 |
Search Options | |||
| Index | Site Map | FAQ | Facility Info | Reading Rm | New | Help | Glossary | Contact Us |  |
|||
Home > Electronic Reading Room > Document Collections > Commission Documents > Commission Meetings, Slides, Transcripts, Meeting SRMs, and Full Written Explanation for Closed Meetings > 1997
>
05/14/1997
1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
***
BRIEFING ON STATUS OF ACTIVITIES
WITH CNWRA AND HLW
***
PUBLIC MEETING
***
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Commission Hearing Room
11555 Rockville Pike
Rockville, Maryland
Wednesday, May 14, 1997
The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
notice, at 1:33 p.m., the Honorable SHIRLEY A. JACKSON,
Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission
KENNETH C. ROGERS, Member of the Commission
GRETA J. DICUS, Member of the Commission
EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., Member of the Commission
NILS J. DIAZ, Member of the Commission
. 2
. 3
STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE:
JOHN C. HOYLE, Secretary
KAREN D. CYR, General Counsel
MARGARET V. FEDERLINE, Deputy Director, Division
of Waste Management, NMSS
MALCOLM R. KNAPP, Deputy Director, NMSS
L. JOSEPH CALLAN, EDO
WESLEY PATRICK, President, CNWRA
MICHAEL J. BELL, NMSS
. 4
P R O C E E D I N G S
[1:33 p.m.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen.
The purpose of this afternoon's meeting is for the
NRC staff and the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory
Analyses, or we'll refer to it as the Center, to provide the
Commission with a periodic briefing on the status of the NRC
high-level waste program and activities of the Center.
The Commission is pleased to welcome Dr. Wesley
Patrick, from the Center, who will be providing at least
part of today's briefing. The last time the Center briefed
the Commission was in April of 1996.
Today's briefing will be the first of three
briefings on high-level radioactive waste that the
Commission will receive in the next day and a half.
Tomorrow morning the Commission will be briefed by the U.S.
Department of Energy on its high-level waste program. At
that briefing the Commission also will hear from
representatives from the State of Nevada, local governments,
and affected Indian tribes. Tomorrow afternoon the
Commission will again be briefed by the NRC staff on the
progress that has been made in the area of performance
assessment for high-level waste disposal, as well as for
low-level waste and for SDMP sites.
. 5
Mr. Callan, the Commission looks forward to
hearing from the NRC staff and the Center today on the
status and accomplishments of the NRC's high-level waste
program, and unless my fellow colleagues here have any
opening comments, please proceed.
MR. CALLAN: Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon,
Commissioners. With me at the table this afternoon are Mal
Knapp, the Deputy Director of NMSS; Wes Patrick, the
president of the Center -- I'll use that same phraseology;
Margaret Federline, the Deputy Director of the Division of
Waste Management; and Mike Bell, a branch chief in
Margaret's division.
Margaret Federline will lead the staff's
discussion this afternoon.
Margaret.
MS. FEDERLINE: Thank you.
We appreciate the opportunity to be with you this
afternoon to discuss our progress and accomplishments in the
NRC high-level waste program. As I'm sure the Commissioners
know, external factors and uncertainty still continue to
influence the high-level waste program, and what I'm going
to talk about today is our program strategy in the face of
this uncertainty and how we see it meeting our statutory
obligations.
Dr. Patrick of the Center is also here with me
. 6
today. Wes and I will describe some of the major technical
progress that has been made in the program in spite of the
constraints that we're facing. I also want to discuss our
progress in meeting program objectives and provide some
perspective on how we see the national program and it
progress.
May I have the next slide, please?
May I have the next slide, please?
Because of the uncertainty and external influences
on the high-level waste program, we feel it's really
important to regularly review our program assumptions to
ensure that we have the ship steered in the right direction.
As you are aware, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of '87 and
the Energy Policy Act of '92 are currently the guiding
statutes for the high-level waste program. You are of
course aware of the legislation that's been introduced in
Congress, S. 104, which has passed the Senate, and H.R.
1270, which is under consideration by the House. We don't
expect the key scientific issues at a potential Yucca
Mountain site to change based on the passage of these key
pieces of legislation. However, we can see that adjustments
to the regulatory framework would be needed if these pieces
of legislation do pass.
Another one of our key assumptions is that the EPA
standard will be proposed in 1997 and finalized in 1998.
. 7
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you have, you know, some
sense of what level of confidence you can -- that you have
that EPA would meet that, you know, actually promulgate a
standard, a draft standard, this year?
MS. FEDERLINE: I would say we had more confidence
about two months ago. They were telling us it was in a
couple of weeks, but now the message that we're getting is
it's uncertain as to when it will be published.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Now how would the NRC program
or for that matter the whole high-level waste program be
affected if, you know, assuming we're operating under the
existing statutory requirements, how would that be affected
if the standard were delayed beyond these projected dates?
MS. FEDERLINE: DOE has told us that they -- the
standard could be on the critical path. They've told us
that July 1999 is important for them to have NRC's standard
in place, and I'm sure they've told EPA a similar thing.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Same thing.
MS. FEDERLINE: We believe that DOE will continue
to implement its revised program approach. As you know, the
appropriations language for 1997 directed DOE to focus on
the core scientific issues, and we believe that this is
consistent with NRC's refocused program. And of course
future budget estimates are highly uncertain.
I would just touch on the next slide. My reason
. 8
for including it is to illustrate that both NRC and DOE have
experienced significant reductions over the past two years,
although as you can see from the chart, DOE's budget has
been somewhat restored. The Commission requested the staff
to continue on a path under DSI 6 to keep pace with the
national program at an appropriate level of funding, and
this has been difficult, and will continue to be difficult
if current budget levels persist.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes, please.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: A question on budget.
If the current legislation, and the Chairman testified on
this a few weeks ago, but if the current legislation were to
move forward with either the House or Senate time line in
interim storage came into the picture, we have nothing
budgeted for that, and it would have to be budgeted in the
high-level waste area, right? We would face a tradeoff
between money devoted to the repository and money devoted to
reviewing DOE paperwork related to interim storage. Is that
correct?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, I think as the Chairman
mentioned in her testimony in the hearing, that there is a
pending collision of the programs in this --
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Weird vapors, as --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Oh, yeah, running on --
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Running on fumes.
. 9
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Fumes. Yes, thank you so much.
Those were my very words.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: My recollection is that
DOE as expected -- and this is not your office, so maybe
Joe -- as expected did just submit something to us about a
generic interim storage facility, and -- how much resource
goes into reviewing, you know, their generic paper? Do
you --
MR. BELL: We have two FTE's budgeted for the
spent-fuel project office review, activities under the high-
level waste fund, and that would fall into that area, and
since we're already half -- more than halfway through the
fiscal year, that should be adequate.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MS. FEDERLINE: May I have the next slide, please?
We're entering a critical time in the repository
program. For those of us who've worked in the repository
program for a long time, it's a welcome sight to see the
critical decisions approaching. I would note that decisions
in which NRC will play a key role, I won't go into detail on
each and every milestone, but I would just note that NRC has
either a statutory responsibility to be involved in these
milestones or in the case of the viability assessment, we
expect the Commission to perhaps have views solicited on the
. 10
acceptability of the viability assessment. So as you can
see, there are many activities coming down the pike for us,
and this is the context that we want to present our program
strategy.
The next set of the slides provides an overview of
our refocused program, where we are currently in
prelicensing concepts and where we see ourself going as we
get closer and closer to licensing.
On slide 8, considering the approach of these
important milestones for the national program, we've really
identified three major goals which sort of drive the
objectives that you have listed on the slide here.
The first is to provide a reasonable and
implementable regulatory framework. We have been
cooperating with EPA in the development of implementable
safety standards. The NRC staff with the Center staff has
been conducting detailed analyses and have provided these to
EPA. I would just emphasize that we've not focused on this
acceptability of the repository, but rather on the
implementability of the regulations. We are also planning
to come to the Commission with an options paper discussing
how such regulations might be implemented in our regulatory
framework so that we can ensure that any approach we're
considering is consistent with the Commission's wishes.
And, you know, as I emphasized earlier in the briefing, DOE
. 11
has indicated that they would like something in place by
July of '99.
The other objective that I want to really focus on
today is we've attempted to define a program strategy which
focuses on what really makes a difference. You're aware
that it's a very unique engineering and scientific problem,
and there are a lot of issues that could be studied and
studied and studied. What we're trying to do is using a
systems approach through performance assessment get an
understanding of what really makes a difference, and make
sure that our comments are directed at those areas. And the
objectives that I have listed on the slide that coordinate
with that goal are to set program priorities based on key
technical issues that are most important to repository
performance. One of our key elements of our prelicensing
strategy has been to communicate early with DOE. We don't
want there to be any surprises when the Commission's asked
for its comments on the viability assessment. We want it to
be clear what our scientific programs are finding and what
potential vulnerabilities we see for the licensing program.
We also have initiated a program to resolve key
technical issues at the staff level prior to the viability
assessment. I would just note that under the NRC/DOE
procedural agreement resolving issues means that NRC staff
has no additional questions at this point in time. It
. 12
doesn't preclude us from asking questions at a later point
if new information comes up.
The other objective that I wanted to focus on was
in reviewing elements of DOE's viability assessment and
preparing to answer questions, we have felt that a focus on
potential licensing vulnerabilities is the correct approach,
and what we're trying to do is for each of the KTI's we
would develop acceptance criteria, which would provide some
guidance for DOE as well as for the NRC staff on what the
NRC staff would find acceptable. And we're defining these
acceptance criteria not only on a discipline basis, that's
issue by issue, but on an integrated systems approach, so we
make sure we consider the significance of the issue to
performance at the time we develop the acceptance criteria.
And the third goal that I want to focus on on this
slide is we've been working on improving our efficiency and
interdisciplinary understanding of the processes that are
going on a Yucca Mountain. What we have tried to do through
involving greater numbers of staff in our systems analysis
is to enhance their understanding of how their relative
disciplinary knowledge fits into the big picture and really
affects the end point, the compliance point, which is DOE's.
Another goal that we've set for ourselves is to
never have an interaction that doesn't have a predetermined
objective. We want to make sure that our interactions are
. 13
focused and well-defined, that we just don't get together
for the purposes of getting together. We want to make sure
that it's clear from DOE's side and clear from our side what
we would like to accomplish.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you a couple quick
questions. Has the cooperation between the NRC and EPA
staffs on the EPA high-level standard been favorable?
MS. FEDERLINE: I would say generally we made some
good progress. We have not seen a copy of the draft
standard recently. The last copy of the standard we saw did
reflect some of the progress that we felt we had made, sort
of an agreement and consensus on how to implement such a
standard. There are two significant issues that remain, and
we've discussed those with the Commission. This is the need
for a separate groundwater protection standard as well as
the level of individual protection that might be necessary
at a repository. There are still remaining differences on
those issues.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I was going to ask you about
those. When do you actually plan to initiate the
development of a risk-informed performance-based standard
specific to, you know, rule specific to Yucca Mountain?
MS. FEDERLINE: Our plan is to come to the
Commission in the early fall with an options paper that
would outline some options for the Commission in terms of
. 14
revising the regulatory framework. We -- hopefully the
Commission would give us early guidance at that point, and
we really believe that we would like to go ahead and
proceed.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And does your schedule for
finalization of the rule track with the DOE schedule to
submit a license application in 2002?
MS. FEDERLINE: Well, that's highly dependent on
the availability of resources. If we are to --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So assuming you had the
resources, what you've laid out would track with that is
what you're saying?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. Correct.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay, but it's very resource-
dependent.
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, it is.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And the last question is, you
mentioned improving program efficiencies, you know, as
budget's been squeezed and squeezed. What other ideas do
you have for improving --
[Laughter.]
MS. FEDERLINE: One thing we have worked with the
organizational development staff in the Office of Personnel,
and we are going through team training to help engineers and
geoscientists speak to one another. As I'm sure you know,
. 15
they're very different disciplines, and each brings a
special expertise to the program, and we just want to make
sure that we are interfacing as effectively as we possibly
can. Another efficiency that we've done in the Center has
been a great contributor to this. We have revised our total
system code to be much more user-friendly, and we have
defined it so that more staff members can actually use the
code. That allows us to conduct more sensitivity analysis
in parallel, taking advantage of the various staff
expertise. Now in the past we were forced to use a Cray
computer at Idaho, but putting it on a work station in a
work-station environment it allows us to have real-time
feedback from the analysis.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Let me ask a couple
followup questions to the Chairman's.
You said the last time you saw the EPA standard,
am I accurate that that was some many months ago?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, my best memory is, let's see,
it's probably been about 2 months, but I'd have to check.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: And the Academy of
Sciences on the issues that are in disagreement our staff
position is much more compatible with the NAS study's
recommendations on this issue of groundwater and level of
individual protection than the -- what we know of the EPA
. 16
position at this point?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, the National Academy on the
issue of groundwater protection said they made no
recommendation for a separate groundwater protection
standard, so that is consistent, and our recommendation in
terms of an adequate dose level was within the risk range
the National Academy recommended.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Finally, there's this
other actor in this area, and Nuclear Waste Technical Review
Board, and the reason I'm raising the question now is it
says other parties at the bottom here. How do you see the
relationship between us -- their role as I understand it,
set up in the 1987 act, is to advise the president and
Secretary of Energy on -- as a separate, independent body on
technical progress being made, and there seems to be a bit
of an overlap there. They've made recommendations that are
resource-intensive for DOE with regard to this east-west
tunnelling. Did their recommendations ever get in the way
of our recommendations as to where DOE should be focusing
its resources in order to meet what we need, and how do
issues like that get resolved?
MS. FEDERLINE: Well, we see the roles of the two
organizations as somewhat distinct. The Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board in our mind is an independent group
that was put in place to advise DOE on the operation of the
. 17
program. Our role is not to tell DOE how to run the
repository program. Our role is more to serve as an
independent regulator, to look at DOE's approaches to
things, and to identify vulnerabilities that we would see
for licensing.
So we really see the roles quite differently, and
the recent -- the recent report that came out from the Board
I think was a good example of that. You know, they were
emphasizing the importance of an east-west drift and the
operational aspects of looking at enhancements to the waste
package design, and also looking at transparencies. I don't
think we see inconsistencies, but I would just say in terms
of an east-west drift, GAO had talked to us about this a
couple of months ago, and we had explained that NRC does not
see a need to dictate the necessity. We see the value in
collecting additional information. So we don't see
ourselves in conflict with the Board, but we would not make
such a requirement.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And so you've not seen any
evidence of competing priorities in terms of what they may
be trying to do to work with us vice the recommendations of
this Board?
MS. FEDERLINE: Let me just ask Mike Bell if he
would like to add anything.
MR. BELL: Yes. Actually there have been cases in
. 18
the past where essentially they help reinforce a staff
position. For example, originally DOE was planning to sink
vertical shafts to construct the exploratory studies
facilities. The NRC staff first suggested they consider
ramps, and then some time later that was also recommended by
the Technical Review Board, and eventually DOE in fact
changed their program.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: That brings up the issue
of is there a way to leverage them, given how -- I mean, we
may be already on fumes in some of our core programs here,
and they have -- I don't know what their budget is, the
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board budget, but they are
independent of DOE, we're independent of DOE, we have a
regulatory function, they have an advisory function. Have
you thought about whether there's any efficiency in trying
to leverage them more than we have thus far?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, we have. We approached the
staff of the Technical Review Board with our issue
resolution strategy to see if there's a way that we could
try and coordinate meetings. Meetings can be a big sink in
time and resources and, you know, looking at based on DOE's
waste isolation strategy if we might have meetings so we
could get our information and they could get their
information, and we have a very good working relationship
with the staff at the Review Board.
. 19
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Please.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: On the key technical issues,
is there an agreement now with DOE as to what they are? At
one point we were in disagreement on a couple of issues, and
do we now have a common set that we agree are the key
technical issues?
MS. FEDERLINE: I think DOE continues to place
less emphasis on the disruptive processes. We did have a
recent technical exchange on igneous activity and we
discussed some agreements in that regard, but I think
there's a feeling on the part of the NRC staff that we need
to at least work through to consequences on disruptive
events, because they are the potential for high-consequence
events, and as a responsible regulator, we need to make sure
that things that could result in more serious exposure truly
are a lower-risk event. So I think there may be a mismatch.
I think DOE believes that this issue, you know, does not
warrant much more consideration. Although we did agree --
in our last technical exchange they agreed that more
consequence analysis did need to be done, and they're going
to set about doing that.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: We're talking about
consequences and igneous activity. You're looking at this
probability, of course.
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes.
. 20
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And isn't that probability
very low for that area?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, it is, and we believe that
we're at the point where we can agree on what the range of
probability is, but this is just to keep in mind their own
peer-review panel identified that there are three orders of
magnitude of uncertainty in their range of probability. So,
you know, there are significant uncertainties in these
numbers, but I think we have -- we are comfortable at this
point agreeing on the probability.
Next I wanted to touch on our current program
strategy.
May I have slide 9, please?
Thanks.
We believe that the focus on key technical issues
is still the right strategy at the current funding levels to
ensure that vulnerabilities are identified for the viability
assessment. As you are aware, budget constraints have
forced us to eliminate the Center support in three key
technical issues -- that's design, source term, and
radionuclide transport. Now we have great concern about
this, because from a technical perspective, I think we
believe that all of the technical issues, key technical
issues, are very important, and it was very hard for us to,
you know, eliminate any of the issues, but --
. 21
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you have any contingency
plans for how to bound them or deal with them?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. This is -- currently we are
addressing -- design we deferred because we felt that there
was more flexibility in the future on design. In the area
of source term and radionuclide transport we are addressing
as part of our performance assessment some of the key
sensitivities to really understand how severe the problem
could be, which would then go back into our prioritization
process, and we may start those KTI's. But I would just
emphasize that under the $17 million program that we've
requested we could pursue all ten KTI's.
I'll just touch very quickly. As I said, one of
our main goals is prompt feedback to DOE. I've identified
three ways that we're doing that. I'll discuss the annual
progress report in a little more detail in a future slide.
We are developing issue-resolution status reports. For each
KTI we will be preparing a report which documents our views
on DOE's path to resolution and perhaps presents our own
path to resolution. Through doing this we will define
acceptance criteria which we will use to review the
viability assessment. We actually believe that our
interactions have been more fruitful. The focused nature of
the interactions has been beneficial, and we're trying to
make sure that we actually understand what each other are
. 22
trying to say before we send letters back and forth and
people become more entrenched in their positions.
May I have the next slide, please?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Yeah, just before.
MS. FEDERLINE: Sorry.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Please.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Before you leave that, on
the question of design, our position as I understand it has
been that we really want to see that the entire design is
conceptually fairly well defined in arriving at our
conclusions with respect to the Center. So how are design-
related issues being dealt with if the Center doesn't have a
program in this?
MS. FEDERLINE: Well, we have concern about that,
because we only have one staff member who is focusing on
design at this point in time.
Let me just ask Mike Bell to add anything that he
would like to add.
MR. BELL: Well, as Margaret mentioned, although
the Center support and design area has been eliminated this
fiscal year, we are still trying to do what we can with in-
house staff, and one important aspect of the repository
design that we have under review is a topical report DOE
submitted on their seismic-hazard design which the review is
progressing very well, and we think we're close to resolving
. 23
that question, and it's an example of an area that I think
has worked quite well.
DOE came in to us because they wanted to use a
probabilistic seismic hazard assessment methodology. We had
some exchanges with them. Eventually I sent them an issue
resolution status report agreeing with the methodology, and
they're in the process of conducting a expert elicitation on
that topic, which is following guidelines that we sent out
and a branch technical position on expert elicitation, and
so I guess we think with the resources we have, we're trying
to do all the necessary things to be responsive to the
things that are important to the DOE program at this time,
but it's going to be hard to keep up if the Department's
program keeps growing and we're straight-lined.
MS. FEDERLINE: I think this issue just makes the
bottom point on my slide, that the $17 million request for
'98 is really critical to be able to work on all and key
technical issues.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: It's just a continuation of
the same question and the priorities when the priorities are
established. Of course I imagine every year you set the
priorities.
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And it seems to me like the
design and source term, radionuclide transport are very
. 24
important priorities. You know, how do they get placed when
our, you know, resource allocation seems to me a very
critical issue.
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And I don't know whether
they're being revised or you have, you know, the terms in
that they are now more important. In other words, we might
only have money for seven or eight.
MS. FEDERLINE: Right.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: But the question is which
seven or eight, and I know that at the beginning there is,
you know, some exploratory research and some issues that
come, but eventually you have to come to the bottom line.
MS. FEDERLINE: That's right.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Like these issues are kind of
the bottom line.
MS. FEDERLINE: Right. Just to give you just a
quick glimpse into our prioritization process, we've worked
very hard to get to the point where our system code can have
enough substance to it where, you know, we can really count
on our sensitivities and importance analysis. We're
scheduled to complete those analyses late in the summer, and
in the fall we will have the sensitivity analysis to help us
prioritize. But another sort of measure that we use is
tying it to the DOE program. In other words, DOE had told
. 25
us that they were not going to rely on sorption. And so
that was one of the reasons why we ascribed a lower priority
to radionuclide transport. They're now, I believe, going to
depend more, so in our upcoming prioritization I think a
reprioritization of the is going to be required.
Now because the licensing review will focus on the
complete license application, it'll be necessary to examine
other issues. These preclosure safety issues will be
important as well as postclosure. So at the end of
viability assessment we feel that it's necessary to shift to
what we call the comprehensive approach. This will allow us
to pursue the other statutory requirements such as the
comments on the sufficiency of at-depth characterization and
waste form which are to accompany the President's
recommendation, as well as to review and adopt DOE's
environmental impact statement.
Now you may question how is the comprehensive
approach different than the current refocused program. We
believe that the comprehensive approach will need to include
refined independent performance assessments. This will be
our complete review methodology for postclosure issues. We
also believe it's necessary to develop a standard review
plan for the license application review.
As I mentioned, we're developing acceptance
criteria for postclosure for use in the viability
. 26
assessment, but we need to develop a full review plan for
the licensing -- review of the license application. And we
also feel that increased focus on quality assurance
activities are necessary, and we're currently recruiting
additional resources in this area right now.
As you'll recall, early on in the program we had
concerns about DOE's QA program. They did strengthen their
program significantly, and we think they're on the right
track, but I think as we've learned in other regulatory
experience in this agency, lack of attention to QA is a bad
plan. So we want to make sure that we have the right focus
there.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: With the main tunnel at Yucca
Mountain completed, is there a basis for this at-depth site
characterization, you know, moving that forward in any way?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, the primary data for the at-
depth site characterization and waste form will be from the
exploratory facility. DOE has shifted an additional about
$10 million into the experimental program to collect some
information on saturated and unsaturated flow, which is a
key issue at the site, and so we'll also want to have the
benefit of that in our --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So that's being moved forward
to be done earlier than originally planned?
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. Yes, additional resources.
. 27
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The standard review
plan, if I were DOE I'd want to have that in good time
before I submitted license application in 2002. What is the
current plan for when the standard review plan would be --
would be completed, so that the, you know, I would know how
to structure my application?
MS. FEDERLINE: Our current plan is to have
acceptance criteria for the postclosure done by the time of
viability assessment. It will take us and depending upon
budget levels -- we have different assessments depending
upon the budget level -- it could take up to an additional
three years to complete the review plan. So, you know,
this -- depending upon budget uncertainty, this is an area
where we could be on the critical path.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Commissioner Diaz.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes, I just, really on the
same question, I, since this is kind of a unique case, I
wonder if the standard review plan as you're developing has
some clear objectives and milestones, because it might be
that it's sometimes more important to get the work done
timely than just a review plan, but I have no idea how it's
actually --
MS. FEDERLINE: Right. The standard review plan
is growing out of our work -- our work on the postclosure
. 28
issues. We've not even been able to focus on preclosure
safety issues at this point in time. So, you know, this
will depend upon, you know, the budget level that we're
seeing. And the EDO has requested us to look at some
options and, you know, more information will be available on
that.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Please proceed.
MS. FEDERLINE: I wanted to touch on one subject
that you requested in the SRM on the meeting. When our
budget was reduced from $22 million to $11 million in 1996
we had to make some severe cuts, and the way we did that,
managers from the Office of Research, from NMSS, and from
the Center sat down and laid out all the activities that we
believed would be needed before licensing, and sort of
worked through a prioritization in terms of what activities
needed to be completed and were most important. And in
doing that we found it necessary to reduce some of the
research projects, all but the highest priority research
projects could not be fully funded.
The group of managers also recommended that to
achieve some efficiencies that the management of the
technical assistance and research should be consolidated
under one organization, and this was recommended to the EDO,
and of course the Commission was advised of this. And in
your SRM you asked us for an appraisal, you know, of how
. 29
this was working.
Well, I think all of us would prefer to have a
fully funded research program. That's entirely desirable in
a program of this nature. But I think under the research --
or under the budget constraints that we're experiencing at
the current time, this was the only option that was open to
us.
Now research has initiated a generic environmental
transport research program, which we think will be very
important. It will be broadly applicable to all the waste
management programs. We think that is an advantage, and
John Greeves and I not too long ago met with the management
of the Office of Research to review the status of this
generic program, and in a way this more closely parallels
the traditional role with research performing generic
activities and the licensing office doing site-specific
activities.
Let me turn to --
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Is the Center involved with
that work?
MS. FEDERLINE: The Center is involved in
receiving feedback from the work that is going on, but they
are not conducting the work for the Office of Research.
I just wanted to note on this slide just some
efforts that we're making to make sure that the independent
. 30
expertise that's available in the Office of Research is
brought to bear on our waste management problems. NMSS,
we're continuing to work together. As a matter of fact,
there was an Appendix 7 at the University of Arizona to look
at some extraction techniques from TUF, and the Office of
Research participated. Even though they have a very limited
budget, they contributed their expertise to that.
Research does monitor activities. They attend the
weekly branch chief meetings and the weekly Yucca Mountain
team meetings, and of course we provide them with copies of
products and Center reports. We do participate in their
research workshops when possible. As the generic research
advances, we hope to have an annual meeting where we can
have a dedicated exchange on the generic research that's
being conducted.
May I have the next slide, please?
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Does this generic
research activity get funded out of high-level waste, or is
it funded out of the appropriated budget that we get
separate from --
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, it's funded out of the
appropriated budget, not high-level waste.
Next I wanted to turn to what we feel has been
significant progress in meeting the program objectives. On
slide 14 I wanted to talk about one of our new products. In
. 31
fiscal year '96 we produced an annual progress report, and
this was an attempt to describe in an integrated fashion all
of our technical work and show how it relates to DOE's waste
isolation strategy, and define what we see as the path
forward to resolution of these issues. We've had several
meetings with DOE. We introduced the report to DOE, and
we've recently discussed it in a management meeting, and our
feedback that we're getting is that they've found that it
was useful and it facilitated a dialogue on the issues.
It's been a top seller. We're thinking of selling copies to
fund the high-level waste program.
Now I'd like to turn to Dr. Patrick, who will
summarize some of our key areas of progress.
DR. PATRICK: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Chairman, Commissioners, the remainder of our
briefing today I'd like to focus on what we feel to be
rather significant progress that we've made, both the Center
staff and the NRC staff over this past year, and some plans
that we have looking out ahead in meeting some of the high-
level waste program objectives.
I'm going to start with an overview of the
progress, touch briefly some comments on our plan for the
future, a few general views about the DOE program at this
stage, and hopefully in doing that to lay out a framework
for the remainder of the discussion, which will be to
. 32
present in four broad program areas some specific examples
of progress that we've made.
There are a number of bullets on those charts.
I'll probably be touching on just a few of those, and would
encourage and be open to your questions on those that I
might not have put high priority on in addressing here. I'd
certainly be happy to cover those.
Slide 15, please.
We dedicated our efforts during FY '96 to
establishing what we consider to be a sound technical basis
for proceeding with issue resolution. Those considerations
and those efforts have continued in early FY '97, and as
Margaret has indicated, we're going to be later this summer
initiating a series of detailed sensitivity analyses that we
believe will be instrumental in doing several things which
I'll be touching on a little more as we move through the
discussion.
If you look at the second, third, and fourth
bullets there, they highlight three broad areas where I feel
that we've made significant progress if you look in broad
brush. First, we've improved our understanding of a number
of very critical processes, critical from the standpoint of
repository performance, things like igneous activity. This
has been done through review of a variety of sources of
existing data as well as collection of some selected new
. 33
data ourselves.
Second, we've enhanced or completed the models for
representing those processes, again, processes that are
important to performance. We've developed an ash dispersion
model which will be instrumental in understanding the second
part of the risk equation that you alluded to earlier,
Commissioner Diaz, to understand not only the probability
but to get at the consequences portion of that issue. We've
also done development in the container corrosion and we'll
speak to that as a specific example a little bit later on in
the presentation.
The third areas that we will be conducting
sensitivity studies on some of the individual repository
systems and processes that are believed to be important to
performance. We're going to have the results of those
studies appear in two key documents, the annual report,
which was just alluded to, for FY '96. We'll be doing
another one of those reports this fiscal year as well. And
then within these ten key technical issues we'll be
publishing issue resolution status reports where we will use
these sensitivity analyses to try to understand better what
the priorities for future work should be, and also to
determine which ones of those subissues can be closed
because we have determined at this point that there are no
further questions, that the sensitivity is such that we
. 34
understand that particular subissue well enough to set it
aside until we move forward into the licensing process.
Again, recognizing that there is the option as new
information, new understandings become available, as the
designs are solidified and come forward to us from DOE, that
we will once again examine and be sure that our initial
findings are appropriate and are substantiated.
We feel that the approach we're taking here has
been quite successful. There's been progress in three
particularly notable issues closing in on the tectonic
models that are applicable for the site, coming to an
agreement on the probability of extrusive vulcanism at the
site, and the one that Mike Bell alluded to earlier,
developing and coming to agreement on a seismic design
methodology. We're very close to closure on that issue as
well.
Slide 16, please.
Just kind of carrying over from 15, unable to show
both of these at the same time, but one of the last items
there, which carries over onto slide 16, deals with the
broad area of total system performance assessment. This has
been an area where significant effort has been devoted by
both of our staffs. We've been involved in developing a new
version of the code.
Several of you will be familiar with the general
. 35
approach that we've embarked on a number of years ago. We
use the phrase iterative performance assessment, indicating
the evolutionary iterative process that is needed to address
a complex issue like this where information is evolving both
about the site and about the design as well as the
performance standard against which the eventual performance
of the repository will be judged.
Those code modifications this year have focused in
several areas. We have tried to incorporate in the new code
not only some enhanced models with respect to this geology,
but we have also made some improvements with regard to
including some of DOE's new design considerations. The
previous version of the code, for instance, had a vertical
emplacement. That was the design that was in vogue at the
time. We've since revised that to consider DOE's more
recent in-drift emplacement. And of course to be able to
make this code more efficient for a broader base of this
staff to use it and operate with it, we have moved it onto
the p.c. platforms, able to use this on your advanced
computer system, and with that we have had to make some
improvements in the computational efficiency of that code.
The version 3 of the code will be very shortly in
this hands of a very broad cross-section of the staff. You
have a number of staff who are currently involved in
reviewing and evaluating this version of the code that we
. 36
delivered in mid-March. We hope by early summer to have
completed the development and refinement of that code and
turned it over for the sensitivity analyses and importance
analyses that will be conducted not only by your staff here
at White Flint but also by Center staff members.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Is this code available
to the public, if somebody at a university wanted to be
looking at the same sorts of issues?
MR. PATRICK: The code has not yet reached a point
where we have put it under version control and have
solidified it as a code which we would be comfortable I
think either from a regulatory perspective or technical
perspective in releasing it. The specifics with regard to
release I would defer to NRC management on what their plans
might be there. We did not release TPA version 2, but 3 I
guess we've not discussed.
MS. FEDERLINE: That's correct, we've not made a
final decision, but our general policy is under our
procedural agreement that we would share the code with
interested parties.
MR. PATRICK: I would note in an allied area there
are other codes, detailed system-level codes, which we have
completed development on, developed user's guides. NRC has
made decisions on a case-by-case basis to release those to
the public or to allow the Southwest Research Institute, the
. 37
Center, to copyright those and make those available.
Regardless of which path is followed, there's a provision in
the copyright that allows any party to the NWPA to gain free
access to that code, as well as your staff to have access to
it. So that is a part of the puzzle that we have worked,
but the total system.
Touching on that first bullet on slide 16, we feel
that in addition to its purely technical role, the total
system performance assessment code and the analyses that we
do with it fulfill some very important decision-aiding
processes. It's a tool box in that sense. It has enabled
us to and continues to enable us to reevaluate the
importance of the various technical issues that are under
consideration. It's the only tool we have available that
allows us to do that in a quantitative way, to move beyond
the qualitative judgments that we feel confident in making
but only reasonably confident until we have made an
assessment against risk. It also is providing us with the
basis to develop a risk-informed performance base acceptance
criteria which appear first in our issue-resolution status
reports and which we believe will be instrumental in both
development of the standard review plan and also in
assisting in the eventual development of a Yucca Mountain-
specific regulation.
And finally, it's being used as a very important
. 38
tool to help us develop the methods that we will use to
conduct various reviews, starting with a viability
assessment and a site-suitability report and so forth on
through the construction authorization process.
I've noted here a couple of vehicles that are very
important in communicating with the Department of Energy and
documenting the progress that we're making as well.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: When do you expect to have
that completed, that work on risk-informed performance-
based acceptance criteria?
MR. PATRICK: That is an ongoing process. We
anticipate having the first round of issue resolution status
reports completed late this calendar year or early next
calendar year is the current schedule I believe that
we're --
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes.
MR. PATRICK: We want to have information in DOE's
hands about six months before the viability assessment comes
in. And with the current resources and the current schedule
we're working to and realizing that this is all being pushed
by the development of the TPA code as well, that's -- I
think we can make that kind of a schedule.
Slide 17, please.
Turning now to some general views on the DOE
program at this point, and I'll try to focus primarily on
. 39
technical issues, but there are always programmatic
implications to those. I would say that our most important
observation is that there has been a very clear improvement
in DOE's overall program management and planning process.
An example of that was alluded to earlier, where we're
seeing a flexibility to reallocate resources. As they did
some of their performance assessments and began to realize
the credit that they would need to take, want to take, for
mixing in the saturated zone, they have now directed
resources to examine in better detail how the saturated zone
behaves in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain, and we're very
pleased to see that sort of responsiveness.
Likewise, I think the communication between NRC
and the Center staffs and DOE has improved. That's come
about through focusing all of our interactions, having very
clear objectives for each of those. I would cite several
very important examples. We had an appendix 7 meeting on
tectonic processes where DOE, Center, NRC, and State was
represented. Very important in terms of narrowing down the
very broad range of processes we're examining. The seismic
design methodology and the igneous activities technical
exchange would be similar examples in that area.
Certainly the completion of the exploratory
studies facility has been a major milestone for DOE, and it
has opened up in both a figurative and literal way access to
. 40
seeing the geology and allowing DOE to make measurements,
not so much in the tunnel itself but in the various alcoves
that have been developed. And we continue through the NRC's
on-site representatives and through various interactions
with the Department of Energy staff and its contractors to
follow very closely the testing that they are doing, the
designs of those tests, as well as the results that are
coming out of those.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Is DOE conducting surface
tests?
MR. PATRICK: Surface-based testing continues.
They've one area that they've reached a conclusion in.
They've completed their trenching activities and actually
have made a decision to begin backfilling a number of those
trenches.
That brings to mind another point of coordination.
That was coordinated very carefully. NRC staff had an
opportunity to give them feedback as to whether the NRC
needed additional information from those trenches before the
bulldozers moved in and filled them back in again. So I
think it was another area that worked quite well.
Yes, certainly the sea well complex of surface-
based testing, looking at both reactive and nonreactive
tracer testing at that complex is an important surface-
based testing.
. 41
One of the items that we alluded to earlier, just
to touch on that last bullet, we've seen substantial
progress in the quality-assurance area. This has been an
issue between the NRC and DOE staffs from the outset. It's
one of the original objections that was filed when the site
characterization plan was submitted. We've seen significant
progress there in some very measurable areas. They're
developing what they call a binning process, which will help
not just in this quality assurance area of applying a graded
quality assurance approach, but it'll help greatly in this
design process.
And I might note that some of the areas that Mike
alluded to earlier, the focus of activities there on DOE's
are going to be in the novel areas of design. They, like
us, given the constraints that they have, are not going to
pay great attention coming into viability assessment.
They're not going to pay great attention to things that they
believe can be handled in a routine fashion based on
existing engineering capabilities within their organization
and their contractor group.
Slide 18, please.
I mentioned moving into a brief discussion on four
areas where we have made significant progress. The first of
those deals with NRC progress and views on this site
characterization program. That's the first of the four
. 42
areas I'd like to touch on.
Staff work including some limited field studies,
probabilistic volcanic hazard analysis conducted by the
Department of Energy and technical exchanges on this
subject, as well as a follow-on meeting with the Advisory
Committee on Nuclear Waste, have moved us to the position
where we are able to reach agreement on the probability of
extrusive vulcanism. We're concluding that the probability
is low, but not so low that we cannot give attention to the
consequences. So there's an issue, a very visible one,
where we believe we're going to be able to close that within
just the next few months. The issue resolution status
report on that is due out the end of November. It's a
little bit of additional work that we want to finish up to
be confident that we have no further questions at this
point.
Development of a model for shallow infiltration is
continued through this year, another area that is
potentially quite important to performance. In fact, it
comes up in the top of the list for almost everyone's
performance assessment, because shallow infiltration in turn
drives the deep percolation through the repository level,
and down to the saturated zone. Interestingly, we're
finding considerably higher estimates than were originally
conceived, and that is an important finding from the
. 43
standpoint of our modeling, and we're beginning to see
confirmation from the results of DOE's testing in that
particular area.
I note here and I mention it because of a question
you had raised earlier, Chairman, with regard to the
sorption area. We have completed some work in that area,
and have translated or transferred a critical portion of the
sorption studies into the performance assessment area, so
that what we learned experimentally before the research
program was consolidated and the activities at the Center
under sorption were reduced, we've been able to capture that
information and develop a module which will be incorporated
in the total system performance assessment code. So we will
be able to consider the kind of phenomena that I mention
here, importance of pH variations, for instance.
And again, just the last bullet, we've touched on
that a couple of times with regard to their flexibility in
bringing in additional studies.
Now the second bullet on this chart 18, I'd like
to address a little bit further with the figure that is
shown on chart 19.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Before you go to the next
one --
MR. PATRICK: Certainly.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: How do the third and fifth
. 44
bullets relate to each other, the chlorine-36 measurements
that come from fracture flow presumably and your shallow
infiltration models?
MR. PATRICK: We have not --
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: How do they relate to each
other? Are they totally disconnected?
MR. PATRICK: No, they're not disconnected at all.
In fact, I would say that from chlorine-36 information gives
very keen insights and confirmation of what the shallow
infiltration studies show, namely that infiltration is not
homogeneous across the mountain. No one expected it to be
purely homogeneous, but we're finding that there are
combinations of surface cover, vegetation, and so forth
which seem to -- as well as fracturing, of course -- which
seem to enhance the infiltration.
What the chlorine-36 is saying is not only is
there enhanced infiltration in those areas, but that
enhancement continues to depth. The moisture is not sucked
back into the matrix, at least in some locations where the
chlorine-36 information indicates rather short groundwater
travel times. So they're very, very closely related to one
another, and we're considering them in that integrated
fashion.
If we could take a look at the figure then on
slide 19.
. 45
A and C gives you a picture of a sandbox model, an
inglorious name that is used for a very sophisticated
physical analog technique. I believe the Chairman and
Commissioner Rogers may have had an opportunity to see that
on their visits at the center in the past. I don't recall
whether it was up and running at the time.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I saw it.
MR. PATRICK: But it was through that type of
modeling work as well as what has been learned in the
trenches through DOE and its contractor studies that we were
able to sit as a group in an Appendix 7 meeting in a very
open forum and discuss as professionals the variety of
models, more than a dozen, that were on the table at that
time and talk about an efficiency factor that Margaret
Federline was mentioning earlier.
We were able to zero in on less than half of those
models, four or five depending on the way you want to count
them, that seemed to be most supportable given the wide
variety of data that is available from the site as well as
these confirmatory kinds of studies with the sandbox models,
which give us insights into how these processes play out
over time.
You can see -- there are a variety of little
symbols on there I don't have time to go into in detail, but
you'll note that we find, for instance that there are -- the
. 46
BF stands for -- there are boundary faults which align the
edges of the basin and they can be controlling factors in
the dominant seismic risk that exists at the site.
There are faults which develop at some point in
the development of the basin but become inactive as time
goes on. That's very important to know from a design
perspective as well as from a performance assessment
perspective in the very long term.
This kind of physical modeling has been very, very
helpful in leading us closer to issue resolution, and we
anticipate publishing an issue resolution status report in
this area as well in the next year.
Slide 20, please.
Moving to the engineering area from site
characterization as part of the closeout activities in the
area of container life and source term, we have taken the
repassivation potential model that was developed under the
experimental research program and worked within the
licensing program a little bit later on, and we've
incorporated that into the total system performance
assessment code. We're trying to, in these areas where
there have been restrictions, to harvest what was able to be
learned in those early years, and I think we're being quite
successful in doing so.
Another design related area where we encountered a
. 47
little bit of a good news/bad news situation is in the third
bullet there. We did some benchmarking this year. We
wanted to understand whether there were any areas of
disagreement between the NRC and the DOE staffs regarding
the kinds of computer codes they were using.
The good news part is that we found we had very
good agreement as we went through that benchmarking study.
The bad news part is that there has been some laboratory
work and field studies done that indicate that those
equivalent continuum models, as they're called, may not be
adequate for capturing some of the details, details, for
instance, like nearby dripping from single fracture such as
what we see documented in the Chlorine 36 data.
So that's an area where we believe some additional
work is going to be needed before we can close that
particular issue.
As I've noted before, we're seeing some
improvements evident in the DOE design control process, and
it appears at this time that their design control process is
adequate. We'll be continuing to monitor that. We in this
case will be Mike Bell's staff. The center has no longer
any tasking in this particular area. So they will be
monitoring that with in-house engineering staff.
The staff continues to evaluate DOE's testing
program as well. The thermohydrology testing area is one
. 48
that has caused concerns in the past. We again have had
open dialogue in this area, and it's my understanding that
rather shortly, DOE will be replying to a particular set of
comments that we sent out with regard to the degree of
heating, the spacial scales of their testing and so forth,
which could be important from the standpoint of
understanding the processes that are taking place. Those
processes in turn have to be accurately reflected in the
performance assessment models so that we can be confident of
the results of those determinations.
I would like to touch on that second bullet on
slide 20 as we look at the figure on slide 21.
DOE noted in their most recent TSPA a possibility
that galvanic coupling could occur between their complex
waste packages, waste package configuration where there are
different metals and roughly concentric cylinders around one
another.
We factored that into our calculations and did a
study, the results of which are indicated here, and a key
point, if we were just to look at, for instance, the blue
curve there, you'll notice that at a low -- well, that's
actually DOE's moderate thermal loading strategy, around 40
metric tons uranium per acre, that you would predict a waste
package lifetime on the scale of tens of years for low
galvanic efficiencies. But if this galvanic coupling
. 49
efficiency factor has a value something about .08 or so, you
get a dramatic increase in the performance of the entire
waste package because that outer container acts as a
sacrificial anode protecting that inner container.
We wanted to be sure that that phenomenon
continued at other thermal loads and I've indicated here for
an 80 metric ton uranium per acre case, you would see an
improvement in waste package performance from on the order
of 2,000, 2,500 years again jumping up to something in
excess of 10,000 years based on these calculations.
Now, the big question is, what is the real
galvanic coupling efficiency factor? And some work is going
to be needed there, both from our standpoint and also from
the Department of Energy's standpoint. We envision that
some additional calculations to examine how sensitive
performance is to this factor will be taking place as we
complete the TPA code and do this --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's material dependent also?
MR. PATRICK: Very much so. So the ultimate
design in the selection of materials is going to be very
important. As I think you're aware, there are many
materials in the mix right now, both for the outer overpack
and the inner overpack.
The other factor that is critical is whether water
comes into contact in the interface, because if there is not
. 50
an electrolyte between those two materials, this factor is
zero, and there's nothing to be gained.
Slide 22.
A third area I would like to speak briefly to is
the total system performance assessment program. One of the
early contributions to the program in the total system area
was development of timely guidance to the Department of
Energy in the area of expert elicitation.
Because DOE is relying quite heavily on expert
elicitations, we're interacting with them to ensure
ourselves that that Branch Technical Position that was
issued by the staff is being implemented in a manner that is
consistent with NRC's guidance, not only to be confident
that the process is working, but also that the product that
that process results in is also working well.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: May I ask you a question back
on slide 21 for a second? You know, given what you just
said about the galvanic coupling, and you need a galvanic
coupling efficiency that apparently, you know, is larger and
larger as the thermal load increases --
MR. PATRICK: Yes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: -- is there not a question
having to do with the likelihood of achieving that thermal
coupling as a function of thermal load?
MR. PATRICK: There can be. I believe that the
. 51
answer to the question is found in a combination of when you
need it, if it is hot enough, there is no water there.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's right.
MR. PATRICK: So galvanic coupling neither works,
nor is needed.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Nor is needed. Okay.
MR. PATRICK: So for a hot enough repository, this
issue will have zero sensitivity. And by the way, you've
hit on a very interesting aspect of all of these sensitivity
studies, is that you base your determination of sensitivity
at any given point on a particular understanding. As that
understanding changes, it gets wetter in the repository, it
stays hotter and dryer longer, then you have to revisit
those things. That's very important.
Anything else on that one?
Coming back, then, following on from the Branch
Technical Position, moving into the core of the TSPA
program, the Department of Energy submitted total system
performance assessment '95, TSPA '95. We conducted both
audit and detailed reviews of that TSPA and provided timely
comments to DOE, and we're involved in a technical exchange
with them to sit eyeball-to-eyeball and hear one another out
on those issues.
We raised what we feel are a number of important
concerns in areas such as lack of conservatism and
. 52
infiltration. I touched on that earlier. We're now
beginning to see a coming together of our thinking there at
a higher infiltration level. The role of dilution, waste
package failure models and so forth.
We're currently examining DOE's TSPA viability
assessment plan, and it appears that a number of our
comments have been taken into consideration there. Of
course, we're quite pleased to see that, and our view --
you'll hear from DOE tomorrow, but our view is that that's
been a significant positive contribution, both in moving us
toward issue resolution and also moving the program forward
to decision points.
I have noted previously the modifications to the
total system performance assessment code, enhancing the
process models, revising it to handle DOE's planned drift
emplacement and improving the computational efficiency.
We've also modified it to include the anticipated dose and
risk based performance measures. Those were not present in
TPA 2, which was, under the old standard, was a release
based assessment of performance.
I've noted that a key thing that has been done is
this code is now available to a much broader cross section
of staff, both at the center and at the NRC, and I think
that's very important to develop that broad user group from
an efficiency point of view and also strictly from the
. 53
standpoint of the volume of analysis that we're able to
complete within the time that's available.
My observations to this point apply predominantly
with regard to how we have influenced DOE's program using
this total system code and the total system approach, but I
think equally important are the impacts that we've seen
internally, and we've touched on those, alluded to those a
little bit before. It has helped us greatly to align our
key technical issues to DOE's waste containment and
isolation strategy.
To your earlier question, Commissioner Rogers,
they are not exactly the same, but we have an explicit
correlation between the two, and as issue resolution status
reports are published, each one of those will explicitly
identify which items within DOE's waste containment and
isolation strategy are being addressed by that particular
key issue resolution status report.
So that kind of close coupling I think is very
important. It's assisting us and we think it's going to
assist DOE as well. It has helped us focus our plans on
these issue resolution and also on the inputs that are
needed to the total system performance assessment code,
enabling us to develop a consistent set of data for those
analyses and, of course, has led to increased integration
and broad participation. Conducting team training goes hand
. 54
in glove with the staffs working together in this total
system performance assessment area.
The final, the fourth area I would like to touch
on deals with NRC staff interactions with the EPA regarding
the development of a Yucca Mountain specific standard and
the support that the center has provided to aid NRC staff in
progressing in that area.
There will be a NUREG document which will be
published shortly that contains the results of the
supporting calculations that have been done. Three
particular areas here that we have addressed are noted. We
have evaluated the relative radiological hazard of a
repository as time goes on. That has given us insights into
what a reasonable period of compliance might be. That was
an area that was questioned.
We have used core body equivalent types of
analyses to examine that. We've also examined how peak dose
is location specific, something that the Academy did not
specifically address but which ends up being quite important
if one chooses to go to a peak dose determination or
standard. And then, of course, NRC policy and public
comments are going to need to be considered in this process.
We calculated following the NAS recommendation a
stylized human intrusion scenario and found that both the
consequences and the probability of inadvertent human
. 55
intrusion were relatively low for a Yucca Mountain type
repository design. Finally, we've looked at the relative
importance of disruptive events and, not too surprisingly,
although it seems to surprise some, as the time period of
performance gets longer, those take on an ever-increasing
role.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Repeat what you said about the
calculated effects of human intrusion.
MR. PATRICK: Based on our calculations, the
probability and the consequences of inadvertent human
intrusion are relatively low, quite a different conclusion
with regard to probability than, for instance, WIPP would
decide, and that has a lot to do with the relative area
containing waste with regard to the total target area that a
driller could intersect.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I see.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: The next bullet after that,
the relative importance question, is that just simply that
the longer you wait, the more events you're going to have or
--
MR. PATRICK: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: -- or is there anything more
--
MR. PATRICK: No. It's, again, it's intuitively
obvious once it's brought to one's attention, I guess.
. 56
The interaction --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's what intuitively obvious
means, right?
[Laughter.]
MR. PATRICK: Intuitively obvious, but you have to
prove them often.
The interaction between EPA and NRC regarding the
NAS recommendations -- NRC staff has been in frequent
contact, up until just a few months ago, with EPA. I think
the general assessment there is that we have general
agreement on the approaches that they are suggesting, things
like the 10,000 years being a reasonable time period for a
standard, using an individual dose, stylized treatment of
human intrusion, definition of the critical group and so
forth, but there are a few critical issues, two in
particular, and we've mentioned those already and I'm sure
those will continue to be points of discussion.
The final item, one that we've touched on just
briefly, is we have begun examining options for a risk-
informed performance-based regulation, and staff will be
coming forward to you with a Commission paper in that
particular area, and we anticipate supporting those
activities.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Is that going to happen this
year or do you know what's the time table for that
. 57
performance-based rule -- you know, when?
MS. FEDERLINE: We will be getting up to the
Commission in early fall with an options paper, and assuming
you provide us guidance, we would intend to begin at that
point.
MR. PATRICK: If there are no further questions
for me, I'll turn the floor back over to Margaret Federline.
MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. I just wanted to emphasize
three points in summary on slide 24.
We feel that feedback and interactions with DOE
have resulted in significant progress, even at reduced
budget levels for both agencies. We've demonstrated that
focused interactions can result in agreements and improved
understanding of differences, and we believe that this is
going to be key to making reasonable national decisions
about a waste repository.
I would also like to emphasize that enhancement of
both the NRC's and the Center's total system performance
capability have been fundamental in achieving this progress.
The experience that the staff has gained in being able to
focus on a system's perspective rather than a disciplinary
view is key to determining when enough is enough in terms of
data and when bonding is sufficient.
The final -- I would also like to emphasize that
maintaining the infrastructure is key here. In order to do
. 58
the calculations, we need to maintain the equipment and
software that enables us to do those calculations.
Finally, I just wanted to note that future funding
is uncertain and we believe that keeping pace a national
program depends upon obtaining funding at higher levels.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
Commissioner Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, just on that last
slide, our total system performance assessment capability,
have we slipped in that?
MS. FEDERLINE: No. I think we have made
significant improvements in that area. We have -- between
phase 2 and phase 3, we've added some significant additional
conceptual models allowing us to look at two conceptual
models in the thermohydrology area. So there really are
some significant enhancements in terms of being able to look
at repository performance.
There are also significant enhancements in the
simplicity of the code and the ability for multiple people
to use and benefit from the code.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, the capability
involves not only the codes and the hardware, but also
people.
MS. FEDERLINE: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Have we been able to
. 59
maintain our staffing level there?
MS. FEDERLINE: Well, I think it's fair to say
that the staffing level has been reduced, but we feel we're
spreading the experience within the staff that we do have.
So I think there is more of a focus that performance
assessment is all of us, it's not one unique aspect.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: That's all I have.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Dicus?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: No, no questions. Just thank
you for your presentations.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I would just comment on the
idea of funding and the issue of closure. You know, this
program is completely starved for providing closure on a
series of issues, and it might very well be that closing
some of those as early as possible would be a very, very
good impetus to the program.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan?
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I would like to raise
one question that's slightly off the subject, but there was
a separate large computer effort relating to public
involvement when we got to the licensing stage, and I forget
the --
MR. PATRICK: LSS.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The LSS, the licensing
. 60
support system. Thank you.
My judgment when I first looked at that was that
you had already reviewed it, it was gone, but it was one of
these systems which was going to be typical of the federal
information system, was going to be obsolete before arrival.
You're now looking at something different. That's
a different group of people that are doing that? And how is
that budgeted? Is that budgeted within the DOE high level
waste budget and they basically, you know, have to design
the system to whatever standard we ultimately give them?
MS. FEDERLINE: DOE is responsible for the
operation of the system, but we must budget to -- audit to
ensure that the documents and to certify -- I believe in
part 2, there is a certification role for NRC to assure that
the documents have been properly entered.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: And so that's a future
budgetary issue for us. And relatively small or --
MS. FEDERLINE: Let me ask John --
MR. GREEVES: John Greeves.
MS. FEDERLINE: John Greeves is the steering
committee member.
MR. GREEVES: We participate with IRM on this
issue and I think if you look at our current budget, you'll
see it's running something like 1 FTE and 100K for the next
few years.
. 61
There's always this debate about when is LSS going
to really happen, and what's been going on in LSS territory
is all the groups have recognized that an Internet-based
approach is on top of us now. There is no point in going
with this old approach that will be this megasystem that
will cost a bunch of dollars and is housed by DOE solely.
So we've talked with all the parties about an Internet-
based approach and it's been running on what I call a small
budget.
So I think the crunch on this is going to come and
I believe IRM put numbers in '99 where it just depends on
what happens to part 2. Are we going to switch to an
Internet-based approach where each party, like NRC, puts all
of our documents up on the computer, makes them available on
the Internet -- by the way, we have that capability now; we
have a test case that exists -- and whether all the other
parties would do the same thing. It would be obviously much
more cost effective to do it that way.
I think the knotty question is what will IRM have
to do in terms of auditing something like that and I think
out to about '99, it's not a big budgetary issue, but the
last number I looked at does become significant in '99 if
IRM has to do this audit process in terms of hiring a bunch
of people or a contractor to do it.
So I think it's probably worth your time to talk
. 62
to us separately on that topic, but right now, it's pretty
much a level of effort and we're working with OGC on looking
into how this would be accomplished with part 2.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Thank you.
I have one last question for Dr. Patrick.
Are there any of the activities in which you've
been engaged or are currently engaged that have any
potential fungibility in terms of being applicable to an
interim storage facility?
MR. PATRICK: I believe so, particularly in the
engineering area, both in material sciences and also in the
staff that has supported what we call the repository design,
construction and operations group.
In fact, interestingly, those who crafted the
original request for proposal for establishing the center
included monitored retrievable storage under the repository
area. So skills and civil engineering and structural
engineering, material sciences, corrosion issues and things
of that nature, as well as seismic risk and the like, those
are areas where I think there's quite good fungibility.
That is a relatively small percentage of our total staff,
but those skills are available.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Thank you.
Well, the Commission would like to thank you, Dr.
Patrick, and the NRC staff for a very informative briefing.
. 63
The information you presented us provides us with a
perspective on where we are and the challenges the NRC's
program faces and the Commission commends you and commends
you and the Center for working through these issues in very
difficult circumstances, yet developing and maintaining a
credible program, and needless to say, what you've presented
will be useful in our future considerations.
I just want to make a comment. If you flip back
to your viewgraph 5 and we look at the -- you know, the DOE
budget has been itself buffeted, but if we look at the NRC
and DOE repository funding levels and if we look at where we
were in FY '95 relative to our request, or even where we
were in FY '97 where we used 3 million carryover, that the
DOE budget had gone below the dip it had earlier by a factor
of about 15 percent, and a 15 percent, if we were assuming
the same kind of a scaling, from our funding level would
have put us at 18.7 million in appropriated funds from the
Nuclear Waste Fund.
The point I'm making is that I think we all know
and it gives me the opportunity for the public record to say
that the issue of our keeping pace with the national high
level waste program at a level commensurate with the
responsibilities that we have and with additional
responsibilities that we may be asked to have is a very,
very serious issue.
. 64
It is one that I, in fact, did speak to at the
congressional hearing on the high level waste bill pending
in the House. It is one that you should know that the
Commission has not lost sight of, will not lose sight of
and, you know, we intend to fight this issue, because there
is no way we can do what we are asked to do in the law if we
don't have the money to do it. That kind of simplified
comparison shows the level of difficulty that we have.
So the Commission requests that you keep us
informed, you know, of the progress and we'll have to stay
on top of it. We look forward to hearing from both the
staff and the Center on this important issue.
We're adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:59 p.m., the briefing adjourned.]
|
Privacy Policy |
Site Disclaimer |