proceed with the massive
21 Oak Ridge radioactive metals recycling project without
22 complying with NEPA or providing adequate public notice.
23 There are also numerous examples of DOE releasing
24 radioactive materials improperly. The recent reports of
25 improper releases and dumping of radioactive materials at
50
1 Paducah is just one of the most recent examples in a long
2 line of such problems.
3 In short, if the NRC and DOE cannot manage such
4 materials in a purportedly highly regulated environment,
5 what confidence can the public possibly have that they can
6 do so when they release it for use in consumer products?
7 The implementation problems are equally serious
8 and of significant public concern. The public is skeptical
9 about the NRC's ability reasonably to evaluate the human
10 health impacts associated with the de minimis standard.
11 Examples of specific issues are aggregate effects of
12 multiple exposures to different contaminated materials,
13 synergistic effects with other carcinogens, and assessing
14 the long-term impacts of radionuclides that remain hazardous
15 for literally thousands of years.
16 The public is also profoundly concerned about the
17 capacity of DOE and NRC licensees to release materials
18 safely and in compliance with whatever standard is set. The
19 reasons for this include the difficulties involved with
20 surveying equipment for contamination and questions about
21 whether proper instrumentation is available and will be used
22 effectively. None of these issues has been adequately
23 addressed to the satisfaction of the public.
24 Finally, the public does not understand why
25 recycling of such materials is necessary, but the most basic
51
1 question the public is asking is why materials contaminated
2 with nuclear waste need to be recycled in the first place.
3 What is the underlying policy? This is
4 particularly relevant, given the low value of steel which
5 makes up the vast bulk of metals that could be recycled.
6 Not even the economics appear to support recycling such
7 materials. Moreover, such a standard, when applied to
8 recycling, establishes a dangerous precedent of turning
9 recycling into a form of hazardous waste disposal, which is
10 achieved by diluting contaminants in bulk commercial
11 products.
12 At a basic intuitive level, just like radioactive
13 baby carriages and kitchen utensils, this just seems like
14 bad public policy. Neither the NRC nor DOE has provided a
15 clear, understandable explanation for why such a standard is
16 necessary or why, in particular, recycling of contaminated
17 materials makes sense.
18 Lacking public confidence, facing serious public
19 concerns about practical, real-world problems and failing to
20 address basic public policy issues coherently, it is no
21 wonder that the NRC and DOE have run into such strong public
22 opposition. These concerns must be addressed before
23 proceeding with a rule or, indeed, proceeding with any
24 further releases of contaminated materials.
25 Just one final point I want to emphasize is that
52
1 there's been a lot of discussion this morning so far about
2 public perception, and that's both with regard to the risks
3 themselves, but I think more importantly, it's about the
4 credibility of the nuclear industry, the NRC, and DOE, and
5 that's as important an issue, that political issue, as
6 important as the technical issues that you folks are
7 considering right now.
8 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
9 Mr. Collins?
10 MR. COLLINS: Slides, please.
11 I'm here today to represent 49 states, because
12 only 49 of the states plus the District and some territories
13 have radiation protection programs. I did provide my draft
14 comments to all of those and did not receive any suggestions
15 for change.
16 The primary thing that's most of my talk to you
17 this morning will actually be suggestions regarding the
18 control of solid materials as opposed to comments on your
19 SECY document, even though there are some of those.
20 The NRC and the States, as equal partners, should
21 establish uniform national dose-based criteria for the
22 control of solid materials, to ensure consistent, adequate
23 protection of the public. The States license a majority of
24 the licensees and regulate all forms of radioactive
25 material, not just those covered by the Atomic Energy Act.
53
1 The States have matured such that centers of expertise are
2 no longer at NRC but in state programs as well.
3 The States' motive, covered on the next slide, is
4 to ensure consistent application of uniform criteria and
5 adequate protection of the public, workers and the
6 environment, without excessive cost, while conserving our
7 natural resources.
8 The States believe that scientific consensus
9 standards and recommendations are the appropriate basis for
10 a dose-based criterion. We think that the NRC and the
11 States should look thoroughly at the National Council on
12 Radiation Protection and Measurements, International
13 Commission on Radiation Protection, the International Atomic
14 Energy Agency, and the American National Standards Institute
15 standard that Mr. Kennedy discussed earlier today as the
16 basis for dose-based criteria.
17 The current guidance that's used was based on
18 technical capabilities of survey instruments. These
19 instrument capabilities have changed. They've gotten more
20 and more sensitive, with no concurrent change to the
21 guidance.
22 Licensees use different survey instruments that
23 have different levels of detection. This will lead to
24 disagreements when materials are transferred and confusion
25 over what permissible levels are of release. These
54
1 disagreements end up being very costly to both those
2 licensees, the recipients of material, and to primarily the
3 state regulatory agencies who go out and investigate these
4 situations.
5 We believe that the scientifically correct action
6 is to establish criteria for release of solid materials that
7 are definitely adequately protective of the public, the
8 workers, and the environment. We know that this action will
9 not be supported by some, as you heard this morning. We
10 think the reasons will be other than actual radiation risk.
11 We know that there's radioactivity in everything.
12 Radioactivity is not a significant radiological risk to
13 anyone at 1 millirem a year. The level was selected and
14 recommended by these groups mentioned earlier, considering
15 the benefits, the cost, and the public's reluctance to
16 accept anything other than a trivial dose.
17 We believe that the National Academy of Sciences
18 Board on Energy and Environmental Systems Study and
19 recommendations on possible alternatives that has been
20 requested will provide recommendations that are needed to
21 supplement your SECY document, and we believe that they'll
22 end up supporting a decision that rulemaking is needed for
23 the control of solid materials. I want to keep emphasizing
24 the word "control" as opposed to release.
25 Further, and something you may not have heard from
55
1 us before, is we do not believe any rule or policy that
2 should come out of -- that may come out of this process --
3 we don't believe that that should prevent commercial firms
4 from imposing additional restrictions for materials used as
5 feedstock, if that firm believes that the loss of market
6 share or other harm from acceptance of release materials is
7 likely to occur.
8 What is the States' vision for implementation of
9 the criteria? We have used, as has NRC, case-by-case
10 evaluations in the past. We believe that no unsafe releases
11 of radioactivity has occurred, but there has been some extra
12 costs for materials that have been legally cleared, legally
13 cleared solid materials.
14 The States want flexibility. We want to be able
15 to continue a case-by-case evaluation, but with uniform
16 criteria on derived values to base these case-by-case
17 evaluations on. We do want the values that are derived from
18 release of radioactive solids, along with all of that
19 back-up information, data, analyses, and description of how
20 they were determined, including the models and all that, to
21 be made available, so that we can use that information on
22 our case-by-case evaluations.
23 We do not want to allow licensees to exercise the
24 provisions of a rule independently, without the specific
25 approval of the regulatory body. That's being more
56
1 restrictive. But the States also want to be able to
2 approve, based on case-by-case evaluation higher levels, for
3 example, levels based on maybe 10 millirem a year to an
4 average member of critical group, when we have more specific
5 information on the nuclide, its half life and what the
6 destination of this material may be and those things that we
7 can assure ourselves that will not be a significant dose to
8 the public.
9 We know that the recycling of cleared materials
10 will occur if you had this rule only after sorting of metal,
11 such that no metals above the recommended 1 millirem per
12 year release criteria would find its way into commerce.
13 How do we know that or how would we assure that?
14 We would want a final survey or analysis just prior to the
15 release of the contaminated solids, with documentation of
16 those assay results. That could increase the benefits and
17 reduce the cost for the metals industries and for the
18 regulatory agencies.
19 We want to present the facts from all these
20 technical documents that have been presented -- we want to
21 present those facts to the public in plain language. That
22 has not been done yet.
23 The States' written comments outline items that
24 the States believe are important in demonstrating that
25 uniform national criteria for control of very low levels of
57
1 radioactivity and solid materials should be established.
2 The results of doing this should be improved consistency in
3 our radiation protection requirements, continued adequate
4 protection of the public, workers and the environment
5 without too much excessive cost, and conservation of our
6 natural and economic resources.
7 We strongly encourage the NRC to pursue rulemaking
8 in this area. We encourage the NRC to adopt criteria as
9 recommended by these international scientific bodies and
10 particularly the ANSI standard. And I would like to add
11 that we would encourage NRC to leave it to the States to
12 deal with T-NORM, the oil and gas industry in particular.
13 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you very much.
14 Mr. Deckler?
15 MR. DECKLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
16 ASTSWMO is a group of state regulating agencies,
17 and most of we regulators are also scientists, except for
18 the few that are unfortunately lawyers. And as --
19 VOICE: Hey, wait a minute, now.
20 MR. DECKLER: As regulators and scientists,
21 normally we would look at a rule like this from two
22 perspectives. One, is it technically justifiable? And,
23 two, does it improve the regulatory process?
24 And when ASTSWMO initially looked at the issues
25 paper, we supported the formulation of this rule from both
58
1 of those aspects. The people in ASTSWMO believe that there
2 is some level that is above zero that is protective of human
3 health and the environment and that the ASTM recommendation
4 of 1 millirem is probably a pretty good place to start.
5 And we also believe that in terms of regulatory
6 process, having a known standard that provides consistency
7 and minimizes agency review has obvious benefits to it. And
8 if life were that simple, I could stop talking now, and in
9 fact, you wouldn't be having this meeting, but we all know
10 life isn't that simple.
11 You got 800 comments on this proposed rule, and
12 while the chairman was kind enough to couch that in terms
13 of, he had the benefit of 800 comments, we all know that it
14 presents an enormous, if not impossible, challenge to try
15 and reconcile those 800 comments and decide what to do with
16 this rule. And I'm not necessarily here to make it easier
17 for you, because I think NRC's got some gut-check level of
18 decisions that you're going to have to make.
19 I was having a discussion with my wife before I
20 came to this meeting about coming here and what the issues
21 were, and she basically said to me that even if I could tell
22 her, as a scientist and as her husband, that the eating
23 utensil she was about to use had trace levels of radiation
24 in it and it was safe, she would still choose not to use
25 that eating utensil. And if I can't convince my wife that
59
1 it's safe, how is NRC going to convince the rest of the
2 country? That's a very tough, tough issue.
3 And so rather than come out straightforward and
4 have ASTSWMO's support going forward with the rule, I think
5 what ASTSWMO would do at this point is to go along with the
6 staff recommendation that a rule be delayed at this point
7 for some further investigation.
8 Where ASTSWMO differs a little bit from where NRC
9 is going is that we think the investigation should not be
10 focused on the technical issues. As you heard before in the
11 previous panel, we've probably gone a pretty long way in
12 doing risk assessments, to show what levels may or may not
13 be safe, and we have, in fact, limited the range of what
14 looks right, at least to the scientists and regulators.
15 But as we've also heard on this panel, that just
16 isn't being bought by the general public, and, in fact, not
17 to contradict Steve here, but talking in plain language
18 isn't going to do it. It's not that the general public
19 doesn't understand what we're telling them; it's not that we
20 haven't explained the science in laymen's terms. It's just
21 that we're coming from a totally different perspective that
22 has been alluded to here before about the perception of
23 risk.
24 And so what I suggest for NRC to take a look at a
25 few different things. One is: How important is this rule
60
1 to NRC itself? In the issues paper, you mention that in the
2 long term, this would hopefully be less resources on the
3 NRC, to have a rule instead of a case-by-case basis.
4 You should really fully evaluate that to see how
5 efficient that's going to be for you, because, in fact,
6 proposing a rule is going to cause you a lot of grief, and
7 you're going to have to think of, is that grief going to be
8 worth it to you, in terms of your saved resources?
9 Or, in fact -- and I'll pick this up from the
10 panel right now -- would the increased credibility to NRC by
11 not going forward with a rule, would that be of more benefit
12 to you than the decreased resources of having a rule. I
13 don't have the answer to that question, but it's something
14 that you need to take a look at yourself.
15 How important is this rule to the licensees? What
16 percentage of material do they have that's between whatever
17 our magic number might be -- let's say it's 1 millirem. How
18 much of their material is between zero and 1, and what
19 percentage of their disposal cost does that represent? Is
20 it trivial? Is it .1 percent of their total disposal costs,
21 or is it 90 percent of their disposal costs? How important
22 is it really to them?
23 Then you need to take a look at: What do we
24 really have out there, in terms of waste streams? During
25 one of the public meetings that I attended, people talked
61
1 about the need to case by case release office chairs that
2 were nowhere near a contaminated area.
3 Well, if 90 percent of a waste treatment's office
4 chairs, I think we could probably do a rule on office
5 chairs, and you'd have very little opposition. But if 90
6 percent of the material is steel that needs to be recycled,
7 we know that there's opposition there, not only from the
8 general public but from the steel industry.
9 And we'd further ask the question: If the steel
10 industry is going to refuse to accept this material, what
11 good did it do to have a rule? You'll be able to have a lot
12 of material released, and no one's going to take it. So, in
13 fact, the rule might be ineffectual, even though you've got
14 it there.
15 So I think you need to take a look at that: What
16 are your waste streams? And are people going to be
17 accepting this on the recycling end? And in that light, I
18 would also suggest: I know that the steel industry
19 recommended during one of the meetings that you guys sit
20 down and maybe come to some type of agreement.
21 I don't know if you've done that, but I certainly
22 would suggest that any industry that's going to be accepting
23 recycled material be brought to the table and, you know,
24 maybe more one-on-one fashion, although I know everything
25 you do needs to be open, and talked about, do they have any
62
1 suggestions about what would work for them, either the steel
2 industry or the concrete industry or whoever.
3 And, lastly, I think a lot of work needs to be
4 done on this whole issue of perception. And I know we
5 talked about voluntary and involuntary risk. I think that
6 gets used a lot today. I think it's not as simple as we'd
7 like to believe.
8 When I fly on a plane, the voluntary risk I accept
9 is that that plane may crash. I have no idea that I'm
10 undergoing an additional radiation exposure. I do now,
11 because I'm in the field, but my guess is most of the
12 American public doesn't, and I'm not sure that that -- so I
13 think there are gray areas in terms of voluntary and
14 involuntary risks that need to be take a look at .
15 In France, the French people inherently trust
16 their government, and when the government says the nuclear
17 industry is safe, they believe them. In the United States,
18 that's not the case. Why is that?
19 You know, maybe it's because, you know, people
20 look at certain incidents and say that that shows that we
21 are secretive. I don't know whether our government's more
22 secretive than the French government.
23 I don't know whether our public is more perceptive
24 than the French public. I don't know what the answer is,
25 but there's an issue there that I think we need to take a
63
1 look at. What is it about government credibility, and how
2 can we increase that credibility with the public?
3 And, you know, is there a difference between
4 having a rule and having the case-by-case? The idea of
5 having this rule has brought out a lot of emotion, and
6 sociologically, what's the difference there between the way
7 people feel about having a rule and having case by case?
8 Would a rule really mean that 100 times more material is
9 being released, or is it really just some issue of, again,
10 perception and context?
11 Those sociological issues are pretty long-term,
12 and I don't know that you can wait to solve all of those
13 before you get to a rule, but I would say that whether you
14 can or not, I would suggest that we in government all over
15 need to do a lot of work in that area and really start to
16 devote a lot of attention there.
17 I'm from Colorado. We just had a Super Fund site
18 where we decided to leave it in Denver, the Shaddock site.
19 I'm sure a lot of people have heard of it. It's made
20 national news. Again, from a technical standpoint, we
21 thought it was safe. It was completely unacceptable to the
22 public, and we're now sending $25 million or so to pick up
23 the material we put there in the first place and ship it to
24 another state.
25 So I don't have answers for you on how to deal
64
1 with these issues, but I know that they need to be dealt
2 with. And, again, I would just suggest that as part of what
3 NRC's continued research is on the issue, the sociological
4 part of the picture not be left out. Thank you.
5 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
6 Commissioner Merrifield?
7 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Ms. D'Arrigo, you
8 clearly articulated your concern about moving forward with
9 any kind of a release standard and that we shouldn't be
10 adding additional contamination to the consumer stream.
11 There are -- and I think Commissioner McGaffigan
12 alluded somewhat to this. There are obviously materials
13 that we have in the waste stream right now which do have
14 levels of radioactivity, whether it is from atomic bomb
15 testing in the '50s or whether it is from naturally
16 occurring materials.
17 If we were to go down the road that you're
18 suggesting and saying, Okay, we shouldn't release any of
19 this, how do we deal with the practical consequences of what
20 is already in the waste stream and setting a base line. We
21 talked a little bit about materials coming in from outside.
22 If we, as a country, were to decide, we're not
23 going to have any additional contamination, yet we're
24 confronted with pots and pans and baby carriages that come
25 in from Europe, where they may have decided it's okay, how
65
1 do we -- how do we regulate that. I don't have a picture --
2 MS. D'ARRIGO: We change our gears on what the NRC
3 is doing in promoting international standards that will
4 legalize and encourage trade in slightly contaminated
5 materials. We take the stance that there should not be
6 contamination in our country or any other country, and we
7 work to prevent releases internationally.
8 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: I'm trying to think
9 of -- and, again, I'm assuming it's a perfect world for you
10 and we went directly the direction that you're suggesting.
11 How --
12 MS. D'ARRIGO: At least we have the goal of going
13 in that direction, which is not even -- we don't even have
14 that. But okay.
15 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Okay. But how do we
16 deal with the waste stream that we currently have here? Ow
17 do we deal with ISRI and the scrap recycling industry, and
18 how do we deal with the --
19 MS. D'ARRIGO: With regular garbage.
20 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: No. I'm talking about
21 scrap, scrap which is currently being recycled into metal in
22 the United States. How do we go about regulating those
23 issues and dealing with the stuff that's being imported into
24 the United States, if we were to go down the road that
25 you're suggesting?
66
1 MS. D'ARRIGO: You're saying -- well, the metal
2 industry is trying to keep contaminated materials out also,
3 so we're supportive of their efforts to prohibit
4 contaminated materials from coming in.
5 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Maybe I should focus a
6 little bit more.
7 MS. D'ARRIGO: Okay.
8 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Would we need -- under
9 your suggestion, would we as an agency presumably need to
10 get together with our EPA counterparts and say, Okay, for
11 tin or for steel, there should be no more than X level of
12 certain radiological materials in that metal, irrespective
13 of however it is used?
14 MS. D'ARRIGO: I think your job is to not permit
15 materials to be released from regulated facilities that are
16 contaminated by the materials at that facility, so you don't
17 release -- your problem isn't -- if you do your job and you
18 require that the nuclear waste that's generated from
19 facilities that are licensed facilities be treated as
20 radioactive material and not released, then that's what my
21 scenario would be. It is not your job to go in and regulate
22 T-NORM and other isotopes.
23 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Okay. So our focus
24 would only be on the facilities -- our licensees, and we
25 wouldn't worry about imports or we wouldn't worry about
67
1 other materials getting into the waste stream. Our focus as
2 an agency would be only on --
3 MS. D'ARRIGO: Well, I'm saying that
4 internationally, I would like the United States to take the
5 lead or support other countries that are taking a position
6 of keeping this industry's waste within this industry.
7 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Okay. Ms. -- is it
8 Hauter? Your comments -- you mentioned disagreement that
9 the Public Citizen has with WTO and your concern about --
10 your belief that we're deferring to international
11 organizations like IAEA in terms of setting these standards.
12 And I'm in a bit of a conundrum, only in that when
13 I used to work up on Capitol Hill in the Senate environment
14 committee, representatives of the Public Citizen very
15 articulately explained -- I was dealing with the Clean Air
16 Act reauthorization back in the '90s, and representatives of
17 the Public Citizen and others were recommending to the
18 United States Senate and the United States House that we
19 move toward European standards, that the Europeans had a
20 better way of dealing with things relative to clean air.
21 How is it -- how do you reconcile the belief in
22 that regard, that the Europeans might have a better way of
23 doing things and that we should look to the international
24 organizations, and yet in this instance, what you're telling
25 us is that we shouldn't be influenced by that?
68
1 MS. HAUTER: I don't think that there's any
2 inconsistency whatsoever. Saying that there is a better
3 standard elsewhere and that we should make a decision within
4 our own legislative body to follow that standard is
5 different than going to an international agency and allowing
6 that agency to set a standard for the world.
7 And the real issue here is that there's a game
8 being played that here in the United States we're being
9 told, Oh, we have to set a standard because there's going to
10 be an international standard. Then we our agencies, like
11 the EPA, go to the international meetings and say, Oh, we
12 need to have a standard, because the U.S. needs to move
13 ahead and this will help us move ahead.
14 So, you know, I think it's -- that there's a --
15 that there's not an honest process that's going on and that
16 there should be a debate about whether there should be trade
17 at all of radioactively contaminated materials, because it
18 is not a given.
19 Our MGO counterparts in Europe are as opposed to
20 this as we are, and it's not absolutely certain that there
21 will be radioactively contaminated materials being traded.
22 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: But you recognize that
23 at least some may believe -- and I'm not being accusatory
24 here -- some may believe that you're willing to suggest the
25 movement toward international standards when it is going in
69
1 the direction you want, and you don't want to move to
2 international standards when it's going in the direction
3 that you think is the wrong way of going.
4 MS. HAUTER: No. I think you're missing a
5 distinction. It's one thing to say, Our Senate, our elected
6 Congress, should consider this standard that is being used
7 in Europe, because it is a higher and more protective
8 standard. That is different than punting the decision to an
9 international body that makes the decision rather than our
10 elected representatives. And I think that's the concern.
11 And the concern is that there will be a race to the bottom
12 with these standards.
13 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: That's fair. I mean, I
14 think, at least from my own part, you weren't here -- you
15 may not have been here in the initial comments. You know,
16 for my own part, I believe that we need to have a full and
17 open process and make a determination on our own, and, you
18 know, I'll make that very irrespective of whether the French
19 and the Germans and the English feel differently or not.
20 So our charter under the Atomic Energy Act is to
21 get information from a variety of sources and make
22 determinations, and I think that's a legitimate process.
23 Mr. Adelman, I mentioned in my earlier panel, I
24 asked about the issue of restricted uses. Some are
25 suggesting that that might be very, very limited, that the
70
1 only restricted use might be for additional uses in the
2 nuclear industry, disposal purposes, things of that nature.
3 And I suggested there may be other types of civilian uses of
4 materials that would not result -- once that's used, it
5 wouldn't result in getting into the waste stream. I mean,
6 it might be a more closed use. I used the example of our
7 pipeline.
8 Do you think -- have you explored that idea of
9 some areas where this material might be used, where it would
10 not involve overall exposure to the public?
11 MR. ADELMAN: So is the purpose there that the
12 potential exposure pathways would be reduced or diminished,
13 and you wouldn't have to worry about the problems associated
14 with materials going into consumer products?
15 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Yes. Consumer products.
16 You mentioned baby carriages, the spoons, and things of that
17 nature.
18 MR. ADELMAN: Sure. I mean, I think there are --
19 I mean, really what you're setting out is that there are a
20 range of different materials that you folks are thinking
21 about considering. And in that range, you can go from
22 anything from no release that goes into a disposal facility,
23 to restricted end use where it's going into a completely
24 regulated environment, to something that you're proposing
25 right now which is a little more grayer towards, well, it
71
1 can go into civilian uses; we're not going to be tracking
2 it. It could, you know, be used for another type of use
3 later on potentially, although with the pipeline, it seems
4 like a fairly permanent, and, you know, you're sort of
5 moving the ball over towards a grayer area.
6 I certainly think it diminishes the opposition
7 that we would have, and I want to say that the NRDC's
8 position is that in principle, a standard can be set, and if
9 it were based on good science, we wouldn't oppose it. And
10 certainly if you were going into end uses that were very
11 clear and controlled, and we had confidence in how the
12 material was being surveyed and how measurements were being
13 made, what you're proposing is something we might consider.
14 However, under the given circumstances right now,
15 with the lack of credibility, the general concerns about
16 actually implementing a standard, I think those would come
17 before seriously considering the alternative that you're
18 proposing.
19 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you.
20 Mr. Collins, one of the issues that you didn't
21 touch on it, but I'm wondering if this is part of the
22 thinking of the States: We've had a long and checkered
23 history with the Low-Level Waste Disposal Act. We as a
24 nation have spent $600 million on seeking new low-level
25 waste disposal facilities and for the most part, have
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1 nothing to show for it.
2 Is part of the concern of the States that we would
3 be utilizing limited low-level waste storage capacity,
4 especially given the decision of South Carolina, for
5 materials that don't seem scientifically justified to be
6 disposed of? Is that part of the rationale of the States?
7 MR. COLLINS: I haven't heard that rationale from
8 any of the States, that the radioactivity was so low that
9 there was no need, so, no, I haven't heard that at all. I
10 really don't want to get into low-level waste in detail,
11 since that wasn't the subject of this meeting and I didn't
12 come prepared for that.
13 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: That's fair.
14 Mr. Deckler, I appreciate your comments about your
15 wife. Although I'm only a lawyer, I think if I made the
16 same arguments, I may have the same response.
17 The line of questioning that I had for the last
18 panel and also I directed towards Mr. Adelman: Do you have
19 any thoughts about that area, having more restricted use?
20 MR. DECKLER: More restricted use? Most of the
21 discussion that we had in ASTSWMO regarding restricted use
22 had to do with the difficulty in tracking that material once
23 it left for the restricted use, and what would happen in its
24 future lifetimes and whatever other uses it came under.
25 Now, you've expressed a different scenario, where
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1 you've got something that's released for restricted use that
2 is basically a permanent restricted use, and I would guess
3 that ASTSWMO would support that as a potential option.
4 Again, I would come back to you and ask what the
5 practicability of that is. You know, do I have -- I don't
6 know -- 100 tons of metal that I'm waiting to recycle and
7 now I have to wait for the one project where they're going
8 to build this pipeline, so that I've got a place to put it?
9 Is there enough of a market for these permanent restricted
10 uses that it then makes practical sense to institute that?
11 That would be my only question.
12 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Given the nature of, for
13 example, material data tracking sheets and the work that
14 ASTSWMO and its members have done relative to hazardous
15 materials, I mean, it wouldn't be unheard of that you would
16 be able to track some of this stuff if need be.
17 MR. DECKLER: That's true. And, again, I don't
18 know that we have any data in how well those tracking
19 mechanisms work or don't work and how many times things have
20 slipped through the cracks. It's just -- you know,
21 tracking, generally speaking, even when we do it well, is
22 kind of an administrative nightmare, and I guess no one's
23 looking forward to having another set of tracking data like
24 that.
25 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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1 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner Diaz?
2 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes. Let me try to bring out
3 two issues for all of the participants, which we appreciate
4 you providing your comments. The first issue, I'll call it
5 the zero contamination, and the other one is the issue of
6 credibility that's been brought up. Let me go to the issue
7 of zero contamination.
8 It is, you know, obvious that I am frequently
9 handicapped by my scientific background, and that really
10 creates a problem for me on many occasions, but I strongly
11 believe that there is no such thing as a zero contamination,
12 whether it's zero bacterial contamination, whether it's zero
13 toxins, whether there is zero heavy metals, whatever,
14 whatever you choose.
15 It doesn't matter what you choose; there is no
16 such thing as zero. There is only, you know, a level that
17 is acceptable to society, whether it's in food, in
18 commercial products, industrial, no zero. You know, if you
19 look at anything you have on, you give me enough tools, I
20 will find on it something that you don't like, that is --
21 there's no doubt about it. Give me enough time and enough
22 tools, whatever is it that you don't like, whether it's
23 bacteria, whether it's pathogens, whether carcinogens. It
24 doesn't matter.
25 Having said that, let me just also say there is no
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1 such thing as zero release either, because every time that
2 any concern touches something, changes it, whether it's the
3 most biologically pure product and it's taken into commerce,
4 it is no longer as pure.
5 Therefore, we need to deal with the fact that, you
6 know, we have the obligation in the United States
7 Government, you know, whether we do it in concert with
8 international organizations or not, to deal with what is
9 protecting the public health and safety. And it might be
10 very little tiny, about zero, whatever it is. It depends
11 how you can measure it, what society can tolerate it.
12 That's a statement, but it's a fact. It's
13 something that we cannot go away from it. It doesn't have
14 anything to do with perception. That is reality. It's
15 reality that we have to face. The reality that this
16 Commission faced was: Do we ignore the issue and avoid the
17 grief, which would have been the easy thing to do, and let
18 it go on and on and not have this perception that we're
19 trying to do something that is wrong, or whether we face the
20 facts that we have a duty to protect public health and
21 safety, and that to do that, it has to be done at a level
22 that can be measured, can be distinguished. That's from the
23 standpoint of the actual scientific and technical and
24 practical facts.
25 On the issue of credibility, it's been mentioned
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1 that maybe we will be more credible if we don't do it. We
2 have talked about it, you know, when we made -- in
3 one-to-one discussions. Okay. We have looked at it. We
4 say, Do we really want to do this, you know, when we meet
5 and look at it, or do we just really -- you know, it would
6 be nice just to keep going and not getting into these
7 things.
8 But in reality, we just can't avoid, it, because
9 it's there; it's around us, and we need to deal with it.
10 Therefore, I firmly believe that the Commission initiated
11 these activities to become more credible, to be able to say,
12 We are not going to allow the gaps, and in that fact, I want
13 you to know that we believe that rulemaking is the most
14 credible of all our activities.
15 It is the most open, the most analyzed, and
16 whether it results in what we started with or not, it
17 affords us the opportunity for an analysis, for assessment,
18 for engagement, for public opinions, and, therefore, you
19 know, I have these two things that I need to deal with it.
20 You know, my job is to initiate and then approve
21 things that are protective of public health and safety. And
22 we have engaged all of you to give us that information, so
23 let me finalize this by saying: There are facts. There is
24 no zero; there is no zero contamination; there is no zero
25 releases. Everything releases something.
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1 And the issue of credibility -- and I know that
2 this is hard after my three-and-a-half minute statement, but
3 if we could -- you know, if you've got some opinions that
4 are short, I would really welcome that. Thank you.
5 MS. D'ARRIGO: I like being able to answer this.
6 I was itching when you were asking that last week. I have a
7 scientific background, and I know that there is no zero. In
8 fact, I'm pretty careful not to call for a zero release.
9 What I'm calling for is -- and maybe it's essentially the
10 same thing to you -- is to have a goal and have a mission of
11 prohibiting additional contamination out.
12 It's true we've got background radiation. It's
13 true we've got radioactive contamination from previous
14 releases into air and water and bomb testing and so forth,
15 and I understand that there may be some difficulty detecting
16 a distinction between strontium-90 from bomb testing or from
17 other releases, and strontium-90 that was generated at the
18 reprocessing facility or the reactor.
19 However, I believe that the goal should not be to
20 say, Well, we got away with all this bomb testing; we got
21 away with releasing this stuff; we've got legal levels to
22 release it in 10 CFR 20 into air and water; therefore, we
23 can have additional releases into solids, and therefore,
24 we'll legalize through a rulemaking or not through a
25 rulemaking, but through streamlining or changing your
78
1 existing guidance or continuing the same way you're going --
2 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Excuse me. We don't do
3 guidance. You know, that's EPA. We do rules, and we
4 enforce them. I'm sorry to say that --
5 MS. D'ARRIGO: Well, you have Reg Guide 1.86,
6 which is the functional --
7 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes. But that follows a rule.
8 Okay? There is a rule, and then it allows you to do certain
9 things, but we normally have enforcement when we have, you
10 know, one issue that comes in, even if it's, you know, on a
11 case-by-case basis.
12 MS. D'ARRIGO: It's my understanding that the 1.86
13 guidance has been incorporated into licenses and into the
14 case-by-case analyses that go on, and that's why -- I was
15 going to answer your zero thing first, but now we've sort of
16 drifted to the credibility and the how to proceed.
17 But that's one of the real problems that I see
18 with all of the paperwork that goes with this, that's come
19 out of the NRC, is that it's clear to me from the paperwork
20 and the discussions that the NRC has already determined at
21 every level to increase the allowable amounts that are
22 getting out into solids, that existing case-by-case,
23 there'll be -- that if you make a rule, it will be for
24 volumetric releases.
25 Right now, volumetric releases are theoretically
79
1 not allowed, so as soon as you make a rule, it's going to
2 legalize, and everything that's volumetric is now going to
3 get out. That is additional releases. You can claim that
4 that's protecting the public, because it's consistent with
5 something or it's consistent across the board, but it is
6 allowing for releases into the marketplace and into
7 landfills that were not previously allowed.
8 So that's the option of doing a rulemaking for
9 both surface and volumetric, and then if you go with the
10 option of -- which is on page 1 to 2 of Appendix 1 in your
11 SECY 0070 document, the other option is to go with the
12 existing provisions and update them. And I'm paraphrasing
13 here, but both avenues are going to allow the ongoing
14 release that are going on and to allow more.
15 So as far as the credibility and the options of
16 respecting what the public is asking for, it's not seriously
17 under consideration. It's given some lip service in a few
18 places, which I think is -- I mean, there's no -- when I
19 asked, if you were to -- and I've talked to Commissioner
20 Meserve -- if you were to choose to regulate the material
21 that's generated in the facility as completely as possible,
22 if that were your goal, how would you do that. And I've not
23 gotten an answer from anybody in this Commission.
24 Instead, I get arguments that it's not necessary
25 to do that and that the amount that's being allowed is
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1 trivial and acceptable, and I should help pick that level.
2 And so there is a technical question there, but there's
3 also -- let's see. I want to stick to what you asked. This
4 could go back to your, how to prohibit -- or how to have a
5 zero.
6 If the idea is to minimize what's getting out into
7 the marketplace, then you don't make a standard that has the
8 effect of increasing and legalizing more getting out than is
9 currently getting out. If you don't do that, if you don't
10 pick a level that does allow for more to get out, then it's
11 not economically worth it for the generators of the material
12 to have you bother. I mean, that's the whole incentive and
13 motivation here.
14 So I think that -- I mean, not only should -- I
15 mean, we've also, in our comments, asked to recapture the
16 stuff that's already been released, because we can't assume
17 what's already gone out hasn't injured anybody, but that
18 assumption is made because no one's ever tracked or followed
19 up.
20 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Okay. Thank you.
21 Mr. Adelman, do you have a comment?
22 MR. ADELMAN: Sure. On the issue of the
23 case-by-case scenario or system that you have right now, I
24 agree with you. I think it's the worst of all possible
25 worlds and in many ways, the least transparent. But because
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1 we have the worst of all possible worlds doesn't necessarily
2 improving or, quote, improving things to a standard, given
3 the general public's concern is the right thing to do in the
4 broader context. It may be an improvement over what we have
5 right now, but it may -- it's probably still not acceptable
6 to the public at large, so I'd like to make that
7 distinction.
8 You mentioned that there are de minimis standards
9 in a variety of different regulatory circumstances. EPA has
10 a wide range of them, and it's something that regulators
11 have to contend with generally. One -- there wa a meeting
12 held, I think it was, in 1998, I think, the spring, where
13 EPA and NRC and DOE, a number of regulators, got together,
14 to talk about this basically general regulatory
15 harmonization, and one thing that came out of that
16 meeting -- I looked at some of the documents from that -- is
17 that actually a number of DOE's standards are substantially
18 weaker than the standards in other regulatory contexts.
19 So I think that one of the concerns that people
20 have is just, again, the history with NRC, with DOE, and not
21 only that there's weaker enforcement, weaker oversight, but
22 also that the standards themselves tend to be weaker as
23 well, and that, you know, a de minimis standard is, I think,
24 something that no one really is fully comfortable with.
25 It's a reality, but it's something that we accept only
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1 grudgingly.
2 And under these sorts of circumstances, I think
3 there's an important distinction to be made between
4 materials that are already in the commercial marketplace
5 that may have residual quantities of radiation which would
6 necessarily require a de minimis standard versus a standard
7 that's going to permit materials that are in a regulated
8 environment and are contaminated and allow them to enter the
9 commercial environment and, therefore, as a general matter,
10 increase the types and amount of radioactively contaminated
11 materials that people are exposed to.
12 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: All right. Thank you. Let me
13 just make a quick qualification on my statement of there is
14 no such thing as zero release. I don't only mean that if
15 you decide not to put the material out there, that that's
16 going to take care of the problem.
17 Any time you handle, whether they are bacterially
18 contaminated, heavy metals, whatever it is, once you handle
19 it, once you start cutting it, once you start putting it
20 away, there is a price to be paid, and the price is the
21 price that society, you know, have to find acceptable. And
22 what we're trying to do is compare these options, see which
23 one is more acceptable for us in terms of public health and
24 safety. I'm sorry. Just a comment; it's not just release
25 only.
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1 I'm sorry. Are you finished?
2 MR. ADELMAN: I'm done.
3 MS. HAUTER: Commissioner Diaz, I'd like to
4 comment on the credibility issue.
5 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Sure.
6 MS. HAUTER: This proceeding has been going on
7 simultaneously with the latest round of revelations about
8 the Commission's predecessor, the AEC's cover-up of the
9 radioactive risk to workers and communities, and so I think
10 that the credibility problem really has its roots in the
11 actions of the AEC.
12 And also at the same time that this proceeding has
13 been going on, we've seen the international scandal around
14 B&FL; and the Department of Energy's ability to supervise
15 their contractors, and that scandal has been -- I mean,
16 we've been getting bits and pieces of it in the news for
17 over the past two years.
18 And, you know, I think it's the relationship to
19 this proceeding and what's going on at the Department of
20 Energy that really taints this proceeding. I mean, the
21 Department of Energy has been unable in our written requests
22 to provide information about their case-by-case releases, to
23 tell us what's been released or when things have been
24 released, and the fact that the B&FL;, teaming partner SAIC's
25 technical analysis is still the basis for this rulemaking
84
1 also leads to more lack of credibility.
2 And it's obvious that a great deal of the pressure
3 for this proceeding is coming from the Department of Energy
4 and their desire to get rid of the problems at their waste
5 facilities, and in fact, at the Chicago meeting when the
6 participants were asked, Who is in favor of proceeding with
7 radioactive recycling, it was someone from the Department of
8 Energy who raised his hand.
9 And that has not been taken into account, the
10 DOE's terrible record of secrecy and inability to deal with
11 these weapons sites and that waste and what's going to
12 happen to that waste. Why shouldn't that waste be isolated
13 rather than sent out into the public?
14 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Thank you, Ms. Hauter, but,
15 you know, this Commission cannot be responsible for previous
16 actions. We're trying to be responsible now, and we're
17 trying to be credible now. And I know that that is against
18 a background that might not be the ideal from, you know,
19 your perspective, but we cannot change that. All we can do
20 it is do it the best we can now.
21 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Yes. I just want to
22 make a brief comment. I think Congress in its wisdom in
23 1975 -- we're now celebrating our 25th year as an
24 independent agency -- separated the NRC from what was to
25 become the Department of Energy because of a concern of that
85
1 internalized conflict of interest. I think that was the
2 right thing to do. One of the things that we frequently do
3 is encourage our international counterparts to do the same
4 thing.
5 I think it's unfair to paint us with the brush of
6 what happened in the AEC relative to Paducah and Portsmouth.
7 I also think it's unfair to paint us with the brush of what
8 happened in England relative to B&FL;. We have our own --
9 obviously, we have our own things that we are responsible
10 for and can be targeted with, but to paint us with those, I
11 think, is -- I believe is unfair.
12 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: I'd like to add one other point
13 to that, and that is that we do -- and this is really for
14 the benefit of the public, because I think you know this, is
15 that we not regulate the Department of Energy. They are an
16 autonomous party. They set their own orders as to how
17 they're going to deal with these matters, and they have no
18 compulsion that they come to us to seek approval or license
19 amendments or what have you, with regard to their actions.
20 MS. D'ARRIGO: That's one of the concerns of why,
21 you know, if the NRC makes something legal and the DOE is
22 going to follow it, there are going to be consequences of --
23 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: They don't have to follow it.
24 MS. D'ARRIGO: They don't have to, but they've
25 already said that they want to, and 1640, your technical
86
1 basis, doesn't even consider the materials from the
2 Department of Energy.
3 And then since I mentioned SAIC, which did that,
4 it's good that the contract was ended because of the
5 conflict of interest, but I wonder whether NRC has looked at
6 the other contractors, the Department of Energy's
7 environmental measurements labs, the ORIS, the Oak Ridge
8 place that's doing your other contract, the ICF and the
9 other contracts, to see whether they have similar contracts.
10 I mean, those are two DOE entities that you're
11 relying on for technical bases, and so I think that I would
12 have NRC be responsible for its own. I wouldn't blame NRC
13 for the AEC, but I think the NRC has its own things that
14 it's responsible for.
15 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Mr. Chairman, should we give a
16 brief minute to our colleagues, just to make sure they don't
17 feel --
18 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Sure. Then we'll move on.
19 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: -- slighted?
20 MR. COLLINS: Okay. With regard to zero
21 contamination, everything we eat, breathe or drink is
22 radioactive, and as stated earlier, I think the 1 millirem
23 criteria is going to be a trivial dose and that we should go
24 that route, and I don't even want to go into the zero
25 release.
87
1 As regards the credibility, you already brought
2 part of this out in your response. As a minimum, the
3 current NRC can follow its Administrative Procedures Act,
4 continue to be people of integrity, and you will be
5 guaranteed to be accused of not being credible anyway, but
6 you can sleep real well at night.
7 MR. DECKLER: Regarding credibility, I have a
8 great deal of trust in Government, but then again, I am
9 Government, so I probably need to recuse myself from that
10 particular discussion.
11 Regarding the zero issue, you know, I completely
12 understand what you say and I agree. I think there's some
13 danger in -- and I'll use this term -- getting on a
14 scientific high-horse, because I've been on them and they're
15 easy to fall off of.
16 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Absolutely.
17 MR. DECKLER: And, you know, what I would say is:
18 Go back to -- look at the rule and the benefits to the
19 various parties versus the detriments to other parties or at
20 least those perceived detriments and make a judgment based
21 on that and not just that, Hey, we feel we're scientifically
22 right, so we're going to make this decision; it's a matter
23 of benefits in the system.
24 And in that regard, I would say that you mentioned
25 protecting public health and the environment, and that's
88
1 your first charge, and I agree with you. And I would say
2 that if your determination is that this rule makes a
3 significant improvement in the protection of public health
4 and environment, that that should probably weigh most
5 heavily in your decision to approve or not approve a rule.
6 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And one comment. You said
7 that, you know, in the discussion, we mentioned the issue of
8 resources. In reality, we are required to mention those
9 things. That was really not the issue. The issue is
10 protection of public health and safety.
11 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner Dicus.
13 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Yes. Mr. Adelman, I'm
14 following up on the comments made by Commissioners
15 Merrifield and Diaz. The focus, it seemed to be, of most of
16 your comments, not entirely but most of your comments was
17 your concern with recycling and material finding its way
18 into the public domain that you had concerns about.
19 If recycling is not part of any possible
20 rulemaking -- and I want to address: We don't have a
21 proposed rule here at all; we have an issue that we're
22 discussing, but what would your position be? Would it --
23 would the NRDC maybe have a different position, if recycling
24 is not part of the issue?
25 MR. ADELMAN: So you're basically saying that you
89
1 would deregulate it and permit disposal at nonregulated
2 facilities. Is that --
3 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Well, I'm not saying that
4 necessarily, but I'm saying --
5 MR. ADELMAN: Well, then, I need to understand
6 more particularly what the alternative to recycling would
7 be.
8 COMMISSIONER DICUS: An alternative might be
9 disposal, but not necessarily in nonregulated facility. It
10 might be a landfill, but that is a regulated facility.
11 MR. ADELMAN: Okay. That's what I mean, so like a
12 solid waste facility or a RCRA facility or something like
13 that.
14 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Uh-huh.
15 MR. ADELMAN: I mean, again, it's going to
16 depend --
17 COMMISSIONER DICUS: I put you on the spot. I
18 recognize that, but I think so much of your comments had to
19 do with recycling, so I --
20 MR. ADELMAN: I mean, there are really two --
21 there are two parts to the comments. There's sort of a
22 credibility issue and sort of a history of the legacy that
23 you have to deal with in addressing the issue. And then
24 there's sort of the recycling and the public perception
25 about having these materials enter into commercial products.
90
1 And I would certainly agree that excluding
2 recycling into commercial products is going to alleviate a
3 lot of people's concerns, a lot of the general public's
4 concerns, and it certainly reduces the potential pathways
5 and risks associated with deregulating these materials.
6 So in that sense, I think it's -- you know, if
7 you're looking at the better of two evils, it's the better
8 of the two evils. Whether or not we would feel comfortable
9 with it is going to be really contingent on what the
10 ultimate standard is and what the technical evaluations are.
11 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Okay. Mr. Collins, do you
12 have any idea how many States might use the ANSI standard
13 in -- what is it? -- 13.12? If they were to go to that, do
14 you have any feel for that at all?
15 MR. COLLINS: Since our recommendations were
16 basically consistent with those --
17 COMMISSIONER DICUS: You think all of them.
18 MR. COLLINS: -- I think almost all of them would.
19 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Okay.
20 MR. COLLINS: Like I said, I got no negative
21 comments on that, so I do believe they would.
22 COMMISSIONER DICUS: I don't have anything
23 further.
24 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner McGaffigan.
25 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I could go on for quite
91
1 a while. I'm going to start by just inviting folks to come
2 in and see me individually. I know some -- Diane's been in
3 my office and Mr. Adelman. I think it's more the public
4 members; we see the CRCPD folks a lot, but I think this is a
5 long conversation we're going to have on this subject.
6 I'll start with Mr. Deckler's suggestion and
7 direct the question down to this end. Mr. Adelman's already
8 said that the worst of all possible worlds is to retreat to
9 the case-by-case standard, do everything in the dark through
10 exemptions and case-by-case reviews. I heard Ms. D'Arrigo
11 suggesting that we need a rule, too, just a different rule,
12 and that rule option would be as close to a zero standard.
13 I understand the discussion you've had with
14 Commissioner Diaz. You understand everything is
15 contaminated at some level, but do you -- so if we punt the
16 way Mr. Deckler suggests -- we can punt in various ways, as
17 you've suggested in your testimony -- and we just retreat to
18 status quo ante, updating the Reg Guide 1.86 and other reg
19 guides as appropriate, is that a very satisfactory
20 resolution for you? I'm asking you. He's already said
21 that's the worst of all possible worlds, so --
22 MS. D'ARRIGO: Oh, no. That's not acceptable
23 either actually, because now we know that stuff's coming out
24 and we don't like it.
25 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Okay. You do
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1 recognize -- I'm going to try to -- I've been admonished by
2 both sides here not to talk about T-NORM, but I'm going to
3 talk about it nevertheless.
4 We have to make our choices based on some sort of
5 world that's out there. Let's start with coal ash. That's
6 T-NORM. It's routinely used in building materials; in fact,
7 I think its use in building materials is encouraged by folk
8 who want to see that material utilized, and we have very,
9 very large quantities of it. It's primarily contaminated
10 with uranium, thorium, and radium.
11 And you use it in a building material and it's not
12 that -- you know, it's about the same thing as natural brick
13 maybe a little bit hotter than natural brick. Right? So
14 you might get 10 or 30 millirems a year out of it, if you
15 live in a house that's made of it.
16 Does the public interest community want that to
17 stop, too? I mean, are you comfortable? Do you make a
18 judgment there? It's about the same as brick; therefore,
19 it's acceptable, in the case of recycling T-NORM, coal ash,
20 in particular.
21 MS. HAUTER: I think we have a real concern with
22 what's going on with the NORM and NORM releases, and I think
23 the old adage about two wrongs don't make a right, we
24 shouldn't be using the fact that there are releases, whether
25 they're natural releases or releases that are going on from
93
1 other industries to further justify allowing more
2 contaminated material out into the environment.
3 You know, it's similar to a murderer using the
4 defense that, Well, he got away with it; why can't I, and --
5 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: But I'm suggesting the
6 levels are much higher than anything we're talking about. I
7 mean, I'm suggesting that what happens in NORM and NORM
8 space is much -- the recycling that already occurs there, in
9 concrete or whatever, results in higher doses, in calculably
10 higher doses, although consistent, not -- I mean, I don't
11 think anybody's doing anything wrong.
12 You know the CRCPD has a NORM standard that they
13 haven't been able to complete because EPA differs with them
14 on some issues, in fact, on fundamental approach, but we
15 tolerate in NORM and NORM space doses to the public that are
16 quite high.
17 MS. D'ARRIGO: Our organization doesn't really
18 have a focus on naturally T-NORM or naturally occurring. I
19 appreciate that States are picking up the ball and doing
20 what they can to regulate it. If there were more hours in
21 the day or days in the years, we might try to look at taking
22 a public interest position on every kind of radiation
23 exposure, but that's just not something that my organization
24 has worked on specifically.
25 It doesn't mean that we like it. I mean, we don't
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1 work on other kinds of problems in society. The one that
2 we're focusing on is the dangers from the nuclear fuel chain
3 which is your responsibility here, and we're saying that
4 because there's another risk out there that may or may not
5 be acceptable, it doesn't justify allowing even smaller
6 amounts out from what is already under regulatory control.
7 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: One of the issues that
8 came up last week when we were talking to the staff -- and I
9 know you were present -- was the different definitions of
10 radioactive material around the world. I mean, there is not
11 even a consensus as to what is radioactive.
12 The case I brought up was the baghouse dust, I
13 believe, from a Louisiana steel mill. There's about 80 tons
14 of it, but there's an export license pending before the
15 Commission, and when it gets to Canada, neither the
16 Environmental Protection Agency, the equivalent there, nor
17 their NRC equivalent considers it radioactive material once
18 it arrives there.
19 It will still be hazardous material because of the
20 other contaminants in it, and so it's being proposed to be
21 exported for disposal in Canada at a reputable facility, but
22 the interesting thing is it's not radioactive, and there's
23 different definitions of radioactive material applied in
24 different countries and different ways.
25 In this country, we apply different definitions
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1 for different purposes, so do you have any comment on that I
2 mean, how do we -- if you want a uniform standard that is as
3 close to zero as possible, and we don't even have
4 definitions that are equivalent across countries of what is
5 radioactive, then it's hard.
6 MS. D'ARRIGO: We're doing our best to work with
7 people in other countries on these issues and to not dictate
8 what the nongovernmental organizations, the public interest
9 groups in other countries do or say. It's a growing thing.
10 As the industry grows and becomes global, our organizations
11 are becoming more conscious of the global effort in making
12 the best efforts we can to --
13 I mean, you can talk about uniformity and then you
14 come down to the distinction of, Do we encourage continuing
15 to make more of that, which we don't want to be exposed to.
16 And that's where we differ, and across the board, it seems
17 like, one, we have to accept that it's already there, and,
18 two, we have to accept that more is going to be produced,
19 and, three, we have to accept whatever exposure we're going
20 to get to it, because there's other exposure there that we
21 don't have control over whether or not they're produced.
22 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: We're trying to figure
23 out what the right amount of control is. I think Mr.
24 Collins makes a good effort at -- you're trying to use the
25 word "control" rather than "release criteria," but "release
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1 criteria" is widely used. It's the IAEA word; it's the EC
2 word, so we end up -- but we're trying to figure out what
3 the right level of control is, in the context of everything
4 else that's around there, and our mission is adequate
5 protection of public health and safety. It's not well
6 defined what adequate --
7 Could I ask --
8 MS. D'ARRIGO: You might think it's adequate to
9 kill more people. You might not think that it's -- that
10 there are effects that some may believe there are.
11 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Do you --
12 MS. D'ARRIGO: If there's an unknown --
13 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Do you oppose -- from
14 your testimony, I assume you oppose the limits that already
15 exist based on statute for air and liquid effluent releases
16 in Part 20.
17 MS. D'ARRIGO: We did challenge the Part 20 when
18 the new dosimetry led to an increase in allowable
19 concentrations in air and water. I point to EPA right now
20 in their Safe Drinking Water standards, that they're talking
21 about adopting the effective dose equivalent versus the
22 critical body dose into their drinking water concentrations,
23 but they're not going to allow that to increase the
24 allowable concentrations that already exist. And that's
25 something that we disagreed with the NRC on. We think it
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1 violated ALARA.
2 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Mr. Collins, just a
3 quick question or two. You suggested that whatever rule we
4 end up with, if we end up with a rule, that it should have
5 flexibility in it for the States to occasionally go to 10
6 millirems, and I saw eyes raised at the end there. How do
7 we do that? I mean, you know, it's either a 1 millirem rule
8 to which we have, I think, a pretty sound technical basis
9 because IAEA, EC, EPA, NRC are all coming together on how to
10 translate 1 millirem or tenth of a millirem, whatever it is
11 to so many becquerels per gram or becquerels per square
12 centimeter.
13 But how do you see giving the States then
14 flexibility to introduce something that might be 10? Would
15 it only be for an application like Commissioner Merrifield
16 talked about, where it's a pipe that's going to be under the
17 sea forever, or where would you use that 10 millirem
18 flexibility, if there was a 1 millirem rule?
19 MR. COLLINS: That would be one good example of
20 where we would be able to use it. It would be like your
21 waste rule, where you have 25 millirem as your basic rule,
22 but under certain sets of circumstances, you can go higher
23 than that, when you know a lot more and there's a need to.
24 And the States want the flexibility to do that.
25 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: So how --
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1 MR. COLLINS: So under the rule, if there was a
2 rule and it said 1 millirem, that would be always allowed,
3 but when you applied for permission under a certain set of
4 circumstances to go higher, the States would have the
5 ability, as would NRC, to approve that on a case-by-case
6 evaluation basis. And also the CRCPD has approved a model
7 T-NORM rule, noting the EPA's lack of concurrence.
8 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: You have approved it.
9 MR. COLLINS: Uh-huh.
10 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: It's now going to be
11 used widely. How does the T-NORM rule deal with, say, slag
12 from the oil and gas industry?
13 MR. COLLINS: It allows each State the flexibility
14 to address that on a state-by-state basis.
15 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: So it didn't deal with
16 on a uniform national basis; it did not attempt to.
17 MR. COLLINS: It sets a minimum criteria that has
18 to be met. In other words, you will not exceed this dose in
19 whatever method you use to dispose of it. It doesn't tell
20 industry exactly how it has to go about doing that, and the
21 States have the flexibility to be more restrictive.
22 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Okay. I'll leave it at
23 that.
24 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Most of the issues I wanted to
25 explore have been addressed, although I do have one question
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1 for Mr. Adelman, get his insight on something.
2 I think it's apparent from this panel that this
3 gulf in perception of radiation issues is apparent from
4 either side of you. You indicated in your statement that
5 the NRDC might be prepared to accept some sort of a rule at
6 a non-zero level, I understood, so long as all of the
7 technical issues that you had raised were adequately
8 addressed and explored in a public fashion.
9 Then you went on to suggest that there was also a
10 need to address this public perception issue. And I'd like
11 to get some idea from you how we go about doing that. I
12 mean, we're having this process. We've had open processes
13 involving our -- the public meetings. We've been seeking
14 comments.
15 I mean, what should we do that we haven't done,
16 that would satisfy that aspect of the issue that you raised?
17 MR. ADELMAN: First of all, I think that some of
18 the suggestions that Jeff Deckler mentioned, that you should
19 be looking specifically at the alternatives and weighing
20 who's going to benefit, what benefits will accrue from
21 setting a standard, and I think his general comment being
22 that another NAS study isn't necessarily what's needed right
23 now, that the issue isn't so much nailing down the science
24 more, which there seems to be increasing consensus between
25 the different regulatory agencies right now, but how to
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1 communicate with the public.
2 So I think that there's that issue. I think that
3 in terms of the specifics of communicating with the public,
4 what I've experienced in the few meetings that I've attended
5 are kind of two extremes. One is that you come out with a
6 technical document, like 1640, which is not something that's
7 readily addressable by the lay person, and then on the other
8 extreme, there are generalized statements that attempt to
9 place radiation hazards in some broader context like flights
10 over the United States, background radiation, and those are
11 the two sort of extremes of the dialogue that goes on, and
12 that there's very little effort to sort of connect the dots
13 between the more specific technical documentations and bases
14 upon which you're making decisions and the public's just
15 general concern about the risks posed by these materials and
16 how you get from those very technical issues to a final
17 standard.
18 So I think that's something, at least in my
19 experience, that could be done much more effectively.
20 I also think that there's an inherent
21 contradiction in how you're proceeding right now and how DOE
22 is proceeding. You have -- everyone's purportedly
23 considering a rule right now, and yet you have DOE embarking
24 on the first large-scale release of radioactively
25 contaminated materials. You continue to have case-by-case
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1 releases here.
2 And I think just from a basic -- the public's
3 perspective, when you're shifting into an environment that,
4 I believe at least, is substantially different from what
5 existed before -- there have been relatively small-scale
6 releases of radioactively contaminated materials, because --
7 predominantly because of decommissioning of DOE facilities.
8 What we're looking at is much more significant releases in
9 the future.
10 And given that you're sort of on this boundary
11 line, I think from a symbolic perspective, if you're really
12 going to go forward with considering a rule and even with an
13 NAS study, having a moratorium and saying, Look, you know,
14 this is something that we're reevaluating right now; we're
15 going to reevaluate it from all perspectives, considering
16 all viewpoints, what we're going to do is hold -- have a
17 moratorium on case-by-case releases, that you're going to
18 collaborate with DOE and say, Look, you know, if we all want
19 to work toward setting a consistent standard, you guys
20 shouldn't be going forward with the K-25 project; it just
21 doesn't make any sense. And, in fact, you've already agreed
22 to release the volumetrically contaminated materials, so
23 what's the real difference here.
24 So those are a few things.
25 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: I'd like to thank the panel.
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1 Very much appreciate it.
2 We have a third panel that we will turn to, but I
3 know we've all been here for a couple of hours now. I'd
4 like to suggest that we take a five-minute break, literally
5 only five minutes, and then we'll return to the third panel.
6 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)
7 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: We are now moving to the third
8 panel, and I very much appreciate the panel's patience of
9 waiting for an opportunity to step to the table.
10 The participants in this session include Lynnette
11 Hendricks, who's the director for plant support for the
12 Nuclear Energy Institute; Val Loiselle -- I may be
13 mispronouncing that, and I apologize if I am -- who's
14 managing director for the Association of Radioactive
15 Recyclers; Mike Mattia is the director of risk management
16 for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries,
17 Incorporated; John Wittenborn, who's an attorney with
18 Collier Shannon Scott, who is here representing the Metals
19 Industry Recycling Coalition, who have a large number of
20 members in the steel and recycling business; and Dan
21 Guttman, who is here representing the Allied-Industrial,
22 Chemical and Energy Workers international Union -- and I
23 guess Paper is first. I apologize.
24 MR. GUTTMAN: Paper, yes. Formerly OCAW, for
25 those that have been around, Oil, Chemical.
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1 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Welcome. Why don't we start
2 with Ms. Hendricks.
3 MS. HENDRICKS: Thank you. Good morning, Mr.
4 Chairman, Commissioners, General Counsel. It certainly is a
5 pleasure to be here today, and I appreciate the opportunity
6 to share the views of the organizations that NEI represents
7 and just to sort of cover that for people that may not be as
8 familiar with NEI as perhaps the Commissioners are.
9 We represent industries, medical research
10 facilities, universities, and all the facilities that are
11 involved in the nuclear fuel cycle.
12 I commend the Commission for its efforts today,
13 one in a series of many to solicit the views of all
14 stakeholders. I think this is perhaps the issue that has
15 the single greatest potential to have positive impact on
16 public confidence. I, as others have, have provided a
17 written statement, so I'm going to try to keep my remarks
18 very brief and talk about four topics today:
19 NEI's recommendations on proceeding with the
20 standard; views on -- the request for views on soliciting
21 input from the National Academy of Sciences; briefly on the
22 steel recycling issue; and finally on the issue of the nexus
23 of the material control standards with the site release
24 standards.
25 But before I launch into the issue, we've talked a
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1 lot about the difference in perspective on this issue, and I
2 see it sort of differently, in that oftentimes discussion of
3 this issue lacks a context, and I'd like to at least provide
4 a context from my perspective, and that context is the
5 enormous benefits provided by the use of radioactive
6 materials.
7 I mean, after all that's why we are here. The
8 Atomic Energy Act was not created for other than to provide
9 beneficial uses of radioactive materials to society. Some
10 of those beneficial uses are 10 million Americans are
11 treated each year, diagnosed and treated for diseases, using
12 radioactive materials.
13 Radioactive materials are used extensively in
14 looking for cures for AIDS, cancers, and other diseases.
15 It's used in many industries. For example, the steel
16 industry uses radioactive sources to test for the quality of
17 its steel in automobile and aircraft engines, very
18 important. And, of course, nuclear energy produces 20
19 percent of the energy in this country, without releasing
20 SO2, NO2, or CO2.
21 So I think it's very important when we look at the
22 benefits of setting the standard, it's to preserve some of
23 these benefits while avoiding the wastage of resources, and
24 I see that falling into three categories. One is low-level
25 waste disposal resources, which are limited, and I consider
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1 them to be -- they could be overwhelmed and wasted by
2 sending a lot of material there that does not warrant that
3 type of control.
4 Discarding of materials that could be reused is a
5 waste if, in fact, there's no commensurate benefit to public
6 health and safety, and in fact, then you use additional
7 natural resources to make the product again.
8 And, finally, there's a wastage in terms of undue
9 burden on organizations attempting to provide these benefits
10 by not having a standard by which they can control these
11 materials in an effective manner.
12 The recommendations of NEI and the organizations
13 we represent is that the Commission act expeditiously to set
14 consistent, dose-based, measurable standard. These
15 organizations that provide the benefits must move the
16 materials in and out of their facilities, sometimes on a
17 daily basis.
18 This involves everything from delivery trucks,
19 people, materials you're discarding, materials you're
20 sending for subsequent reuse either in unrestricted context
21 or to subsequent folks that are also licensed for the use of
22 radioactive materials.
23 We're devoting significant resources today to
24 material control programs, but as we've heard earlier, the
25 standards are inconsistent, and they're incomplete. We
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1 recommend that the NRC endorse ANSI N13.12. It's a
2 dose-based standard, and that that means in the simplest
3 terms is that you take the myriad properties of radioactive
4 material, such as their half lives and their physical and
5 biological properties, and translate them into one
6 consistent equivalent standard of protection, meaning that
7 every time the standard is applied, the same level of
8 protection is assured.
9 It's a trivial dose, as has been discussed, in
10 accordance with recommendations of national and
11 international bodies of experts of radiation protection that
12 recommend a 1 millirem dose for these types of activities
13 that have a potential for being repeated activities, if you
14 will.
15 And, finally, it takes the very important next
16 step of translating these dose standards into practical
17 survey requirements, which is a very important aspect of
18 this. Some have suggested that in lieu of setting a
19 dose-based standard that we use a zero standard. I think
20 this is worse than no standard at all. I agree with some of
21 the comments earlier that it simply cannot be implemented.
22 Others have suggested ducking the issue by
23 setting -- by not setting a standard and instead controlling
24 materials based on where they were likely to have been in
25 the facility.
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1 We call this a ghost-based standard, not a
2 dose-based standard, because the ultimate effect is you
3 remove very powerful tools that we have today to sort
4 materials, to verify that we've sorted properly clean
5 materials from materials needing further control, and it
6 also removes the same effective simple tool from the
7 regulators, to ensure that compliance is actually occurring,
8 and instead we'd be chasing phantoms.
9 I mean, if an atom of cobalt-60 was detected, we'd
10 have no perspective at all to put that into context, so not
11 setting a standard, I don't think is going to be practical
12 at all. I was going to launch into an analogy; I think I'll
13 skip it.
14 We do support the Commission's efforts to solicit
15 the views of the National Academy of Sciences. We would
16 encourage, however, the Commission to encourage the staff to
17 act expeditiously in the interim on the technical bases and
18 other supporting steps for rulemaking, cost benefit of the
19 various options.
20 We'd also encourage the Commission to explicitly
21 solicit the views of the National Council on Radiation
22 Protection and Measurements, the congressionally chartered
23 organization responsible for giving recommendations to this
24 country on radiation protection. And we also encourage the
25 Commission to work very closely with international bodies
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1 implementing standards for control of materials.
2 I wanted to say a few brief words on steel
3 recycling. It's a topic that has dominated discussion at
4 all four of the workshops. We do believe the steel
5 manufacturers deserve some special consideration because of
6 the issue of orphan sources. They've experienced clean-ups
7 of tens of millions of dollars, and they also are very
8 concerned, as anyone would be, about the potential for
9 exposure of their workers.
10 They've responded, in part, with very sensitive
11 counting instruments. The problem there is you're trying to
12 look for a needle in a haystack, if you will. You're
13 looking for a source that is contained in a truck, which
14 makes it a very unpredictable, highly shielded geometry. As
15 a result of that, you have sensitive instrumentation; you
16 get a lot of false positives from NORM. You even get false
17 positives if there are voids in the scrap, letting in
18 terrestrial background radiation.
19 One solution, obviously, is to improve on the
20 counting geometry, to allow determination of the source and
21 significance of the counts detected, and we would certainly
22 commit to work with the industry in any way possible, to
23 help improve on this situation. We're very sympathetic
24 about the orphan source problem.
25 Final issue I wanted to speak on -- I realize I'm
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1 getting over my time -- is the site release standards. In
2 the '96, '97 time frame, the Commission took what we
3 considered was a major step forward and set a dose-based
4 standard for release of materials and structures. This is a
5 major milestone in NRC's goal to establish same, timely,
6 efficient clean-ups.
7 Previously to that, we had the same approach that
8 we have here. We had inconsistent, incomplete standards. A
9 lot of effort was being wasted in site clean-ups, trying to
10 interpolate, extrapolate and demonstrate compliance to
11 something that was not as applicable as it could have been
12 if it was a dose-based standard.
13 The environmental impact statement the Commission
14 prepared in conjunction with the rule indicated that there's
15 some potential that materials left on the site after
16 termination of a license could, in fact, be removed from the
17 site at some point, but that the doses were likely to be
18 much lower, because you've changed the configuration which
19 the subsequent person may be exposed; in other words,
20 configuration on site, all the material is there, and the
21 pathways and such are about as conservative as they could
22 be. As it goes off, you're bound to get dilution.
23 So we would encourage the Commission to recognize
24 the very important benefits of the site release standard and
25 to ensure that in setting any standards for control of
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1 materials, that there isn't an inadvertent impact on the
2 site release standards that would, in effect, delay and/or
3 hamper clean-ups.
4 In summary, we support your efforts. We encourage
5 you to act expeditiously to establish a dose-based standard.
6 We would encourage you to consider the ANSI standard and
7 also standards set internationally, in particular for the
8 metal recycle issue. Thank you.
9 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
10 Mr. Loiselle?
11 MR. LOISELLE: Yes. Mr. Chairman, Commissioners,
12 I represent ARMR, the Association of Radioactive Metal
13 Recyclers. ARMR was formed five years ago by licensees
14 interested in metals recycle, and my representation here
15 this morning is primarily for those people who are not only
16 the licensees but processors, over some recent 20 years of
17 our history, who stood and became identified as a group of
18 companies that would stand between the generation of nuclear
19 waste materials and the disposal for same.
20 Processing was a legitimate alternative, and when
21 the opportunity to look at metals and find that metals could
22 be cleaned and released was also a viable alternative.
23 The purpose of the association is to coordinate
24 and disseminate information on the topics and assimilate the
25 industry's resources, capabilities and performance. During
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1 1997, ARMR supported EPA's investigations into the
2 feasibility and conditions of metals release, until the
3 public and steel industry opposition was defined.
4 ARMR today cannot support NRC's current plan
5 unconditionally. Even though we represent a portion of the
6 regulated community and the NRC is our regulator, we
7 sympathize with the owners of the metals, materials in
8 question. They are our clients. We identify with the
9 metals industry and the steels industry in particular,
10 because of economic issues and the perception of
11 contamination present in commerce.
12 We do feel, however, that rules and standards can
13 be developed to make this a safe action, in the interest of
14 the public and other stakeholders, once all of their
15 concerns have been addressed. More specifically, the metals
16 industry has to be comfortable with the plan. It's not just
17 a regulatory action, defining risk versus the former
18 limit-based criteria. It's to avoid the perception of
19 spread of contamination to commerce.
20 We support the steel industry's call for
21 collaboration to determine what it can accept. While
22 nuclear technology is not now responsible for cancer, our
23 choices under the law and regulation must continue to show
24 that it never will be, and to that end, we will need the
25 cooperation of the environmental community, to see the
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1 safety and legitimacy of the processes we perform.
2 The key to management and disposition of
3 contaminated materials or the activity therein is to isolate
4 these substances from the biosphere. We have the ability to
5 do that. Taken in balance, then, there's a need to focus
6 more on the benefits of nuclear technology for energy,
7 pollution prevention, and medicine, where the given
8 practices are found safe.
9 Also, there has to be a demonstration plan,
10 acceptable to both the industry and the public. The plan
11 should be the collaborative work of key stakeholders to gain
12 their acceptance for determining the impacts we have already
13 analyzed in terms of risk.
14 The plan should include restricted and
15 unrestricted metal recycle options according to some
16 proposed standard. The plan should encompass NORM materials
17 and address a sufficient time period to substantiate the
18 prior analyses performed.
19 The demonstration approach would be our appeal to
20 the steel industry in its quest to determine the
21 detectability and levels of contamination that could impact
22 the steel supply and subsequent products before recycle is
23 adopted. And if the demonstration is successful with steel
24 industry, we'll have defined what it can accept.
25 We don't define the path forward. We think there
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1 has to be one, and we do essentially support the concept of
2 a rulemaking, once all of these concerns can be established
3 or satisfied.
4 ANS has made a position statement on the linear no
5 threshold theory. We believe -- we, too, believe there is a
6 threshold, and we support the proposals and research needed
7 to establish that science. We also disagree with the
8 application of the collective dose concept.
9 The Health Physics Society in ANSI 13.12, it's
10 essentially a 1 MR per year standard, with good features
11 toward implementation practice, and that's where we live.
12 We have to implement these things. We feel, however, that
13 such a standard is embraced without account of the full
14 range of options we might have in dealing with candidate
15 materials.
16 I realize that complicates the task of setting a
17 rule, but I think there are enough differences there, and
18 some suggestions about segregating approaches to dealing
19 with candidate materials might be illuminating in the
20 meetings or developments that we have in the future.
21 And while there is merit in adopting regulation
22 which guarantees no consequence, we feel such an approach to
23 regulation really isn't doing the job right, and as we found
24 from last year's hearings, it isn't the number at which you
25 regulate, and it may not be safety issue at all, so let's
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1 find out what it needs to be and go from there.
2 On the SECY document, we have no additional
3 comments to submit on SECY 0070. And, finally, we would
4 urge the Commission and our community to look at things in a
5 more plain-language approach by giving consideration to
6 defining what is radioactive and what is not.
7 As technocrats and scientists, we tend to place
8 labels and numbers on everything and use those as a basis to
9 justify what we say, but as we are also finding out, we
10 should be able to satisfy our publics in a simplified and
11 quantifiable way that the control of contamination and the
12 fear of cancer from continued exposure to low-levels of
13 radiation that might exist or arise from future releases of
14 solid materials would be inconsequential. Thank you.
15 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
16 Mr. Mattia?
17 MR. MATTIA: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
18 Commissioners. I'm here today representing the Institute of
19 Scrap Recycling Industries. My organization represents
20 companies that process, broker, and consume scrap
21 commodities. All forms of scrap metal are major commodity
22 for our industry.
23 We are thankful to the Commission for again giving
24 us the opportunity to present to you our concerns and our
25 suggestions, concerning the important issue of radioactive
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1 material entering the commercial scrap recycling stream.
2 For many years now, our industry has been plagued
3 by various sources and types of radioactive material
4 entering the commercial recycling stream. This intrusion by
5 hazardous materials which escaped regulatory concern has
6 been nothing less than a plague on our industry.
7 Millions of dollars have been spent or lost,
8 related to the decontamination, suspension of operations,
9 and storage and disposal of radioactive waste, directly
10 related to the entry into both the scrap recycling and metal
11 producing facilities of radioactive material that should
12 have never been lost or released by facilities that were
13 licensed to have this material.
14 While these costs have been a tremendous burden to
15 the recycling industry, the cost to human life has been
16 horribly tragic. To date worldwide, at least eight
17 individuals involved in scrap recycling have died, directly
18 due to exposure to radioactive material that entered the
19 recycling stream, while hundreds of workers received
20 hazardous doses of radiation.
21 Now, we understand that the issue at hand today is
22 not directly related to the orphan sources and to other
23 improper releases of radioactive material that have been the
24 primary and most severe cause of the tragic events that have
25 plagued our industry. Yet I trust that you'll understand,
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1 given this history, that we're a little touchy about
2 radioactive material entering the recycling stream.
3 That thought of radioactive material in any form
4 entering the recycling stream elicits tremendous fears and
5 concerns for scrap recyclers. These fears and concerns are
6 shared by the metal-producing companies which purchase and
7 melt that scrap, by companies which produce that metal to
8 make automobiles, appliances, and other consumer products,
9 and by the consumers which either purchase these products or
10 directly expose to products that are made from this
11 material.
12 We acknowledge with gratitude that the Commission
13 heard our concerns about the issue of orphan sources and
14 undertook a solution that we fully agreed with. We ask that
15 the Commission once again hear us on the topic at hand.
16 Until these concerns and fears are adequately addressed,
17 there will be no opportunity to find a solution that is
18 acceptable to the stakeholders who would be involved in the
19 release and recycling of scrap from these facilities.
20 We applaud the decision of the Commission to
21 request the involvement of the National Academy of Sciences.
22 Such a respected scientific body will provide tremendously
23 useful insights and recommendations towards the ultimate
24 solution of this issue, but the NAS cannot address our
25 fears. This Commission cannot address our fears. Only we,
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1 the stakeholders, can address our fears.
2 The only way for our fears and concerns to be
3 addressed and for solutions to be developed is if the
4 stakeholders impacted by any free release decision be
5 allowed to actively participate in all phases of the
6 decision-making process, for what is crucial here is not
7 this Commission's position on a free release criteria. What
8 is crucial is the stakeholders' acceptance criteria.
9 To facilitate the development of such an
10 acceptance criteria, we ask that the Commission create an
11 advisory task force whose members represent the affected
12 stakeholders. These stakeholders include the entities that
13 would release such material and the entities that would
14 recycle such material.
15 Such a task force would seek the input and
16 involvement of the various government organizations that
17 have direct authority over the key issues, the industries
18 that would potentially recycle and reuse the release
19 material to create usable products, and the general public,
20 who would directly use or be exposed to such products.
21 The goal of this advisory task force would be to
22 report to the Commission on the criteria for the acceptable
23 release, recycling and reuse of solid material from licensed
24 facilities. This would be achieved through clarification of
25 the critical issues, a review of all the facts, and a
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1 dialogue between stakeholders with the goal of achieving a
2 consensus on such an acceptance criteria.
3 Given the Commission's decision to request
4 involvement by the National Academy of Sciences, we would
5 propose that the stakeholders advisory task force be tasked
6 to conduct its study concurrently with the National Academy
7 study.
8 We ask that the Commission not ignore the fact
9 that there will be no acceptance, agreement or compromise by
10 the recycling industry on any new position for the release
11 of solid material from NRC-licensed facilities to the
12 commercial recycling stream without such a direct and
13 continuous involvement by representatives of all affected
14 stakeholders, in all phases of any applicable
15 decision-making process. Such an advisory task force would
16 be a vital element to achieving such an acceptance criteria.
17 We've heard a little bit this morning about what
18 is going on in Europe. Last year, the UN economic
19 commission for Europe impaneled a committee of experts,
20 which were representatives from both the metal recycling and
21 metal producing industries throughout Europe. We had the
22 opportunity to serve on that panel, and it was the decision
23 of that UN economic commission for Europe to create an
24 acceptance criteria which it is in the process of drafting,
25 and that hopefully the first draft of that acceptance
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1 criteria will be available this summer and endorsed by all
2 of the recycling entities in Europe.
3 So, in essence, what we're saying to the European
4 Commission is, We know you have created a release criteria.
5 Now we will tell you what is our acceptance criteria. I
6 guess that's putting the cart before the horse, and we're
7 asking the Commission to put the horse before the cart and
8 allow such an advisory task force to provide you with what
9 is acceptable to the industry, what we can live with, down
10 to the minute detail, and use that as the basis for
11 rulemaking, to create a rule that has already been accepted
12 by all the affected stakeholders.
13 My association is prepared to work with the
14 Commission and all other involved stakeholders and
15 government agencies on all aspects of the proposed task
16 force. We thank you again for the opportunity to present
17 our concerns and our proposal for a solution to this problem
18 to you today.
19 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you very much.
20 Mr. Wittenborn?
21 MR. WITTENBORN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I
22 appreciate the attention of the other Commissioners as well.
23 I'm here on behalf of the Metals Industry
24 Recycling Coalition. Our coalition includes the American
25 Iron and Steel Institute, the Steel Manufacturers
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1 Association, Specialty Steel Industry of North America, and
2 collectively those three organizations represent virtually
3 100 percent of the U.S. domestic steel industry. But we
4 also represent the Nickel Development Institute, Copper and
5 Brass Fabricators Council, and the -- I'm missing one --
6 American Zinc Association.
7 So we're looking at the issues, not just affecting
8 steel but of all the metals that are recycled from these
9 facilities. Looking just at steel for a moment, in this
10 country, we recycle 75 million tons of steel scrap a year.
11 When you add nickel, copper, and the other alloys, that
12 number goes up even more significantly.
13 This is a very highly sophisticated, highly
14 technical manufacturing process that involves computer
15 automation, controlled chemistry, scrap blending, to make
16 products that meet detailed customer specifications, and
17 more and more frequently, we're finding that those customer
18 specifications ask us to certify that there is no
19 radioactivity in the scrap metal that we sell.
20 There's been a lot of discussion already this
21 morning about the orphan source issue, and I don't need to
22 reemphasize how important that is. Lately in our industry,
23 there have been, to my knowledge anyway, no health impacts
24 associated with the inadvertent melting of a sealed source.
25 There have been a number of those inadvertent
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1 meltings, and they have cost the industry hundreds of
2 millions of dollars collectively to deal with those, to
3 decontaminate the equipment, to pay for the disposal of the
4 materials that are generated as a result of that activity.
5 And to protect the industry against those impacts,
6 virtually every mill has installed highly sophisticated
7 portal detection monitors. Some facilities have more than
8 one monitor, some at the entry gates, some at the scrap
9 bucket, some at the entry to the furnace itself, just to
10 ensure with belt and suspenders we do everything we possibly
11 can to keep those orphan sources out of the scrap supply.
12 Those detectors are set as close to background as
13 possible. They will alarm, as I think Lynnette said, on
14 natural radiation at times. They'll do that, because steel
15 is inherently well below background radiation, and as a
16 truck passes by the scale, the instrument automatically
17 adjusts background to what it's reading, and if there's a
18 void in that scrap load, it will actually read atmospheric
19 radiation at something higher than the previously recorded
20 background from the steel and trip the alarm.
21 The alarms also trip with NORM, and certainly we
22 hope they will trip with anti-seal source. That's the
23 purpose of having that equipment in place. Every time that
24 alarm trips, it's an enormous operational nightmare for the
25 companies to deal with. They have to segregate the scrap
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1 load and either reject it and deal with the commercial
2 implications of that, or hand sort through the scrap load to
3 try to figure out what set off the device, isolate the
4 particular piece of equipment if it is found, and then
5 arrange for proper handling and disposal of that material.
6 The last thing the industry needs is to have a
7 release standard that allows thousands or potentially
8 millions of tons of steel that will meet the release
9 standard but exceed our detectors coming into the mills. It
10 will essentially shut down our ability to control for orphan
11 sources.
12 Now, that's a critical issue to the industry, but
13 perhaps the most important issue to the steel industry is
14 the one that has also been talked about this morning, and
15 that's public perception. And I'm sure I could ask my wife
16 the same question that Jeff asked his wife this morning and
17 probably get the same answer.
18 But the industry decided to take a slightly more
19 scientific approach, and we actually commissioned the
20 Worthland Group to do first some focus groups and then some
21 public polling, to try to get us statistically valid
22 information about the public's view of the recycling of
23 radioactively contaminated metal.
24 And although 80 percent of the public strongly
25 supported the idea of recycling to begin with, when they
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1 were told that there might be some radioactively
2 contaminated material in the recycling mix, the public
3 overwhelmingly rejected the idea of allowing that material
4 to be recycled, and when told that that material would have
5 to first pass government-approved safety standards, 74
6 percent of the people still did not want that metal to be
7 recycled.
8 These are our customers. They don't want the
9 material. If they don't want the material, we're not going
10 to provide it to them. Anything that sets off an alarm at
11 our mills will be rejected, regardless of the level of
12 radioactivity that it contains. If we were to do otherwise,
13 we're afraid the industry would suffer a significant
14 financial loss.
15 Collectively, the steel industry has about a $50
16 billion revenue in sales a year. If 1 percent of that
17 market is lost due to deselection because of the concerns
18 over potential radioactive isotopes in steel, that's a $500
19 million annual loss. That far exceeds the cost of dealing
20 with all of the material that we're talking about coming out
21 of the decommissioned DOE and NRC facilities.
22 So if you're going to look at the economics of it,
23 that's the number that has to be put on the table. And even
24 perhaps more important than just looking at the economics of
25 steel recycling, we also have to contemplate the impact that
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1 this will have on public perception of recycling in general.
2 That's a number perhaps we can't quantify.
3 It's our view that the current release standards
4 are inadequate, but the alternative is not free release
5 based upon another set of standards. Our industry does
6 support dose-based standards, but we don't believe that
7 dose-based standards in and of themselves are enough to
8 address our other concerns.
9 We strongly advocate either a restricted release
10 where the material either goes to some use within the DOE or
11 NRC community, or if adequate safeguards can be put in
12 place, then we're prepared to participate in the task force
13 that Mike Mattia described, to see if we can figure out what
14 some of those safeguards might be. Potentially some of that
15 material can go back into other uses. Perhaps the details
16 of that are best discussed on an individual basis with the
17 other stakeholders rather than to go into that here.
18 I would like to thank the Commission for giving us
19 the opportunity to speak. I'd like to reemphasize to the
20 Commissioners just how important this issue is to the steel
21 industry, and as we've said in previous statements, it's
22 unfair to our industry to allow the economic burden to be
23 pushed down to us, when it should be addressed by the people
24 who are proposing to generate and release this material.
25 Thank you.
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1 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
2 Mr. Guttman?
3 MR. GUTTMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would
4 like to take my five minutes to five minutes and 30 seconds,
5 to see if I can address the question which the Chairman
6 framed and was echoed by Commissioner Diaz, Commissioner
7 Merrifield, Commissioner Dicus, and brought home to me
8 forcefully, for which I'm grateful, by Commissioner
9 McGaffigan, and I should also say I'm glad this is a country
10 where I can have these kinds of exchanges with you folks off
11 the official formal transcript of record, and that is the
12 ostensible perceived conflict between science and perception
13 or science and fear.
14 There is no doubt, since Madam Curie and so forth,
15 that radiation has been a source of ambivalence. We all
16 recall the famous, "Our Friend, the Atom." Heinz Haber, the
17 paper clip Nazi doctor, wrote that for Walt Disney. Btu the
18 issue here is not that between science and perception.
19 We really have two kinds of sciences, and that's
20 what I'd like to describe to you. I, as a personal matter,
21 have no reason to doubt the accuracy of Commissioner
22 McGaffigan's perception. He's a scientist; I'm not. There
23 may be a 1 millirem that in some sense is a relatively low
24 risk in some scientific sense.
25 At the same time, I'm equally confident -- and the
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1 record here is totally undisputed -- that the institutions
2 which have been entrusted by our government, the
3 contractors, the licensees, to deal with the nuclear waste
4 are not competent to protect the public at any level of
5 radiation today, and that is a social scientific fact, if
6 you want, but it's a scientific fact nonetheless. It's not
7 a matter of perception.
8 I can tell you this with confidence, because I'm
9 privileged to be here on behalf of PACE. PACE has, since
10 the inception of the weapons complex, the DOE complex, been
11 the primary representative of the hourly workers. It not
12 only works at the weapons complex, but works for other
13 NRC-licensed facilities, such as Limerick, and also many of
14 the other most hazardous worksites in the world, the oil
15 industry, for example.
16 We are not hysterics. We understand the
17 difference between flying in an airplane and handling
18 plutonium. We also have an inherent interest in the
19 continued operation of the facilities that we work at.
20 Therefore, while not scientists ourselves, we have, as the
21 canaries in the coal mine, sought to determine what the best
22 surrogates are for the adequacy of the technical and
23 scientific process by which regulators such as yourself
24 protect us.
25 We use standards which I suggest to those of you
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1 that have gone to Cal Tech or Stanford may be similar to
2 those which are ostensibly used in the scientific
3 profession, though we know from the Pasteur Diaries, it's
4 not any more clear what kind of integrity our heroic
5 scientists have. I'm sure you've read that recent -- the
6 story of the Pasteur Diaries.
7 But these are: Is there a process? Is the
8 process transparent? Is there fidelity of the process? And
9 is there openness to new evidence? It's now painfully clear
10 that as the human guinea pigs at the Department of Energy's
11 nuclear weapons complex for over 40 years, the Department
12 and its contractors cannot be trusted with human health.
13 As the executive director of the President's
14 Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments, I was
15 privileged to -- tragically privileged to discover that at
16 the dawn of this Commission's operation, the AEC, there was
17 an intentional, knowing secret attempt to cover health from
18 workers and communities for purposes of avoiding
19 embarrassment and liability to this Commission's predecessor
20 and its contractors, with knowledge that national security
21 was not at issue.
22 I had thought that was ancient history, as
23 Commissioner Diaz had suggested. Now we see from the
24 Paducah revelations, unfortunately it's not. As Secretary
25 Richardson has courageously confirmed, this Commission's
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1 predecessor covered up risk affirmatively from workers, not
2 simply negligently, not simply accidently, but deprived them
3 of the means of protecting themselves, and it was not an
4 illusory risk. It is a risk that today the Congress is
5 hopefully going to mark up a compensation package for.
6 Now, what is the relevance? That is the question
7 to today's session. And what I'm here to tell you is that
8 in the eyes of those who perceive the science, the social
9 science, the way that our members do, there is a direct
10 connection between the conduct of your predecessor and you
11 folks here.
12 The first point you should know, I have had the
13 privilege to study, is your predecessors were men and women
14 of an incredible integrity. Chairman Lillienthal, one of
15 the great American heroes, if you haven't read, I'm sure
16 you'll all want to read his confirmation speech at his
17 nomination proceeding. At the same time, Chairman
18 Lillienthal presided over a Commission that had a knowing
19 secret policy of covering up risk. So the first thing we
20 learn is that good intentions don't cut it with radiation in
21 this country.
22 The second is that there is a straight line
23 between the cover-ups, the incompetence, the unlawful past,
24 and this recycling we're talking about here today. I am
25 continually astonished to see you folks disclaiming
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1 responsibility for the Department of Energy.
2 What the B&FL; experience shows is that there has
3 been a very calculated, concerted laundering of the
4 Department of Energy's waste through what used to be but is
5 no longer your good processes, which have now been sullied.
6 The B&FL;/DOE contract, as you all should know but you may
7 not, first -- it proceeded in every respect in disregard of
8 the scientific protocol which I've described: process,
9 openness, openness to new evidence.
10 First, it proceeded in disregard, as David Adelman
11 said, of the National Academy of Sciences injunction which
12 Chairman Meserve, I think, participated in, Don't proceed
13 with recycling until there are national standards and public
14 participation. B&FL;, the country's designated recycler,
15 said, Why should we care. The Department of Energy said,
16 Why should we care.
17 Our nation said, In order to be assured that
18 scientific environmental processes have integrity, have an
19 environmental public review. DOE and B&FL; said, We don't
20 care about EPA; we don't care about the NEPA, the
21 environmental impact statement.
22 Secretary of Energy Pena directed his top
23 officials, James Owendahl and Mr. Hall [phonetic], who
24 signed the contract, Do not sign a contract that doesn't
25 permit me as Secretary to determine ultimate uses.
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1 That directive, unbeknownst to the Department, was
2 dissed, D-I-S-S-E-D, in the vernacular of our kids; didn't
3 know about this until Mr. Hall, who a year after he signed
4 the contract, found out in litigation that the contract
5 clause he thought he signed wasn't in there. That led to
6 the laundering of this waste before your Tennessee agreement
7 state.
8 Why should we trust the Department of Energy, when
9 the Secretary of Energy's direct directive to his highest
10 officials, who sign contracts, are ignored, even when they
11 think they've attended to them. The Tennessee process is a
12 scam, a scandal, and a fraud.
13 B&FL;, as secret documents show, knowingly
14 laundered, used your good facilities to go through
15 Tennessee, because as its documents show, it knew there
16 would be no public review. There was a short window before
17 environmentalists were going to put a public review process
18 in Tennessee.
19 We found out that after the B&FL; contract was
20 awarded, after DOE first did an audit of the Tennessee
21 facility at which this nickel recycling was to take place,
22 that audit found every manner of environmental, worker, and
23 health and safety violations. You should look at the audit.
24 It found no competence; it found no lawfulness in a facility
25 that had been under the United States Government, DOE, and
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1 your Commission's jurisdiction for years.
2 We presented this -- I did -- in a deposition,
3 this audit to Mr. Mobley, the Tennessee state commissioner,
4 who many of you know is a fine fellow. He said, That's
5 shocking; we're going to have to consider it in the
6 licensing process. Was that considered in the Tennessee
7 licensing process? No. They still don't even know about
8 this audit.
9 Is MSC capable of complying with OSHA today? Who
10 knows? Not the Commission. You folks whitewashed,
11 whitewashed this Tennessee process, even after Federal Judge
12 Kessler, looking at two years of records, said, This is not
13 a credible process, and the Secretary of Energy, who's
14 promoting this recycling, called back this process. You are
15 in the embarrassing position of having whitewashed it.
16 Then we see what happens next. The SAIC folks get
17 sent over here to do B&FL; and DOE's bidding. We now have a
18 conflict that I was astonished by. Anybody could have seen
19 the conflict, but this Commission didn't. The question
20 Chairman Meserve wants to know, what you could do to clean
21 yourselves up, explain how that conflict could have
22 eventuated.
23 We asked, as soon as this conflict was obvious,
24 the first day we saw the NUREG document, Tell us what
25 circumstances could possibly have led this Commission to
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1 spend millions of dollars with SAIC in such an obvious
2 conflict. You have still not come clean with the public.
3 What do you have to hide? Who are you suing now?
4 We see from the staff report you're using EML and
5 Allrise. Bob Meck, who's a wonderful man, says that EML is
6 a successor to HASL. You all know who HASL was. Remember
7 uranium workers? Remember beryllium?
8 We have a compensation program to protect the
9 widows and orphans of the uranium miners who died because
10 HASL screwed up. We're having a beryllium compensation
11 program, which is going to be before Congress this week,
12 because HASL didn't provide adequate protection beryllium.
13 These are the folks you're now telling the public to trust
14 in the middle of this process.
15 So the fact of the matter is that you haven't
16 begun the disclosure. We've asked all kinds of questions.
17 You asked about risk that's out there. We asked on the
18 record, Can you tell us how much of this junk has been put
19 out in the nation; not since last year, but since the '50s,
20 because the secret documents which are now dribbling out of
21 the Oak Ridge archives show that as early as '53, we have
22 been perhaps recycling nickel.
23 When I asked your staff at this set of public
24 participation meetings, How much plutonium is out there, the
25 answer is, We don't know, and by the way, it's none of our
133
1 business, because it's the Department of Energy. You want
2 to know why the public doesn't trust you? It's not
3 perception; it's scientific fact, and the scientific fact
4 is, when asked the question and the answer is, you don't
5 know, the science is, we can't trust people who don't know
6 whether plutonium is in knives and forks.
7 The final point I want to make -- two points. One
8 is the National Academy of Sciences, I quoted in our paper
9 what is self-evident to most of the people out here. As was
10 eloquently stated by your predecessors, it has been long
11 known that the NAS is just another name for this Commission,
12 when this Commission can't do something directly.
13 For those of you who missed the quotation, in
14 1954, a very perturbed Los Alamos official wrote to one of
15 your higher level staff and said, I know the AEC is not
16 credible. I'm certainly only too well aware of a resistance
17 particularly in the press to accept pronouncements and
18 conclusions coming out of the AEC. Strangely enough,
19 they're quite willing to accept the conclusions of the
20 National Academy of Sciences, completely forgetting that the
21 subcommittees were, in very large measure, composed of AEC
22 or AEC contractor representatives. They were the same guys,
23 wearing different hats.
24 Of course, there's no reason to think that's
25 changed, but that doesn't mean we're opposed. We're all in
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1 favor of good science. We'll support you. That means if
2 you go to the NAS, it's not the same old NAS, the same guys
3 wearing different hats. It's an open process.
4 President Clinton showed this country, you can be
5 open about the issues you're dealing with. He opened up
6 classified vaults to the radiation commission. He didn't
7 keep that commission secret like the NAS, and the other
8 thing, Mr. Deckler's point well taken: You don't tell the
9 Commission, Please confirm the science that 1 millirem is
10 okay.
11 You tell them, There's also undisputed science
12 this Commission has not disputed that the people doing this
13 work are, as a matter of historical fact, incompetent and
14 can't be trusted. Explore that; explore that openly. Maybe
15 you'll get some support. But if you go ahead and you say,
16 Conflict of interest is cured because we're going to
17 continue relying on the work; we're just terminating SAIC
18 and using the same folks under the name of the NAS, the
19 science of it, not the perception, the science but also the
20 perception, is that that's not credible.
21 Thank you very much for your indulgence. It's
22 been a privilege and a pleasure to be here.
23 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you.
24 Let me say for the benefit of the public when the
25 issue of the SAIC contract was raised with us, that the
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1 staff did investigate that matter. It was -- the contract
2 with SAIC was terminated.
3 The Academy will have to speak for itself as to
4 the participants in its studies. I know from having
5 participated in the past in Academy studies, that there is
6 an effort that is made, to make sure that the people who are
7 selected to serve on their committees reflect a diversity of
8 views and are not -- don't take any single perspective, and
9 then there is an elaborate review process that is undertaken
10 to assure that the studies do have -- do adequately address
11 the questions that have been presented and have been fairly
12 analyzed.
13 But my role here today is not to defend the
14 Academy.
15 MR. GUTTMAN: No, no. I don't mean to be -- but
16 just to be clear, it's an adequate review process for the
17 '50s, for the Cold War. It's not an adequate review
18 process, knowing what the country now knows and knowing that
19 true openness, where the public sits in on NAS decisional
20 meetings and sees drafts and critiques drafts --
21 I can assure you when I was executive director of
22 the President's Commission, Mr. Deutsch, Secretary Deutsch's
23 deputy called up and said, Guttman, what the heck is going
24 on; the press is calling me up, pointing out that your draft
25 criticizes us. And I said, You're lucky you're in a country
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1 where that kind of thing can go on. And it turned out the
2 product was a lot better.
3 And I can assure you, if you directed the NAS,
4 which you certainly can do, because you're the contractor
5 and you got the bucks, to conduct itself the way a
6 post-millennial scientific study group should conduct
7 itself, not the way a Cold War study group, that would be
8 something that would win a lot of fans here.
9 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: All right.
10 MR. GUTTMAN: And that's something you should
11 consider.
12 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Thank you. Let me turn to my
13 colleagues here for questions. Commissioner Diaz.
14 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Mr. Chairman, I'm worn out.
15 Let me start with Mr. Mattia here. You clearly
16 articulated your concerns, which we are aware that they're
17 out there; we've known for some time, and you suggested some
18 remedies, especially the task force. And when you said what
19 the output or the outcome of the task force effort, you say
20 you are going to arrive at a consensus.
21 Seeing what you have seen today, is this an issue
22 for consensus, you know, or is it an issue in which, you
23 know, eventually choices will have to be made, that
24 consider, you know, the stakeholders, considers the nation's
25 good? But, you know, I'm not sure that we can arrive at a
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1 consensus on issues like this.
2 Would you like to comment on that, please.
3 MR. MATTIA: We believe that a consensus could be
4 reached, because, as you said, there is no zero, and so if
5 we are looking at a number above zero to a number that
6 everyone would agree is improper to ever leave the facility,
7 within there, we have a range of decisions to be made that
8 addresses concerns, perceptions, that everyone could live
9 with.
10 Within that consensus group, we would come to an
11 agreement that everyone can live with this type of material
12 being unrestricted, with this type of material being
13 restricted and with this type of material never being
14 released into the commercial recycling stream.
15 But there can be no consensus now if we do a
16 rulemaking, in essence, where we're opening up a
17 battlefield, where parties who have opinions and concerns
18 and perceptions and fears would all strongly defend their
19 position to the very end. What we need is a peace process,
20 where all the parties get to air their concerns, to look at
21 all the science.
22 There's been individuals here in the audience who
23 maybe have never gone and actually looked at one of these
24 facilities and looked at the material, and what does it look
25 like and where is it used and how is it measured.
138
1 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: So you say you'll try to reach
2 consensus by opening the process up and bringing all
3 interested stakeholders into a way that discussions can be,
4 you know, held.
5 Mr. Wittenborn, on the same area, you made the
6 comment which goes back to what Commissioner McGaffigan and,
7 you know, a few of us have been for some time saying. You
8 say that, you know, there is a point in which you said, This
9 material is not radioactive.
10 Let me just state the fact that when you make that
11 conclusion, you have established de facto a de minimis
12 standard, because there is no such thing that it's not
13 radioactive. You have then concluded that it's not
14 detectable within your, you know, standards, or it's below
15 the level of which, you know, you're going to take action.
16 And I think that's correct. I'm not disputing it.
17 I'm just saying that de facto, you have created, you know,
18 quote, a standard by which you are declaring that the
19 material is not radioactive, and maybe eventually this
20 debate should really turn into, you know, an integral
21 analysis of what is society going to consider radioactive or
22 not, but I'll stop right there and let you answer that.
23 MR. WITTENBORN: I'm not sure that was a
24 question --
25 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: It was a question.
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1 MR. WITTENBORN: -- because I did agree with it.
2 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Have you established a de
3 minimis standard, de facto?
4 MR. WITTENBORN: Well, in a sense, I guess the
5 answer to that is yes, because we can only measure what we
6 can measure, and we don't have equipment that can measure
7 less than background, so we set our detection equipment as
8 close to the background level for the area where the mill is
9 located as possible and attempt to screen out everything
10 that we can identify as being radioactive.
11 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I'm not going to get into a
12 detectability issue.
13 MR. WITTENBORN: Well, we understand that that's
14 only as good as the equipment, and it's only as good as
15 the --
16 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: As the equipment that you
17 have.
18 MR. WITTENBORN: Right.
19 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And that you have determined
20 to be used, and that's the point, that you can bring that
21 detectability down and get a larger crystal, you know. We
22 have -- you know, Commissioner Dicus probably has seen many
23 times whole-body counters. I used to work with a whole-body
24 counter, which had some you know, 100 tons of steel, and it
25 had liquid scintillators that were -- let's see -- 3 meters
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1 in diameters.
2 To be able to get a person in there and detect
3 levels of radiation, at levels that were so tiny, way below
4 background, and we can find somebody that had just gone
5 someplace. If we wanted to, we can establish some level,
6 so -- and that's what we need to deal with, but I do
7 appreciate the fact that you are actually making a concerted
8 effort to say, At this level, I declare this material
9 nonradioactive, and I think that is a valid assumption, as
10 long as it is significantly low, below those levels in which
11 anybody would consider it radioactive.
12 MR. WITTENBORN: I agree with that. We would like
13 to see a dose-based standard. We think that's a very useful
14 first step in the process, but if a dose-based standard is
15 still higher than our equipment is capable of detecting
16 material coming in to the mill, it will still be identified,
17 and it will still be rejected.
18 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Thank you.
19 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Let me ask a question about
20 that. Do you have any indication as to what dose-based
21 standard would not cause your equipment to trigger?
22 MR. WITTENBORN: I don't think I can answer that
23 question. We do have some technical people who probably
24 could get an answer to that question for you. I have only
25 been advised that, for example, the ANSI standard would
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1 easily be -- material meeting the ANSI standard would be
2 detectable coming in to our facilities.
3 One other comment, if I may. For the benefit of
4 Commissioner Merrifield and certainly for everyone else, we
5 have arranged a tour of a couple of steel mills in the East
6 Chicago area for June 16, and anyone who would like to come
7 along and see the scrap processing operation and see how the
8 steel mill operates and look to see what procedures we have
9 in place and how the detectors operate, we would welcome
10 your participation.
11 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Okay. Mr. Chairman, just one
12 comment. You know, the issue that we keep talking about and
13 one that I believe the Commission is asking the staff to
14 really look into, not only because of this, you know,
15 analysis, whether we have a rule or not, but because it has
16 implications on everything is the difference between
17 measuring, you know, a dose and detecting radiation. And
18 that becomes a major issue, the measurability of a dose.
19 You know, and there are detections equipment that
20 can actually, you know, process the different types of
21 radiation and tell you what the dose level approximately is.
22 MR. WITTENBORN: Although one of the limitations
23 on the equipment that we have is that it's only capable of
24 measuring gamma radiation, and we're not capable of
25 measuring alpha or beta.
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1 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner Dicus?
2 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Okay. And, yes. I
3 definitely have been in whole-body counts, more than once,
4 and most recently got counted when I sent in my census form,
5 but moving on --
6 MR. WITTENBORN: And that was whole body?
7 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Yes, it was. I tried to
8 count my dog, and they wouldn't let me.
9 Ms. Hendricks, you have, in your submitted
10 material, have indicated discussions at a recent
11 international symposium in Hamburg, Germany, indicated that
12 trade impacts associated with inconsistent clearance
13 standards could approach 6 billion per year. Have you
14 provided that particular data to the NRC? Do you know if
15 that's been provided to the staff?
16 MS. HENDRICKS: I'm not certain.
17 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Perhaps that would be useful,
18 if you could --
19 MS. HENDRICKS: We'll provide it. Thank you.
20 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Okay. The -- Mr. Loiselle --
21 is that correct?
22 MR. LOISELLE: Loiselle.
23 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Okay. I apologize for that.
24 Having a last name like Dicus, I'm sensitive to be correct
25 in pronunciation.
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1 This demonstration plan that you talked about in
2 your submitted testimony and the plan would encompass NORM
3 materials and addresses sufficient time period, et cetera,
4 have you approached EPA with that?
5 MR. LOISELLE: No, we have not.
6 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Are you going to? Or is
7 that -- I may be --
8 MR. LOISELLE: We don't know exactly what our path
9 forward is to make input, but it's something as a component
10 of the industry that we feel is essential. It's like
11 looking at due process from our point of view, that there
12 are certain steps you make to qualify something that you
13 want to do, and it seems like in the public interest and
14 certainly steel industry, that we've left a major step out,
15 that if we're going to do this and such and that and such,
16 well, by gosh, where is all of the information.
17 We've got the technical and statistical
18 mathematical determinations, but we don't have the practice.
19 We don't have ten years of data to say that, I've been doing
20 this for ten years, and so it's okay. And that's the
21 demonstration plan or that's the essence of it. And it
22 needs a whole lot of development, because it would need that
23 to be comprehensive and include everybody.
24 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Okay. I would recommend
25 that.
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1 Now, I'm coming right down the line. So -- and I
2 know you did a disqualifier and recognized that the sources
3 that you were talking about that had been melted down were
4 not from recycling; they were from lost control of licensed
5 material, be it generally or specifically licensed, and you
6 well know that I've led a charge to try to get better
7 control of this material.
8 But I would really caution you: Be sure we keep
9 these two issues very, very separate, because they are two
10 entirely different issues. And I'm going to put this
11 question to both of you really.
12 If recycling is taken out of the mix, what -- how
13 would you feel? We're not going to recycle. We may have a
14 clearance standard, but we're not going to allow recycling.
15 Where do you want to -- do you want to approach that?
16 MR. WITTENBORN: Our industry would be perfectly
17 comfortable if none of this material ever came out of
18 government control, whether it goes to a landfill of some
19 kind or whether it goes into reuse within the DOE or NRC
20 community. That would be a perfectly acceptable
21 alternative.
22 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: So long as it's controlled.
23 MR. WITTENBORN: So long as it's controlled, and
24 I'm aware that DOE has convened a task force that includes a
25 number of steel companies, looking at the possibility of
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1 using a dedicated steel mill that could be used to produce
2 products that could be reused within DOE and NRC community.
3 MR. MATTIA: Well, we would agree with the same
4 concept. The recycling industry for a long time has
5 championed the cause that by recycling material that can be
6 recycled, we're saving our natural resources from having to
7 be dug up and used for those purposes.
8 It goes back to the issue of if there is material
9 that everyone agrees is adequate and fine and safe to be
10 used in the recycling stream, then it should be used and
11 agreed that material that should not enter the recycling
12 stream should not. If there is some there or a lot there
13 that can save some natural resources that everyone agrees is
14 perfectly safe, then we shouldn't just shove everything into
15 the ground, to dig up more ore to replace it.
16 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Okay. Like the pipeline
17 under the ocean, like Commissioner Merrifield talked about
18 earlier.
19 Did you want to address that?
20 MR. GUTTMAN: Yes. Obviously we think it's not a
21 great idea to put this stuff out in the public, for reasons
22 lots of us have said. But I think I'd like to comment on
23 what obviously is a constructive suggestion you're making.
24 And that is our experience is --
25 COMMISSIONER DICUS: I'm not necessarily making a
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1 suggestion. I'm just asking --
2 MR. GUTTMAN: Okay. I know, and this isn't a
3 rulemaking. Sorry.
4 The unfortunate understanding that we now have,
5 the more that becomes public is that any transfer of this --
6 it really is Ralph Nader's, unsafe at any speed. Let me
7 describe -- I understand you may be putting it in landfills,
8 as per your colloquy with Mr. Adelman.
9 But first of all the workers that we represent --
10 I mean, the sick gallows humor joke is that you want the
11 American people to believe frying pans are safe when you
12 can't keep the workers who've been monitored safe, but the
13 reality is the workers have been for decades taking home
14 clothing contaminated with radiation, notwithstanding --
15 this is not --
16 As Commissioner McGaffigan and others would
17 undoubtedly instruct me, our knowledge of radiation ain't
18 new. We've known it's been risky since, you know, day one
19 of Robert Stone, M.D., and the Manhattan Project. The
20 workers themselves have been permitted to take this stuff
21 into their closet. That's A.
22 Mike Mobley, one of the most eminent of state
23 commissioners who unfortunately left Tennessee recently, for
24 personal reasons, stated publicly in court, but also in the
25 October '98 Progressive, which I'm sure you've all looked
147
1 at, that, Heck, you can't trust anything that DOE does; it's
2 kind of -- if whoever's metering it, you know, finds
3 something, they'll think they did their work for the day and
4 then forget the rest of it.
5 This is on the record. Three -- in the case of
6 the immediate situation of the B&FL; business, B&FL; as it's
7 now scandalously apparent, has no clue what's in the
8 material they're dealing with, in part because they didn't
9 have the security clearances. They don't know what's in the
10 material. Tennessee doesn't know what's in the material.
11 This license was granted based on, you know, a
12 couple of pounds of stuff. We asked Tennessee, Mr. Adelman
13 and I, on the telephone with the chief regulator, Mr.
14 Mobley, how much plutonium is in here. Beats him. I
15 understand we're all technical experts, but this stuff
16 should partition out so I can tell the public it's probably
17 not a lot of plutonium that the DOE and the NRC has put out
18 in your knives and forks, but it's some plutonium that's
19 probably out there.
20 The point is every step in this process is
21 governed by the same science that you have been ignoring
22 that I have been describing. It's the science of human
23 institutions, human competence.
24 I appreciate, Commissioner Diaz, all the advances
25 in radiation measurement, but when Commissioner Mobley,
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1 who's got decades of experience, says, Ah, they don't do
2 that stuff at the Department of Energy, and when I find out
3 that Tennessee, which is protecting my workers, they don't
4 do that stuff either, then I begin to wonder, what's the
5 virtue of all this science A, when science B, which is in
6 much part common sense and humanities, a social science, but
7 when that science shows that we really should go back to
8 square one on this question of transfer of materials outside
9 of the sites that it's located at, on a mass basis in any
10 event.
11 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner Merrifield?
12 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Mr. Mattia, I've had the
13 pleasure in a previous life of visiting facilities, most
14 memorable being Kohn & Son, Brothers, in Concord, New
15 Hampshire. They run a pretty nice facility up there.
16 I think there's a -- having looked at a lot of the
17 work that you do, the members of your association manage a
18 large number of different types of scrap. I think we would
19 be surprised by the number and the complexity of some of the
20 scrap in your operations, and the ability of the members to
21 do that.
22 We touched a little bit in earlier panels -- and
23 Commissioner Dicus has brought up my arctic pipeline
24 example. Is there a way -- and I'd ask Mr. Wittenborn to
25 weigh in on this as well. Is there a way for us to consider
149
1 perhaps the notion of having a dedicated recycling regime, a
2 restricted recycling regime, perhaps a little wider than
3 what you previously committed to, where we could have -- we
4 could determine if this material is usable for a limited
5 number of certain uses, that we would have dedicated
6 recyclers and dedicated mini-mills that could process that
7 material, and it could be put into uses which would not open
8 it up for overall human consumption, in terms of knives and
9 forks and baby carriages and things of that nature? Is that
10 something that you all have thought about?
11 MR. WITTENBORN: Yes, we have. Notwithstanding
12 the position that I took when I answered Commissioner
13 Dicus's question, would we be happy if none of this stuff
14 ever came out, the answer to that is yes. We realize that
15 that might not be acceptable to all the stakeholders.
16 So we've been looking for a way to try to achieve,
17 part of the goal that Mike Mattia was talking about earlier
18 through this task force process of trying to define some
19 acceptance criteria, what are the materials -- I'm answering
20 your question in a roundabout way.
21 Are there some materials to which we would have no
22 objection to the release, even a free release of those
23 materials, and are there other materials that need to be
24 processed for some controlled release scenario, and how
25 broad can that controlled release scenario go?
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1 Well, the answer to the first question is that
2 perhaps there are some materials coming off of these
3 facilities that could be released back into commerce. The
4 example that I heard this morning was the steel folding
5 chairs or filing cabinets or trucks that drive in and out of
6 the facilities on a daily basis. Those can't, once they
7 drive in, never leave the facility again.
8 There has to be some mechanism for those materials
9 to be cleared, and we think a dose-based standard is a
10 useful way to get articles like that, that are intended to
11 go back for their originally intended use, back into
12 commerce.
13 Scrap metal, though, is where we draw the line,
14 because scrap metal -- it's too easy for scrap metal to be
15 commingled; it's too easy for scrap metal to be mixed and
16 matched with materials from other places on the facility;
17 you don't know where it's been, what it's been in contact
18 with. That material has to be treated separately, and under
19 any scenario, under a controlled release mechanism.
20 Are there other uses to which that material could
21 be put --
22 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: I don't mean to
23 interrupt you, but given my tour of Kohn & Sons and others,
24 I think that diminishes the ability of ISRI and its members
25 to keep the stuff separate. I saw large numbers of various
151
1 metals that were segregated, and they did a pretty good job
2 at it, so I don't know if I would take at face value the
3 notion it's impossible --
4 MR. WITTENBORN: Well, they do segregate --
5 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: -- to segregate these
6 materials.
7 MR. WITTENBORN: Well, they do segregate the
8 ferrous and non-ferrous materials. They segregate the
9 copper alloys, the aluminum alloys, and so forth. But if
10 you're decommissioning a major facility like K-25, you don't
11 know, for example, whether the ferrous scrap has come out of
12 Building A or Building B. It goes into a shredder; it goes
13 into a baler; it goes into a sheering machine. When it
14 comes out of there, you don't know exactly where that
15 material has --
16 Once it goes through that process at a scrap yard,
17 it's no longer recognizable, and it's too easy for that
18 material to be commingled with other material. That's a
19 concern that we have.
20 But back to your original question, are there
21 other uses to which that steel or copper or aluminum could
22 be put, I think the answer to that would be yes. Our goal
23 is to try to keep it out of the consumer's venue.
24 The problem we have with metals is that they're
25 infinitely recycled, so if your first use of the steel
152
1 coming out of a DOE facility is to make rebar to go into
2 concrete for bridges, 20 years later, that bridge is torn
3 down; the rebar is recycled, and you've lost control over
4 that.
5 So your suggestion of a pipeline that goes under
6 the ocean that will never be removed, that's, as far as I'm
7 concerned, as permanent a disposal as any landfill, and that
8 would be perfectly acceptable use. But if the material were
9 going into a use where 20, 30 years later, it's going to be
10 recycled and potentially back into consumer products, we
11 would have a concern with that.
12 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Mr. Loiselle, do you
13 have any comments in that regard as well? you obviously
14 represent the Association of Radioactive Recyclers. Do you
15 think there possibly exists that we could come up with a
16 waste stream in which we could have these restricted
17 releases?
18 MR. LOISELLE: We as the processor end of it,
19 looking at the regulations and what we do, we do perceive
20 restricted and unrestricted uses in the future. It seems
21 like the way to go to cover the spectrum, because if you can
22 define so-called de minimis standard, we're always going to
23 have stuff that still has no place to go, and a restricted
24 reuse application is ideal.
25 We've run a number of pilot programs in Oak Ridge
153
1 so far. The problem is the cost of doing that and the
2 market. For example, it's pretty clear to us that if you're
3 going to take recycled metal and make waste containers, that
4 perhaps your only market today -- there is no market, but if
5 there were to be a market, it would probably be Department
6 of Energy.
7 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Ms. Hendricks, one of
8 the issues that was brought up today by Mr. Wittenborn is
9 the issue of externalities, passing the costs off to those
10 who don't bear any of the benefits of it, and, you know,
11 they say, We're the steel industry; we don't have to pay the
12 cost of dealing with this, since it's the nuclear industry
13 which has benefitted from producing the power and making the
14 money.
15 What's your take on that belief?
16 MS. HENDRICKS: Well, I think it's somewhat
17 difficult to answer those questions, because they're by
18 nature societal and complex, and we're all interrelated.
19 It's hard to say that for every benefit, the exact person
20 that benefits. I mean, does that person also benefit from
21 nuclear power? Chances are, that person does. Do they
22 benefit from the medical and radioactive uses of radioactive
23 material? Chances are, they do.
24 But getting to the, I think, more direct part of
25 your question, if there is to be a tremendous cost, it's not
154
1 appropriate entirely to externalize that, but when -- I
2 guess you get into a problem if cost is, in fact, driven
3 entirely by perception, which in turn is -- you know, no
4 matter where you sit, it can be driven even further.
5 You'd like to hope that there are some opportunity
6 for a dialogue that can establish a rational and even, you
7 know, in spite of our apologies for being technical people,
8 technical basis. I don't think people that aren't in the
9 business can fully appreciate the significance of the
10 international bodies picking a dose as low as 1 millirem.
11 I mean, the standards that radiation protection
12 folks believe protect people is 100 millirem, and I don't
13 believe there have been any studies conducted in any sort of
14 a scientific basis that show otherwise, that show any
15 indication of any health effects, even at the dose of 100
16 millirem. So a lot of it's communication.
17 We sound cavalier, and it sounds like we're, you
18 know, perhaps externalizing, you know, costs and harm, but
19 if you put it in the perspective of the kind of doses we're
20 looking at, I have a hard time seeing it that way.
21 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 MR. GUTTMAN: Could I address from the workers'
23 perspective?
24 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Briefly.
25 MR. GUTTMAN: Yes. Real world -- this is why I
155
1 like to see how you deal with this, Commissioner and Ms.
2 Hendricks. In the real world, it turns out all our workers
3 just didn't know there was plutonium that they were dealing
4 with, so they weren't protected against plutonium.
5 As we discussed with Chairman Meserve, happy to
6 discuss with any of you, our workforce found that with all
7 the tight controls your Commission has been imposing, this
8 plutonium seemed to find its way into Fernald, and then from
9 Fernald into one of your facilities. How much is there,
10 what effect on workers? As I said, Tennessee isn't metering
11 for plutonium.
12 When this gets out, we're talking about workers
13 not in steel mills but elsewhere. Our members could be
14 using lathes and other things, you know, slicing plutonium.
15 There is no standard, as far as I know -- I may be wrong --
16 for plutonium. Plutonium, as I understand, can be fatal at
17 any level.
18 I understand there's all this qualifications and
19 it's not as deadly as coral snake bite and all that kind of
20 stuff, but it's still serious stuff. And the question I'm
21 asking you is: If you're not going to tell the public that
22 your science is good enough to make sure we don't hire B&FL;
23 or we don't hire people who are incompetent or act
24 unlawfully, then you're going to have to regulate all the
25 way downstream, through American industry, to tell all those
156
1 workers that are lathing with all this stuff coming out of
2 Mr. Wittenborn's steel mill, This may contain plutonium,
3 which means label it.
4 If you've got the confidence you've got, then go
5 ahead and do what you're going to do, but have the guts to
6 label it and put in everything that you're going out there:
7 Workers down there in Joe's instrument, you know, trombone
8 and clarinet refining thing, you may be using plutonium in
9 this thing. Do it; have the guts to label it and say, We
10 can't protect you against plutonium. We don't think it's
11 going to harm you on the average. It may kill one of you,
12 but it's not going to harm most of you.
13 That's what it is. The public can take risks. Be
14 men and women enough to tell them. Very few of you are
15 going to get killed, and it's going to be a lost of cost
16 benefit, so do it up front. Label it.
17 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Commissioner McGaffigan.
18 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Let me start with Mr.
19 Mattia. As you know, I've supported the effort to try to
20 bring more orphan sources under control through the
21 registration program, and I think the Commission has as a
22 whole, and Commissioner Dicus has been our leader on that,
23 but there are still going to be holes there. And I also
24 join Commissioner Dicus in the admonishment not to confuse
25 the two, but they keep getting confused, so I'm going to
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1 stay a while on this.
2 Most of the material that is causing the problems,
3 as I understand it, at the mills is from the oil and gas
4 industry. Isn't that correct? I mean, it isn't our sealed
5 sources. The things that set off monitors, that force you
6 to look in detail at what's there, it's oil and gas -- it's
7 slag that's left on the pipes that somebody's going to try
8 to reuse. They try to blast it off with water or whatever,
9 but they didn't get it all off, and it's setting off
10 monitors. It's got one of these gamma emitters that Mr.
11 Wittenborn talks about.
12 Isn't that what mostly sets it off? It's not
13 orphan sources. Orphan sources, you have to worry about,
14 because if you burn one, it's a big problem. But this other
15 stuff, you just try to sort it; you try to figure out, is it
16 really radioactive. I guess you reject it if you come to
17 the conclusion that it is, based on the detectors you have
18 there. But that's what's causing most of the problem.
19 MR. MATTIA: The majority of the alarms that are
20 occurring are not from sources, sealed sources. The
21 problem, as you well know, is a detector, looking at a rail
22 car or a truck of scrap going through the portal, is not
23 sure it's reading a piece of NORM on the wall or a cobalt-60
24 source in the center because of the dilution going through
25 the metal. And so that's why the concern is there.
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1 The numbers are correct, but all of this material
2 that has come into our industry has obviously heightened the
3 concern and heightened the concern of the workers, the
4 individuals who are running this facility. As soon as you
5 say, radioactive, there's a knee jerk, and what we want to
6 try to do is to quiet that with reason, with discussion.
7 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I think part of it is --
8 we were admonished to get the facts on the table. I think
9 it's real important that we get the facts on the table as to
10 what's actually happening and what the source of the problem
11 is, because a lot of the material that I think is a problem
12 for you guys, that Mr. Wittenborn says may cost you, if 1
13 percent of the public chooses not to buy steel, $500 million
14 a year, is never going to come from us; it's already there.
15 You're already dealing with NORM; you're already inevitably
16 smelting and getting some amount of NORM material into the
17 steel, and you can't do anything about it. And it's going
18 to come at you from sources that are totally outside of NRC
19 space.
20 MR. WITTENBORN: Well, let me clarify one point.
21 We don't melt NORM if we detect it.
22 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: But you -- yes.
23 MR. WITTENBORN: If we detect it, and that's one
24 of the reasons why we try to get the best detection
25 equipment we can, because we try to find everything. But as
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1 Mike suggested, the real culprit are the sealed sources, and
2 if that sealed source is buried in the middle of a rail car,
3 it takes extremely sensitive equipment to be able to detect
4 it. That same equipment will also pick up NORM in that same
5 scrap.
6 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Or pick up the radium.
7 Right?
8 MR. WITTENBORN: And it will be rejected, and it's
9 turned over to --
10 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: If there's enough radium
11 in it, you'll detect it. If there isn't enough --
12 MR. WITTENBORN: If there isn't enough, then
13 perhaps it gets through.
14 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Did you want to -- go
15 ahead.
16 COMMISSIONER DICUS: Thank you. Just one quick --
17 because, you know, as I think you probably know, I was head
18 of a state program, and we had a lot of problems with the
19 Arkansas steel mills, and we've got a lot of scrap. But
20 sometimes they didn't reject the entire load. They did try
21 to find the source, so --
22 MR. WITTENBORN: Different mills have different
23 practices. In some cases, if the alarm goes off, they just
24 tell the truck driver, Go back where you came from. In
25 other cases, if it's a rail car, if it's coming in on a
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1 barge, that may not be as feasible, and somebody has to
2 segregate that shipment and workers have to be tasked to go
3 through there with hand-detectors and try to figure out what
4 set off the alarm.
5 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: So we start from the
6 premise that there is -- you know, we talked earlier with
7 Mr. Deckler and his wife and the forks. There is some
8 radioactivity in that fork that she's using on her table
9 today. If we let Commissioner Diaz's university team go at
10 it and melt that fork and examine it with every detector
11 they can think of, over a long enough time, I guarantee you,
12 they'll detect radioactivity in the fork.
13 So the question is how much, and last week when we
14 had -- when we were talking with the staff -- I almost wish
15 we had the cement folks here, because they, I guess, like
16 concrete folks, largely joined you, and yet their recycling
17 coal ash, and, you know, I think it's perfectly rational to
18 recycle coal ash personally and mix it in building materials
19 and make concrete out of it, because it's no more
20 radioactive than if I built the house with brick probably.
21 But we -- and I don't know whether anybody had a
22 rulemaking process that reached -- you know, EPA just went
23 through a Bevil amendment process that decided that coal ash
24 was going to stay outside of RCRA and was going to be
25 utilized, you know, disposed of properly through state
161
1 action, and beneficial uses were going to be made of it in
2 various ways, including recycle and concrete.
3 But we do have these other -- we have -- you know,
4 your steel may be imbedded in a building. The rebar you
5 talk about being gutted in concrete, the concrete may well
6 be typically more radioactive than the rebars, and society
7 accepts that. So how do we have a dialogue with the public
8 about all the radioactivity that's there? Is that what your
9 task force is going to talk about or --
10 MR. MATTIA: I use the example that we've heard so
11 many times, that we definitely need more prisons, but I just
12 don't want it in my backyard and you don't want it in yours,
13 and we need more landfills; we just don't want it across the
14 street from the playground.
15 We are -- this material is being used. There's
16 material, as Commissioner Diaz says, that is radioactive,
17 down to the atomic level, that's being recycled every day,
18 because you can't get away from it. We have to address the
19 perception, What will my industry feel comfortable dealing
20 with; what will the steel industry be comfortable melting;
21 what will the consumers be comfortable creating cars with.
22 If we can deal with the perception along with the
23 science, we can quiet the fears, and we can have a way that
24 we can deal with this material
25 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Mr. Collins suggested a
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1 note for your industry earlier in his presentation where he
2 was basically recommending the ANSI standard to us. He said
3 that that would not preclude, in the States' view, any
4 industry from adopting a tighter standard.
5 And the de facto tighter standard I think I'm
6 hearing from you all is that for gamma emitters, where your
7 detectors can detect, you're going to go -- if there were an
8 ANSI standard or you take the European experience, where you
9 say you're given an acceptance criterion, and after the
10 fact, a standard that is largely in place. It sounds like
11 it's the Collins approach.
12 You guys, for the purposes of gamma emitters, may
13 well be going to establish a lower acceptance criteria for
14 anything that's going to come in through your industry. For
15 the technetiums and for the other things that are
16 essentially nondetectable because they're self-shielding,
17 you can't do much about it. You don't have the detectors to
18 detect it; they probably will never be cost-effective, so
19 maybe the ANSI standard would be the standard.
20 And, you know, if you take the European
21 experience, just take the European experience, I'll make a
22 bet that what you're coming up with the de facto there is
23 something for gamma emitters and something else for alpha
24 and beta emitters, the slow-energy betas.
25 MR. WITTENBORN: Well, an alternative would be not
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1 to allow that stuff to come out, especially if it's going to
2 set off our equipment, because --
3 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: It won't set off your
4 equipment; I'm telling you it won't.
5 MR. WITTENBORN: Well, the technetium perhaps
6 won't, but the gamma emitters, even at the ANSI standard,
7 will.
8 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: No. I'm saying, what
9 you're -- at some point, it won't. It sounds like what
10 you're saying is at some point, if I take a tenth of the
11 ANSI standard, you guys --
12 MR. WITTENBORN: At some point it won't be
13 detected.
14 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: At some point, it's not
15 going to be detected by your detectors, so what you would
16 come up with as an industry, perhaps after the fact in
17 Europe, if that's what happening, as you describe it, is for
18 gamma emitters, you're coming up with something that's a
19 tenth of the standard or a hundredth of the standard,
20 whatever it proves to be for your detection limits. For the
21 alpha and beta emitters, you're probably basically living
22 with the standard, because you don't have the equipment to
23 detect.
24 MR. WITTENBORN: But the price of that is that
25 we're going to look at several million tons of scrap metal
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1 coming into these mills that presumably is going to -- even
2 if it meets the clearance level, is going to set off the
3 detectors, and we're going to have to deal with that.
4 That's a commercial cost that I don't think it's fair to
5 impose on the steel industry or the other metal industries.
6 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: And that gets back to
7 the question of NORM and how much of that is going to -- I
8 just assume that there are industries in this country,
9 totally outside of our license space, that have to interact
10 with naturally occurring materials and concentrate them, and
11 that those industries also are trying to recycle their
12 product, and that's why it isn't just in our space that
13 there's a problem; there's a problem overall.
14 MR. WITTENBORN: The other issue that we deal with
15 that hasn't really been discussed is: What is the impact
16 that accepting this material would have on the mills, even
17 if we didn't detect it? To what extent are some of these
18 isotopes going to concentrate in the baghouse dust or
19 partition and concentrate in the slag and create problems
20 for us, or contaminate our processing equipment over time,
21 just because steel continues --
22 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: We need to look at that.
23 Mr. Guttman, I'll tell you. We try to run an open
24 process around here. I feel that a lot of your dialogue has
25 to do with tarring us with every sin of the AEC --
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1 MR. GUTTMAN: No, that is not true. You have not
2 read the materials, Mr. McGaffigan. If you did, I'd be
3 happy to -- and I reject your slander, your attempt to smear
4 us as people who do nothing but smear --
5 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Let's --
6 MR. GUTTMAN: -- when our science has been
7 obtained at the cost of deaths of people under your
8 jurisdiction --
9 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The last comment I'll
10 make --
11 MR. GUTTMAN: That's what our science has been
12 obtained at, Mr. McGaffigan.
13 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The last comment I'll
14 make, you know, is --
15 MR. GUTTMAN: So please refrain from accusing
16 anybody, when you're not reading their material, and if you
17 want to read the material, my offices are available as
18 yours.
19 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The last comment I'll
20 make, Mr. Chairman -- I guess he's looked up our resumes,
21 and he's mentioned Cal Tech and Stanford a couple of
22 times -- part of it isn't on my resume is my father was a
23 member of the United Mineworkers Union. He was an immigrant
24 to this country, and I think -- I like unions; I like unions
25 protecting people. I think that's important. They
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1 protected my father. I grew up reading John L. Lewis in the
2 monthly Mineworkers newsletter.
3 And the thought that your saying that we're here,
4 this group of people, most of us from working class
5 backgrounds, trying to contaminate your members and kill
6 them is just a very great --
7 MR. GUTTMAN: As a point of privilege, let me
8 prove my point then, if you're going to use those kind of
9 terms. Your question -- now, wait a second. This is a
10 point of personal privilege.
11 Mr. McGaffigan's question pointedly omitted the
12 workers who were involved in recycling. On this record, I
13 have repeatedly asked at the public participation, why was
14 there no study of the hazards to the workers doing the
15 recycling? Why did Tennessee not study it? Why did B&FL;
16 not study it? If you were so concerned about workers, Mr.
17 McGaffigan, why don't you go and find out why that wasn't
18 studied. Why don't you ask these folks with your staff,
19 what is the effect on the B&FL; process, so let's not
20 demagogue. Let's not demagogue. We all have backgrounds
21 that are impressive and important. We're all immigrants or
22 most of us here.
23 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Let me suggest, Mr. Guttman,
24 that we --
25 MR. GUTTMAN: Let's ask about the workers in the
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1 recycling plants.
2 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: -- the issue of workers would
3 clearly be something that would have to be --
4 MR. GUTTMAN: It hasn't been. And it hasn't been.
5 I've asked questions -- I ask this Commission now: Please
6 provide for the record. We've asked again and again, and
7 we've been ignored since November 1. We were told, Put it
8 in the record.
9 Not one of you has provided a single answer to the
10 question of where is the study of workers in recycling. Not
11 one of you has explained how this Commission can be trusted
12 when it doesn't disclose the conflict of interest basis.
13 Not one of you has explained how much plutonium has gone
14 out.
15 You want to be trusted? Give us facts, not
16 rhetoric. And don't demagogue. Please, we have enough of
17 it in this country.
18 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Mr. Chairman, I would
19 note that your answer to Congressman Dingell, Congressman
20 Markey, and Congressman Klink included a discussion of
21 worker exposures, and I think that was publicly available
22 and --
23 MR. GUTTMAN: Yes. And it didn't tell us of any
24 study related to the SAIC being a failed contract, and
25 that's why we're asking you, where is that study. If you're
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1 going to talk about workers, talk about those that are doing
2 the recycling. Don't try to get out of this problem by
3 getting some detectors, so you only have to worry about the
4 steelworkers. Talk about the workers who are directly
5 exposed and taking this home on their boots, as I'm sure
6 your father knew.
7 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Ms. Hendricks, I have a
8 question for you. Several of the people who've testified
9 before us on this panel and earlier have suggested that we
10 ought not to tolerate any release, and that there ought to
11 be the -- the rule ought to be no releases of materials.
12 That's legitimately something that we have these
13 public meetings so people can raise issues like that, and we
14 have the opportunity to address them. I would appreciate it
15 if you could provide me with some indication, if you can,
16 about what the implications of that would be for licensees.
17 Is that feasible?
18 MS. HENDRICKS: No, it isn't feasible. If you
19 look at it in the context of the way a plant operates -- for
20 example, before a nuclear power plant starts up, they do an
21 environmental impact statement, and they look at preexisting
22 levels of radioactive materials in the environment.
23 They have a very extensive monitoring program
24 throughout their operation; they take samples of media to
25 ascertain that, in fact, nothing untoward is happening.
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1 You're not getting concentrations that you don't anticipate,
2 and through your permitted release program, where you're
3 permitted to release effluents in air and water, and then
4 you have --
5 As an analogy, you have the situation where
6 throughout this process, everything's been permitted and
7 addressed; now you need to dredge your canal, and you have
8 no standard. I mean, if it went out as an effluent, you
9 have a standard, but now that you need to pick it up because
10 the Army Corps of Engineers or somebody says, you know,
11 that's what you've got to do, you pick it up; you put it on
12 a barge. You have no standard anymore, other than this
13 phantom, you know, witch hunt, not one atom, which, of
14 course, is not realistic.
15 So what -- and this is happening. What does this
16 person, what does this organization do responsibly with a
17 barge full of sediment? I mean, it's got to go somewhere.
18 The Army Corps of Engineers says that they can't put it back
19 where it was.
20 NRC for a while was saying, Well, you need a
21 special exemption or special permission, to even put it back
22 on your own site. I mean, this issue of not having
23 standards leads to a lot of illogical, silly actions, and
24 those silly actions, if you will, waste a lot of good
25 resources of both the licensee and the regulator who
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1 otherwise are trying to comply with the regulations in an
2 effective efficient manner and protect public health and
3 safety.
4 CHAIRMAN MESERVE: Let me make an observation that
5 I've been struck by several of the presentations here this
6 morning, about an interest among the steel industry, the
7 recyclers, the Association of Radioactive Recyclers, and the
8 NEI, about getting your acts together, in the sense that an
9 acceptance limit that would be acceptable to you might be
10 different from a kind of dose-based criteria that was
11 discussed in our issues paper.
12 And, you know, I think it would be appropriate to
13 make sure that workers were represented in those discussions
14 and the public more generally in those discussions.
15 Let me suggest to you that there is no need for
16 that necessarily to be a discussion that takes place
17 directly under NRC auspices. I mean, this is an issue that
18 you're all confronting in various ways, and you're
19 confronting it even with regard to materials that are not
20 under our regulatory control, and be something that we can't
21 contemplate regulating in any event.
22 And it does seem to me that this would be the type
23 of issue that would warrant your going ahead and proceeding
24 in an effort to have some discussion among yourselves on
25 these issues, and we might well benefit from that. I think
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1 the public would benefit from it as well.
2 I mean, several of you have indicated you'd be
3 willing to do it, but as far as I'm concerned, there's
4 nothing that should be holding you back.
5 I think we've reached well after the end of our
6 appointed time. It's obvious that we've had the benefit of
7 many different views on the matters that are before us.
8 This is obviously a very complex issue. The Commission has
9 not decided as a Commission how it's going to proceed, and
10 all these interactions are valuable to us.
11 And I'd like to thank all of you on this panel and
12 those on the predecessor panels for spending the morning
13 with us. Thank you very much. And with that, we're
14 adjourned.
15 [Whereupon, at 1:00 p.m., the meeting was
16 concluded.]
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