1
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
3 ***
4 BRIEFING BY DOE ON
5 PLUTONIUM DISPOSITION STRATEGY AND PROGRAM
6 ***
7 PUBLIC MEETING
8 ***
9 Nuclear Regulatory Commission
10 Commission Hearing Room
11 11555 Rockville Pike
12 Rockville, Maryland
13
14 Wednesday, September 17, 1997
15
16 The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
17 notice, at 9:18 a.m., the Honorable SHIRLEY A. JACKSON,
18 Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
19
20 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
21 SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission
22 GRETA J. DICUS, Member of the Commission
23 EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., Member of the Commission
24 NILS J. DIAZ, Member of the Commission
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1 STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT COMMISSION TABLE:
2 JOHN C. HOYLE, Secretary
3 KAREN D. CYR, General Counsel
4 HOWARD CANTER, Acting Director, Office of Fissile
5 Materials Disposition, DOE
6 DAVE NULTON, Director, Reactor Group, Office of
7 Fissile Materials Disposition
8 ANDRE CYGELMAN, Director, Materials &
9 Immobilization Group, Office of Fissile
10 Materials Disposition
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 [9:18 a.m.]
3 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good morning, ladies and
4 gentlemen. The Commission would like to welcome Mr. Howard
5 Canter, Director of DOE's Office of Fissile Materials
6 Disposition, and his colleagues. For the record, DOE is the
7 Department of Energy.
8 This morning the Commission will be briefed on two
9 things.
10 First, DOE's plans to implement a program to
11 provide for the safe and secure storage of weapons-usable
12 fissile materials, that is, plutonium and highly enriched
13 uranium.
14 Second, DOE's strategy for the disposition of
15 surplus weapons-usable plutonium.
16 In December 1996 DOE issued its final programmatic
17 environmental impact statement on the storage and
18 disposition of weapons-usable fissile materials. The
19 Secretary of Energy announced the record of decision on this
20 matter on January 14th of this year. Shortly after the
21 Secretary's announcement the DOE briefed, on January 17,
22 1997, the Commission on its plans.
23 More recently, in July of this year DOE issued a
24 program acquisition strategy for selecting private sector
25 organizations to assist in implementing the MOX fuel
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1 alternative for disposing of surplus weapons grade
2 plutonium.
3 The Commission is extremely interested in the
4 plans and strategies being considered by the Department of
5 Energy on this topic because the program could affect
6 facilities that the NRC has licensing authority over such as
7 commercial power reactors, the geologic high level
8 radioactive waste repository, and possibly others.
9 Unless my fellow members of the Commission have
10 any comments they would like to make, Mr. Canter, please
11 proceed.
12 MR. CANTER: Thank you very much, Madam Chairman
13 and other members of the Commission.
14 With me today is Mr. Dave Nulton, on my right, who
15 is responsible for the reactor option and our work under the
16 National Environmental Policy Act in doing a supplemental
17 EIS for the siting of the facilities that will be required
18 for plutonium disposition. Dave also has the highly
19 enriched uranium program, which I'm not going to discuss in
20 any detail here today, but if you have questions, we can
21 cover them.
22 On my left is Mr. Andre Cygelman, who has the
23 immobilization, the pit conversion, and some of the material
24 issues that our office is involved with.
25 I want to concentrate today on the plutonium
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1 disposition, to go into this procurement strategy for the
2 private sector involvement, talk a little bit about some
3 legislative authority that may be required, and then talk
4 about what is going on with the Russian side of this,
5 because what we finally do in the long run is going to
6 depend on where we end up with an agreement with Russia.
7 Go ahead with the fist viewgraph.
8 This chart just gives some of the background, I
9 think most of which your members know already.
10 The commitment to eliminate the surplus fissile
11 materials.
12 The second item is the Defense Authorization Act
13 for fiscal year 1995 which established a permanent office in
14 the Department of Energy reporting to the under secretary.
15 We have an under secretary nominee now and hopefully he will
16 be confirmed. Then we will have our management structure
17 lined up again.
18 There is a joint U.S./Russian effort that came
19 from several summit agreements. The earliest one was a
20 President Clinton/President Yeltsin statement in January
21 1994 which kicked off a joint effort on this by their
22 "experts."
23 In March 1995 the President declared in excess of
24 200 metric tons of materials surplus to defense needs and
25 stated it would never again be used in nuclear weapons.
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1 Next viewgraph.
2 I'm going to concentrate on the disposition work
3 with the Russians. Right now the storage is a minor part of
4 the effort. If you do have questions about it, we can
5 answer them.
6 Next viewgraph.
7 The decision that was announced in January is to
8 pursue what we call a hybrid strategy. It has two parts to
9 it. There are basic reasons for pursing this. As
10 indicated, insurance against delay on any one.
11 There was no consensus on either approach.
12 The third bullet is a significant Russian concern
13 that if we immobilize all the plutonium that that
14 immobilized form is nothing but a storage form, and although
15 that is a satisfactory method to prevent third parties or
16 sub-national terrorists from obtaining it, it's not an
17 acceptable method to prevent irreversibility of the
18 disarmament process, in the Russian view.
19 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner.
20 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I find that argument
21 from the Russians, which I know is at the core of our policy
22 or our reaction to their policy, sort of the pot calling the
23 kettle black in the sense that every time I hear the
24 Russians talk about their nuclear future, they talk about
25 having breeders, having large numbers of reprocessing
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1 facilities, having vast quantities of plutonium floating
2 around. So if there is any military concern about breakout
3 potential, it would strike me that the Russian breakout
4 potential would be far larger than any potential of us going
5 into Yucca Mountain and hauling out waste to be re-separated
6 and remade into weapons.
7 When you talk with the Russians about this stuff,
8 do we challenge that notion that our breakout potential
9 would somehow be larger than theirs?
10 MR. CANTER: Yes, we do, Commissioner. Some of
11 the things we can't quite say in public yet because they are
12 still classified. The facts are that their position -- we
13 don't necessarily agree with it; it's a negotiable issue --
14 is that if we were going to break out, we would break out
15 with the designed weapons that we presently have and that
16 are proven by tests. So we would want to go back for the
17 same kind of plutonium that we used in manufacturing them
18 originally, and that would be the weapons grade plutonium.
19 That reactor grade or fuel grade or some other isotopic
20 mixture would require redesigning some of the weapons,
21 particularly the long range devices where weight is very
22 significant, and since we can't test, we might be wanting to
23 do that.
24 Of course each nation will probably keep a
25 strategic reserve of material anyway.
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1 This is a disarmament agreement, and we will have
2 to eventually stop talking about how much we are going to
3 get rid of and talk about how much are we keeping, because
4 that's the ultimate bottom line.
5 We are getting a lot of pressure from the Russians
6 on this issue. So it was one of the thoughts that we used.
7 We thought this would help us leverage the Russians towards
8 an agreement if we did at least some of the better quality
9 material with reactor fuel and at least degraded the
10 isotopic and destroyed some of the plutonium in the process.
11 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's really an important
12 point, namely that this point three is referenced to
13 material of a certain grade that obviously is linked to
14 strategic weapons of a certain design, and that's why the
15 focus is here.
16 MR. CANTER: Yes.
17 Next viewgraph.
18 This is just a pictorial of the two approaches.
19 As you can see, the first activities on both of them.
20 Early activities are site selection on the reactor
21 option. There is also the competitive procurement that we
22 are going to talk about, and there is mixed oxide fuel
23 development that has already been started and will continue
24 through the next fiscal year.
25 On immobilization, in addition to site selection
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1 there is a lot of R&D on glass versus ceramic that has been
2 underway, and then there is research and development on the
3 process technology and the final form of the immobilization
4 which will be ongoing next year.
5 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you a couple of
6 questions on this particular slide. First, I guess I am
7 interested in having you expand a bit on the near term 1998
8 schedule vis-a-vis competitive procurement. Somewhat linked
9 to that, have you obtained congressional feedback that
10 indicates a willingness to commit the necessary resources to
11 this initiative, to the long term?
12 MR. CANTER: The procurement schedule will be
13 covered by Dave Nulton later.
14 With regard to the Congress, number one, the best
15 feedback is approval of a budget. Right now they are about
16 to go into conference committee, but the House has approved
17 our requested budget. The Senate reduced it by $8 million
18 out of about $103 million. They asked for more information.
19 We have provided it. We are hoping to get that restored.
20 In addition, in the Senate Armed Services
21 Committee report there is some language -- unfortunately I
22 didn't bring it with me today -- where they endorse this
23 dual track strategy and requested that the Department
24 proceed with it. So there seems to be fairly good support
25 on the Hill at the present time.
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1 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan.
2 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I don't think you are
3 going to come back to immobilization very much, as you said
4 earlier. On immobilization, we are going to have a separate
5 briefing later this week on external regulation of DOE, and
6 one of the areas where we have already been working some is
7 the tank waste remediation effort up at Hanford. Is the
8 notion that the facility that you will use for
9 immobilization may also be NRC licensed?
10 MR. CANTER: Yes. If it's the new facilities, our
11 assumption is we will design them to NRC regulations. Right
12 now the planning is based on the fact that what will be NRC
13 licensed would be the MOX plant, and the other facilities,
14 like the immobilization and the pit conversion, are still
15 DOE regulated and Defense Board reviewed. If the external
16 regulation comes about, we'll shift over to it.
17 My position has been that if we are going to do
18 that, rather than back into something later, the time to do
19 that is in the design phase as early as possible.
20 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: My recollection, and we
21 have come a long ways from it, of the Grumbly-Berube Task
22 Force of last December was that while there was this
23 ten-year time horizon for the defense facilities, there was
24 the notion that new facilities -- I know there is some
25 chance for immobilization you may use an older facilities --
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1 but new facilities would probably come under NRC regulation
2 earlier if Congress creates a whole host of ifs.
3 MR. CANTER: Yes.
4 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Thank you.
5 MR. CANTER: The third piece that we are trying to
6 site is the pit conversion, and that is the next chart. We
7 are into site selection on that. We are installing a
8 prototype system at Los Alamos as we speak, and we expect to
9 start that up next year and to start testing that. There
10 are many different types of pits, so there will have to be
11 modifications to handle different kinds.
12 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Los Alamos is the site for the
13 prototype but not necessarily the whole site?
14 MR. CANTER: That's correct, but it's full size
15 equipment. What would occur in the production facility
16 would be multiple lines of equipment.
17 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Last time you were here
18 the gallium issue had just been in the New York Times and we
19 talked some about it. This is the point at which the
20 gallium, as I understand it, would be removed before it went
21 to the MOX facility. At least that's my recollection of
22 last time. Is that built in now to the planning for this
23 facility?
24 MR. CANTER: It's not necessarily the point for
25 removal of the gallium. The hydride/dehydride process,
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1 which is a dry thermal process, does not purify the
2 plutonium. So whatever is alloyed with the plutonium will
3 come with it.
4 We have a choice if we have to remove the gallium
5 of whether it's removed by adding a module to the back end
6 of this conversion facility or in the front end of the MOX
7 plant if it's going into MOX.
8 We have a program to solve the gallium issue, and
9 we have both out-of-pile and in-pile tests. The out-of-pile
10 tests are already underway; the in-pile testing will be done
11 with fuel fabricated at Los Alamos and inserted into the
12 advanced test reactor in Idaho late this fall or probably
13 early winter.
14 So far the evidence from the out-of-pile tests,
15 which are done in a very conservative manner by using pure
16 gallium in tubes of clad material, show no general corrosion
17 of the cladding material but some evidence of the
18 possibility of some liquid metal embrittlement of the
19 material. But this is pure gallium. When you go through
20 the thermal treatment that has been developed, and then by
21 the time you mix it with uranium oxide in the mixed oxide
22 fuel, you are down to like 10 ppm gallium. That's why the
23 in-pile testing will be very important to determine what
24 happens.
25 If we can't demonstrate that the gallium will not
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1 be a problem, it will have to be removed, because we don't
2 want to go with a licensing risk on this.
3 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: International inspection and
4 safeguards would come in at the point of oxide formation?
5 MR. CANTER: Yes. Once the military
6 characteristics are destroyed so we are not giving away any
7 nuclear weapons design information, from that point forward
8 there will be IAEA safeguards applied.
9 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Again a question that
10 may be appropriate at this point. Los Alamos had to shut
11 down its CMR building for the next six months for safety
12 reasons. How is that impacting your program?
13 MR. CANTER: Right now it doesn't impact because
14 we are still installing the equipment for this. Once we go
15 to start this system up we will need the support of the
16 chemistry laboratory, and we are trying to work out a
17 mechanism to minimize any impact from that, if there is any
18 at all. But right now it's construction work. All the
19 equipment is cold and being installed.
20 Next viewgraph, please.
21 This chart is a tabulation of some of the mixed
22 oxide fuel research and development. We are somewhat
23 hampered by the fact that we don't know which kind of
24 reactors are going to be used, and until we do this
25 competitive procurement and the specific utilities and their
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1 reactors are selected, we don't know whether it's a
2 Westinghouse, a General Electric, B&W, or what that we are
3 involved with. So we have to do most of what we are doing
4 in a generic sense or essentially do all different kinds,
5 which is very expensive and makes it very elaborate. We
6 have got some work underway.
7 We have done work on fabricability of the fuel
8 pellets with weapons-grade plutonium, and we have tested the
9 ability to make satisfactory fuel and sinter it properly and
10 grind it using the oxide produced by the dry process. It's
11 satisfactory. There are some people who say it must be
12 aqueous-derived oxide. We don't believe that's true at all.
13 The impact of gallium I've mentioned.
14 The CANDU MOX fuel testing. We fabricated some
15 CANDU fuel at Los Alamos. We are still struggling to try to
16 get a contract in place for the Russians to fabricate some.
17 That will cover a small-scale test that will be done at the
18 NRU reactor at Chalk River on use of the CANDU reactor.
19 It's called the parallax test.
20 We are doing an environmental assessment on
21 shipping this CANDU MOX fuel -- the original shipment is
22 like 5 kilograms of fuel -- up to Canada. That's in the
23 review cycle right now. Once that is completed, if there is
24 a finding of no significant impact, Los Alamos will apply
25 for the export permit for that, which was something that was
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1 applied for and then pulled back last year.
2 We are doing work on spent MOX fuel
3 characterization. In fact all the forms that we end up with
4 are being analyzed -- we have been doing this for about two
5 years now -- by the people responsible for the repository.
6 Rather than have somebody else do it and have them struggle
7 with do they agree with the results, we are having them do
8 it.
9 That has provided some positive feedback. For
10 example, on our early immobilization forms we had as much as
11 ten percent plutonium in an immobilized form. They found
12 out it was going to create a criticality problem and we had
13 to reduce the quantity of plutonium in the immobilized form.
14 The reactor analyses and some work that has been
15 done on that, and safety analysis, to try to determine to
16 what extent we can go to higher levels of MOX fuel than the
17 traditional European approach, which is about 30 percent MOX
18 fuel assemblies.
19 We have under design a fresh fuel shipping
20 container. I think there are two containers in the United
21 States for MOX fuel, but they are extremely large,
22 cumbersome things. Since we decided we will ship the fresh
23 MOX fuel in our SSTs, they don't take advantage of the
24 protection provided by the SST. So we are designing and
25 plan to get certified a new type of container which will be
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1 smaller and lighter and cheaper, obviously.
2 We are doing a lot of work on the economics and
3 cost analysis of all of this.
4 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Before you go, looking back at
5 reactor core assessment, as I recall, in conventional light
6 water reactors using uranium oxide fuel that at the end of
7 cycle something like 70 percent of the fissions actually
8 come from plutonium-239 produced in the cycle. Do you have
9 some idea of what the percentages would be at a comparable
10 point for the MOX? Presumably it's higher.
11 There is a related question. I am coming to
12 something here in a second. The plutonium-239 provides a
13 more negative moderator temperature and coefficient and a
14 void coefficient to reactivity, which turns out to be
15 advantageous for PWRs at the beginning of cycle, less so at
16 the end of cycle, but I'm told that for BWRs the thermal
17 hydraulics and potential issues of stability, et cetera, are
18 more complex. Does this bias things in any way in terms of
19 reactor selection and the like, or is it too soon to say?
20 Whatever you are able and willing to say in this
21 room, I would appreciate it.
22 MR. CANTER: I don't personally have all the
23 information on that. We could get back to you with the
24 answer on that.
25 The interesting thing is that if you are starting
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1 out with, say, four percent plutonium, which is
2 predominately 239 for the weapons grade -- it's 93 percent
3 more 239 -- and you've got depleted uranium, which may be
4 2/10 of one percent U-235, just about all your energy is
5 going to be produced by fissioning plutonium, either the
6 initial plutonium or the bred plutonium that you are going
7 to get from the 238.
8 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I guess the ultimate place I'm
9 going is not necessarily to have a technical discussion but
10 in terms of what light water reactor mix or what's biased.
11 MR. CANTER: We haven't biased anything against
12 the boiling water reactors at all. In fact there are some
13 attractions to the boiling water.
14 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: From my old physics, if I can
15 remember it, the plutonium-240 will be larger and it will
16 actually make up for whatever difference it is. There is
17 going to be a small difference in the delay mutual fraction,
18 but that actually will not change as a function of core
19 life. It will be different at the beginning. The 240,
20 which will make more 240 than normal, would actually make up
21 for the differences in the coefficient.
22 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So it doesn't bias things one
23 way or the other for one type of reactor.
24 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: No.
25 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner.
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1 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: This may be actually
2 related. The last tick here is the economics and cost. As
3 I understand it, MOX fuel you can't have as long a cycle as
4 with uranium oxide fuels. That has been the practice in
5 Europe. Your burnups can't be as high. Presumably the
6 people who bid on the contract, if you are forcing them to
7 be down more often, will expect you all to make up for that
8 in some way. In your economic analyses have you factored in
9 that, and do you have any better cost estimates now as to
10 what the MOX option is going to cost?
11 MR. CANTER: We are going to need some information
12 from the procurement process to really refine these cost
13 estimates. We don't necessarily agree that you can't have
14 as long a cycle.
15 As a matter of fact, the French are now seriously
16 making preparations to go to an 18-month refueling cycle
17 similar to what is used for LWRs in the United States, and
18 they are talking about much higher burnups. It's an
19 experience factor.
20 So the burnups initially were in the 30,000,
21 33,000 megawatt days per ton range and going up into the
22 40s. It's going to be a question of what's doable within
23 the realm of the envelope of experience at the time.
24 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So you're talking about going
25 into the 40s in terms of gigawatt days per ton for MOX as
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1 opposed to uranium-based?
2 MR. CANTER: Yes.
3 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I suspect the
4 procurement process will give you data. If I were bidding,
5 I probably would bid within the current envelope of
6 experience rather than presuming things.
7 MR. CANTER: For immobilization we have an
8 extensive research and development program. One is the
9 impact of impurities. All of the work prior to our record
10 of decision was done with pure plutonium oxide. The
11 assumption is that immobilization can accept what I'll call
12 the junk and stuff without extensive purification, but we
13 have to prove this out. So we are doing a lot of samples
14 and we have three or four of the labs working on this plus
15 Savannah River.
16 We are doing layouts of the process and to develop
17 the key process parameters and sizing of equipment.
18 We have decided to go with the can and canister
19 concept where the plutonium would be immobilized without a
20 radiation barrier in cans that are about the size of a two
21 liter bottle of Coke. Those cans will be suspended in a
22 framework in the large canisters that are used for high
23 level waste glass similar to those that are at Savannah
24 River now. Then high level waste glass will be poured
25 around those cans and fill the canister to create the
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1 radiation barrier.
2 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Where is the high level waste
3 going to come from?
4 MR. CANTER: It's either going to be at Savannah
5 River or Hanford. I think they've got a lot.
6 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: In liquid form.
7 MR. CANTER: Yes. At one point people felt that
8 we didn't have enough high level waste despite this, and I
9 said, my God, I hope we don't have to go out and create more
10 high level waste for this purpose. But it's adequate.
11 Our preferred sited, by the way, for
12 immobilization is Savannah River. We have already formally
13 announced that in the notice of intent on the EIS, because
14 they have a high level waste vitrification plant in
15 operation.
16 We do not want to alter that plant. It was never
17 designed for criticality control. So you'd have to go with
18 a much smaller melter, much smaller systems, and so forth,
19 which would change the throughput and significantly increase
20 the cost of the high level waste program.
21 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And that's why you picked the
22 can and canister?
23 MR. CANTER: That's why we picked the can and
24 canister. We can take advantage of that facility without
25 affecting its operation, essentially.
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1 Andre mentions that we don't have any technical
2 experience in adding plutonium to the high level waste
3 glass. So that would be a tremendous technical risk.
4 We have gone through and we are completing this
5 month a formal evaluation of the relative merits of glass
6 and ceramic in the smaller cans. We haven't finally
7 approved the results of that, but we will be doing that
8 probably in the next two weeks.
9 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: The Savannah River facility can
10 handle the throughput that you expect?
11 MR. CANTER: Yes.
12 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So in fact then you don't
13 expect to have a new immobilization facility?
14 MR. CANTER: There will be new facilities for
15 immobilizing the plutonium, making the cans, and any
16 preprocessing of the plutonium materials.
17 To give you an idea, the Savannah River facility,
18 the estimate is that they will produce about 6,000 canisters
19 of high level waste glass based on the high level waste at
20 Savannah River. Adding the plutonium to some of those would
21 probably impact maybe 500 to 1,000 of those canisters.
22 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner.
23 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Something occurred to me.
24 Looking at the options of immobilization versus the MOX
25 fuel, obviously we are still standing by our 20-year-old
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1 policy of no reprocessing of fuel. I think in the MOX case
2 we can say that we are processing the plutonium into a new
3 fuel form actually without reprocessing the fuel. However,
4 in the immobilization we are taking high level waste and
5 mixing it in a form that will actually provide the radiation
6 barrier to make it less attractive.
7 Is anybody giving you any problem whether
8 immobilization is closer to reprocessing than the actual
9 fabrication of the MOX?
10 MR. CANTER: The only issues that have been raised
11 about that, Commissioner are, if we were to use the actual
12 canyon facilities at Savannah River, are we promoting use of
13 a reprocessing facility to do this, to mix materials, or so
14 forth? We are not planning to do that. It's not a good
15 argument anyway even with that.
16 I was so disturbed about what is the policy and
17 what has it been that I went back and found the original
18 October 28, 1976, policy statement signed by President Ford,
19 and it was the chemical separation from spent fuel. That
20 was the issue. There has been a lot of confusion on that.
21 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You mention on this slide that
22 you completed a formal evaluation of the relative merits of
23 glass and ceramic forms. How has that come out?
24 MR. CYGELMAN: Actually we had tasked Lawrence
25 Livermore, who is our lead lab in this area, to give us a
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1 recommendation with regard to continuing with one form.
2 They set up a process whereby they had two evaluation panels
3 evaluate the technical information that was presented. DOE
4 provided criteria which the panel and the lab could use to
5 evaluate the merits of each of the forms, and Lawrence
6 Livermore gave us a recommendation, indicating that ceramic
7 had certain advantages relative to glass, and their
8 recommendation was to select ceramic.
9 As Mr. Canter has indicated, we still are
10 assessing that recommendation and we haven't made that
11 decision yet.
12 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: If you are talking
13 vitrification, that means glass.
14 MR. CYGELMAN: Yes, it would mean glass.
15 MR. CANTER: If we were to use glass in these
16 cans, it would not be the same glass that is used with the
17 high level waste; it's a higher temperature glass. So it
18 doesn't remelt and the plutonium separate out when you are
19 pouring the large quantity high level waste glass around
20 those cans. There has been a lot of testing of a much
21 higher temperature glass for that.
22 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan.
23 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The defense waste
24 processing facility at Savannah River had some startup
25 problems. My recollection from reading the energy dailies
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1 and other reliable sources lately is that those are behind
2 it and that it's meeting its goals for producing logs at
3 this point.
4 MR. CANTER: To my understanding, yes, sir.
5 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Just to finish with the issue
6 of the high level waste, we assume that when you take the
7 high level waste stream from Savannah River or Hanford there
8 are no contaminants or chemicals that will need to be
9 separated. I'm sure you will make sure that this is going
10 to happen.
11 MR. CANTER: That is one of the reasons for this
12 can and canister concept. There is a barrier between the
13 immobilized plutonium, a metal can, and the high level waste
14 glass. So whatever process they are doing on preparation of
15 the feed stream for the high level waste glass will be
16 unchanged.
17 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I was concerned about chemical
18 contaminants that might actually attack the integrity of the
19 canister from the high level waste.
20 MR. CANTER: If they have that problem, they have
21 that problem today with the canisters, and we wouldn't be
22 changing that.
23 The pit disassembly and conversion is the next
24 chart. I mentioned the prototype that we expect to start
25 demonstrating in March of next year at Los Alamos.
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1 The initial run is about 40 weapons components.
2 There are seven pit types that will be run through there.
3 Then we will have to start adding some different equipment
4 to do other types. We will probably add some automation and
5 some additional remote handling because some have radiation
6 levels that would give us a problem if we didn't. We expect
7 to test over a two-year period about 200 more.
8 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you see any external
9 regulatory role in the pit disassembly and conversion
10 program? We have already talked about immobilization.
11 MR. CANTER: It depends on what the decisions are
12 and how the Congress reacts to this external regulation. I
13 don't know.
14 The siting of the disposition facilities is the
15 next chart. As you can see, for immobilization there are
16 just two sites that are candidates. Savannah River is the
17 preferred alternative site, but we are evaluating Hanford.
18 Although they don't have a high level waste immobilization
19 facility, they have plans for one. Even though some people
20 refer to their first phase as a pilot scale, that pilot
21 scale is so big that it's large enough to do this job if it
22 were to be completed.
23 For the other two modules, the pit conversion and
24 the mixed oxide fuel fabrication, there are four candidate
25 sites. None of those have been designated as a preferred
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1 alternative at this time.
2 Next viewgraph.
3 We are doing an environmental impact statement,
4 and that is tiered off from our programmatic. The notice of
5 intent is already out. We have gone through scoping
6 meetings.
7 We expect the draft environmental impact statement
8 to be issued early next year, probably January or February
9 time frame. It will contain the preferred alternatives. As
10 I said, we already indicated the preferred alternative for
11 immobilization. So we'll have to pick the site for the MOX
12 plant and the pit conversion.
13 As part of our record of decision the MOX plant
14 will be on a DOE site; it will not be out in the commercial
15 sector. It will be owned by DOE although it will be
16 operated by the private sector.
17 The final environmental impact statement and the
18 record of decision, about the end of fiscal '98, early
19 fiscal '99.
20 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Would you expect NRC to be a
21 commenting or a cooperative agency?
22 MR. CANTER: We have sent you correspondence, and
23 my understanding is that you would be a commenting agency
24 rather than a cooperating agency.
25 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It's a recommendation the
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1 Commission has to act on.
2 MR. CANTER: Yes.
3 The schedule, which is the next chart, is of
4 interest. I will come back to this later, but it shows
5 tests and qualifications, form selections, the procurement,
6 and then the design. We just show design and licensing for
7 the MOX facility because we don't know whether the others
8 will be licensed. And the construction periods.
9 We are requesting construction money to start the
10 design on the pit disassembly and conversion and the MOX
11 facility starting in fiscal '99.
12 We will not be ready to start on the design of the
13 additional facilities needed for the immobilization because
14 we are still developing the processes. That will start in
15 the year 2000, but the actual construction will be much
16 shorter because they are not very extensive facilities. So
17 it should be ready at least a couple years before the MOX
18 plant would be ready.
19 I'd like to let Dave Nulton describe our
20 procurement strategy and the feedback that we have gotten
21 from industry, because I think this will be of interest.
22 MR. NULTON: Because of the unique nature of our
23 procurement, the Department decided that we would issue a
24 procurement strategy rather than go out directly with a
25 draft RFP or a final RFP, the idea being that we would
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1 indicate what our strategy is, get response from industry.
2 If there were major differences with our proposed approach,
3 then we could make changes and hopefully save some time.
4 The strategy indicated a preference for a
5 consortium as a minimum to be made up of a fuel fabricator
6 and an irradiation service provider, presumably a utility or
7 an IPP. The reason for that was we wanted the fabrication
8 of fuel and the fuel supplied to a utility or IPP to be as
9 close as possible to the normal business arrangements that
10 are in place between those entities right now. We didn't
11 want to put ourselves in the middle of that fuel supply
12 process, having to guarantee schedules and warranties on
13 fuel and so forth.
14 The consortium preference also indicated that we
15 wanted a sole contracting authority, a lead company.
16 Initially an NSSS company or a fuel fabricator. We did get
17 some comments back from that proposed approach from the
18 industry, which I will talk to in a minute.
19 The key assumptions were that the mission
20 timetable for this procurement and for implementing the
21 program would be dictated by international agreements,
22 primarily with Russia. The United States isn't going to
23 begin to eliminate or disposition their plutonium until we
24 see some commitment and progress on the Russian side as
25 well. Howard will say more a little bit later, at the end
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1 of the presentation on progress that we are making with
2 Russia in that regard.
3 The MOX fuel fabrication facility site would be
4 determined through NEPA. As Howard mentioned, there are
5 four sites being considered. They are all DOE sites.
6 The assumption also stipulated that the MOX fuel
7 fabrication facility would be licensed by NRC as opposed to
8 being operated under DOE orders.
9 IAEA safeguards requirements would apply through
10 the disposition process once the materials are converted to
11 a declassified state. We would not have IAEA involvement in
12 the pit disassembly and conversion process because the
13 materials would be classified at that point.
14 We also indicated that NRC jurisdiction for
15 security and safeguards would apply at reactor sites.
16 Actually the original strategy indicated that the more
17 stringent safeguards and security requirements would apply
18 at the MOX site. We got some comments back from industry
19 questioning whether or not that would lead to some
20 conflicts, and as a result we are changing our approach
21 there, or at least proposing that it be changed to having
22 NRC jurisdiction at reactor sites and DOE jurisdiction at
23 the MOX fuel fabrication facility.
24 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you a question about
25 that. Since you are talking of NRC licensing of the MOX
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1 fabrication facility as well as having the IAEA safeguards
2 apply, and we implement those at the civilian facilities
3 here, what is the gain or the rationale for having DOE
4 safeguards and security orders apply at the MOX fuel?
5 MR. CANTER: The MOX fuel fabrication plant would
6 be an enclave inside a larger DOE site. Effectively the
7 security force from the larger site would be the backup for
8 whoever is providing the security in the smaller internal
9 site. It just seemed to us that you don't want two sets of
10 rules.
11 One of the fundamental issues, and I'll come to
12 this later when I talk about legislation, is the question of
13 the use of deadly force. Under an NRC license, I don't
14 think that they get the authority through you to use deadly
15 force to protect the material. They can use deadly force to
16 protect themselves.
17 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I know he is going to make the
18 comment I was going to make.
19 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Part of our legislative
20 proposal is to deal with that.
21 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It's in fact to change that.
22 MR. CANTER: I know that. Let's say something
23 were located at Savannah River. They've got a 300 square
24 mile site. They've got certain security requirements. If
25 you need help in this smaller enclave, you don't want to
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1 tell people, well, when you go inside that fence you do it
2 this way, but outside of it you do it a different way. You
3 want a common set. We have to resolve this.
4 I don't think it's a big problem. It's just
5 something that has to be done.
6 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Go ahead.
7 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Just to clarify. It was
8 put out differently in the original acquisition strategy,
9 that it would be under NRC. Having your viewgraph is a
10 reaction to the comments you got at the meeting in Chicago.
11 MR. CANTER: Yes.
12 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you envision the lead
13 contractor as the licensee?
14 MR. CANTER: Probably that would be the way it's
15 done, and it depends on their contractual relationship among
16 the members of this consortium. It was interesting. An
17 attorney in procurement started reading off different
18 definitions of the word "consortium," and when he got all
19 done describing Webster's, Black's Law Dictionary and
20 everything else, we knew less than when we started.
21 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's what dictionaries will
22 do for you.
23 MR. CANTER: It's whatever arrangement a group of
24 companies can have. What we do insist is that somebody be
25 in the lead and be responsible.
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1 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: What about foreign ownership
2 control and influence?
3 MR. NULTON: The rules for foreign ownership would
4 apply. There will be foreign entities involved in this, we
5 believe. The Western European fuel fabricators obviously
6 have this background and expertise, and we would expect to
7 see them in some of these consortia. The Buy American Act
8 would also apply.
9 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: But you'd expect the lead to be
10 a U.S. company.
11 MR. NULTON: A U.S. company or one that could
12 qualify as a U.S. company, yes.
13 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
14 MR. NULTON: Next viewgraph.
15 The responsibilities of the consortium would be to
16 design, construct, license and operate the fuel fabrication
17 facility.
18 Then to irradiate the MOX fuel in existing
19 commercial reactors.
20 And to decontaminate and decommission the MOX fuel
21 facility at the end of the campaign.
22 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes.
23 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Did industry have any
24 comments at this meeting about decontaminating and
25 decommissioning?
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1 You earlier talked about this enclave in a DOE
2 site, and all the DOE candidate sites are not exactly
3 pristine. If I were the entity, I would want to make sure
4 that I had a survey of the site so I did not get blamed for
5 past DOE sins. How is that decommissioning and
6 decontamination baseline going to be set?
7 Presumably if it's our license, it would be to our
8 license termination standard.
9 Was there any comment on that in your Chicago
10 meeting?
11 MR. NULTON: Not a lot of comment on that. The
12 facilities will either be new facilities in greenfields, or
13 they will be used in conjunction with new or existing
14 facilities. At Hanford the FMEF has never been used. So
15 it's a clean facility. At Savannah River we have the APSF.
16 That would sort of be the anchor and these other facilities
17 would be built contiguous to the APSF.
18 I don't think we have any preexisting
19 contamination at those sites, but we did not get a great
20 deal of comment on this.
21 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Would they be allowed to
22 survey the site to provide a baseline?
23 MR. NULTON: Absolutely.
24 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
25 MR. NULTON: The Department of Energy's
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1 responsibilities would be to provide the site through our
2 NEPA process, to provide funding for the design and
3 construction of the facility, but we would retain ownership,
4 as Howard had mentioned earlier.
5 We would provide materials to meet the operator's
6 schedule, and we would also provide those to meet a spec for
7 powder going into the MOX fuel process.
8 We would transport the materials to the
9 fabrication facility from the disassembly and conversion
10 facility. They could be collocated, but they may not
11 necessarily be collocated. That's something to be
12 determined through our NEPA process.
13 Then we would also provide for IAEA inspections.
14 MR. CANTER: Let me interrupt a minute. This
15 shows the transportation to the MOX facility. I also said
16 we would transport the fresh fuel to the reactors.
17 MR. NULTON: Next viewgraph.
18 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think the Commissioner has a
19 question.
20 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I just was wondering whether
21 you have a similar well defined chart of the NRC
22 responsibilities that you see as a companion to this chart.
23 MR. NULTON: We do not. I think that will be the
24 subject of further discussion.
25 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Not even a tentative?
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1 MR. NULTON: Not even a tentative at this point.
2 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: They knew we would give them a
3 hard time.
4 MR. NULTON: The procurement schedule actually
5 began back in March with a Commerce Business Daily
6 announcement that indicated that the Department was about to
7 undertake this procurement, that we would initiate the
8 procurement by issuing a procurement strategy. That
9 strategy was issued on July 17, 1997.
10 We provided time for review and asked that
11 comments be provided to the Department. Actually this
12 procurement is being conducted out of the Chicago operations
13 office. So we are working jointly with the Chicago office
14 on this.
15 There was a workshop held with industry and other
16 members of the public on August 28 to receive further
17 comments and have discussion on the strategy, which I will
18 say more about in a moment.
19 The draft request for proposals will be issued in
20 November, probably late November at this point. Our target
21 is to have that out before Thanksgiving. This will be the
22 last opportunity for industry and others to comment on our
23 procurement process.
24 And then we would have final request for proposals
25 out in February with receipt of proposals sometime around
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1 the May time frame.
2 Contract award we show here as September of 1998,
3 but another comment that we received from industry, and I'll
4 say more in a moment about this as well, was that they were
5 concerned about the commitment of the Department to the
6 procurement; they were concerned about how much material
7 would go to immobilization versus mixed oxide fuel; and some
8 concern about why so much time was allowed between the
9 receipt of proposals and the award of a contract.
10 So we are looking at trying to accelerate this
11 schedule. We might be able to contract as early as July,
12 but that is something that we are still working internal to
13 DOE.
14 Next viewgraph, please.
15 As I mentioned, the workshop was held in Chicago,
16 at the Chicago operations office site on August 28. It was
17 well attended. We had over 100 attendees. I think we had
18 87 or so that formally registered and there were others who
19 came in at the last moment who did not register. So we
20 think roughly 100 people.
21 We had comments that had been provided prior to
22 the meeting. We took these and issued at that meeting a
23 draft set of answers to those comments, and then we also had
24 further discussion and tried to address other issues that
25 were raised at the meeting as we received them.
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1 What we tried to do here is identify some of the
2 major concerns. As I mentioned earlier, concern over DOE's
3 commitment to the MOX/reactor procurement. This, I think,
4 stems from a number of factors.
5 First, the wording in the record of decision from
6 the programmatic environmental impact statement was in some
7 cases vague, maybe even confusing in terms of how much
8 material would be committed to the immobilization approach
9 versus the mixed oxide approach.
10 Also DOE's track record in the past of completing
11 facilities on time and getting them up and running.
12 So there is some concern in industry. We hope
13 that accelerating the procurement, if we can do that, will
14 help to alleviate some of those concerns.
15 There was also a comment made by a number of
16 industry groups on the leadership requirements. Initially
17 we had said that we would like to have a fuel fabricator, an
18 NSSS vendor provide the leadership of that consortium. We
19 are now changing that approach to say that any members of
20 the consortium can be the lead as long as they meet the U.S.
21 ownership requirements, and also they must have the
22 financial and technical resources to be the lead, and then
23 we would contract with that lead.
24 In fact, we even allow, and I think we had this in
25 the original strategy document, for some of these
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1 arrangements to be done through subcontracts. Not every
2 participant in this endeavor needs to be a member of the
3 consortium; they could subcontract to some of those
4 contractors.
5 There was a comment about the cost of preparing
6 the proposal and whether there would be cost reimbursement.
7 At this point we are making no change in our position there.
8 We would expect the consortia to fund the preparation of
9 their proposals.
10 There was a concern for duplicative DOE and NRC
11 regulation. This was primarily focused on the safeguards
12 and security requirements that we talked about earlier.
13 Again we had said that we would apply the most stringent
14 requirements. Now we are proposing that DOE requirements,
15 for the reasons that Howard described, would apply at the
16 MOX site and NRC requirements at the reactor site. This is
17 something that may require some legislation to get nailed
18 down.
19 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Were there any other public
20 comments that addressed NRC or its role in this project?
21 MR. CANTER: We were asked whether we had
22 legislation giving NRC the authority. We said that's yet to
23 come. Some questions about that. Most people felt in view
24 of the fact that part of this process, the reactors, are
25 already NRC licensed that this was the right thing to do. I
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1 didn't hear any real objections to it.
2 MR. NULTON: Next viewgraph, please.
3 One of the requirements that we identified in our
4 strategy was to provide excess capacity in the event that
5 more material is declared surplus or we want to increase the
6 throughput.
7 Also there is an option that we are evaluating in
8 our NEPA process to disposition some of this material in
9 Canadian CANDU reactors. As a result, we wanted to be sure
10 that we had adequate space in the facility to fabricate any
11 type of fuel that would be required or to increase our
12 throughput.
13 There was some objection to this. At this point
14 we have not changed that requirement. Again the Department
15 is going to pay the cost of designing and constructing this
16 facility, and our view is the additional cost will be funded
17 by the U.S. Government. So we're not sure why that is a
18 major concern, but we are looking at that further.
19 There was some uncertainty about how the MOX fuel
20 fabrication facility would relate to other activities at the
21 DOE site where the facility might be constructed. This was
22 focused primarily on services, water, electricity, and so
23 forth, whether they would be purchased or provided by DOE.
24 Also the potential for conflicting missions at that site.
25 We don't think this is a major problem, but we will address
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1 it further in our draft RFP.
2 Finally, there was not so much comment but more
3 inquiry or question on details of criteria that would be
4 used in our evaluation, what would the weighting of that
5 criteria be.
6 Also a question on the safety records of some
7 reactors. If a reactor is in the watch list, will it be
8 considered? Our view there is a reactor that is on the
9 watch list today may not be in ten years when this activity
10 gets up and running and vice versa.
11 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Also, presumably if in fact
12 it's in our regulatory regime, that would be part of what we
13 would make a decision on at any rate.
14 MR. NULTON: Absolutely. In fact we have received
15 correspondence on this in the past prior to the strategy
16 going. That's typically the answer that we give, that this
17 is an NRC regulatory issue.
18 Next viewgraph, please.
19 As Howard mentioned, we believe some legislation
20 will be needed to implement the program. In fact there have
21 been some preliminary discussions between our general
22 counsel's office and your attorneys on how we go about doing
23 this. First, of course, would be the authority for NRC to
24 license a DOE-owned facility.
25 Price Anderson indemnification. There was some
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1 question on this at our meeting in Chicago and also some of
2 the comments that came in as part of the meeting. We need
3 to be clear on who is going to indemnify the operators of
4 this facility. I believe the proposal now would be that the
5 MOX facility would be covered through DOE; the reactors, of
6 course, through NRC. The question came up again because of
7 NRC licensing a facility on a DOE site.
8 The use of deadly force, which we discussed
9 earlier, may require legislation, although your proposed
10 legislation may deal with that and no further changes will
11 be required.
12 Then changes in security approach, having to deal
13 with the safeguards and security at the MOX facility and how
14 we handle that.
15 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes.
16 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Do you have a backup
17 plan in case Congress doesn't decide to do this? In the
18 case of tritium it has been controversial this year whether
19 Congress would grant the DOE legislative request, and I
20 guess we are waiting for the conference result on that.
21 If Congress says no, we want the MOX facility
22 self-regulated by DOE, you then have the interface at the
23 reactors, which are obviously going to continue to be
24 regulated by us. Have you thought through how that
25 regulatory regime would work and how your self-regulation at
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1 the MOX facility producing fuel that you irradiated and our
2 regulated reactors, how that would all work out?
3 MR. CANTER: I think that is pretty
4 straightforward, Commissioner. The DOE regulation would be
5 the safety aspects of the MOX fuel fabrication facility.
6 The quality requirements for the product produced in there
7 would come from its contract with the utility and would have
8 to meet NRC requirements, but DOE wouldn't be responsible to
9 try to control the quality. That would be a contractual
10 arrangement with the purchaser or whatever arrangement there
11 is for that fuel, and the customer is the utility who has
12 requirements under its license with you. But the safety, I
13 think it's very easy, and the handoff would be on delivery
14 at the reactor site.
15 The Price Anderson is rather interesting. My
16 understanding is that if they get Price Anderson via a
17 license they have to pay an insurance premium for it, if I'm
18 correct. I don't know that I'm correct. This wouldn't make
19 sense if they had to pay that and then turn around and bill
20 us for the cost. Through the contract we can furnish the
21 Price Anderson, and we don't charge for it. We furnish it
22 to all our contractors. This would be just circulating
23 money for no purpose.
24 I want to cover a little bit on the Russian
25 activities because all of this is hinging on it and some
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1 things have happened recently which are rather exciting.
2 The next viewgraph.
3 We completed a U.S.-Russian study last fall on the
4 technical options. This did not make recommendations on
5 what to do in Russia. It just presented an evaluation which
6 tried to be fair, an evaluation to some mutually agreed upon
7 criteria of the different options.
8 There were some important considerations that came
9 out of that. One was that the Russians in the study agreed
10 and after we printed it tried to back away from it for a
11 little while, but they agreed that whatever is done in
12 Russia and the United States we would reduce to equal
13 levels. That's a subtle difference between that and equal
14 rate. So if they are starting with more than we are
15 starting with, they may have to run faster.
16 The second point that is very interesting is that
17 they agreed that there would be no recycle of whatever form
18 there was, at least until the stockpile of surplus plutonium
19 is eliminated. So that day may be 30 years from now. They
20 wanted the option to go recycle their fuel. We said not
21 while you're getting it down. What happens 30 years from
22 now we'll figure out in the interim.
23 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner.
24 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: One of the tricky points
25 is this reduction to equal levels, including presumably
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1 whatever strategic reserves the two countries decide to
2 retain. It's fairly straightforward to calculate how much
3 plutonium they produced within, say, ten tons. I think I
4 saw a recent press report where Velikhov was quoted as
5 saying they might declare 50 tons excess. How will we react
6 if the number is that low given that we know it has to be
7 much higher or else their strategic reserve is going to be
8 much, much, much higher than ours?
9 You are into arms control, and I don't want to get
10 into classified, but there is a paradox here that is going
11 to be difficult to get passed unless they declare something
12 much larger.
13 MR. CANTER: You are really asking me what is the
14 negotiating strategy for working out a bilateral agreement
15 which I can't lay out and I don't think in a public forum
16 would be a good idea anyway.
17 In prior arms control agreements they did refer --
18 for example, conventional forces in Europe. They didn't
19 deal with how many tanks are you going to destroy but how
20 many tanks are you going to keep. That's ultimately what we
21 have to get to here. It's going to be tough for the U.S. to
22 accept that, because it will require the U.S. to reveal what
23 it's going to keep, and they don't want to do that; there
24 are people who don't want to do that.
25 We have started conducting some small-scale tests
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1 and demonstrations. We have several activities at the
2 Bochvar Institute on immobilizing plutonium. We have some
3 work at Bochvar and some fuel fabrication, and we have work
4 at IPP, Obninsk and at the Kuchatov Institute on analyzing
5 some of their reactors. Kuchatov was brought in because the
6 most promising option appears to be to start to use mixed
7 oxide fuel in some of the operating VVER-1000 light water
8 reactors.
9 The Russians have seven. They have indicated that
10 four of them are newer and could contribute to this. If you
11 stick with 30 percent MOX fuel, they could each consume
12 about a quarter of a ton of plutonium a year. So that's not
13 very much. But there are happen to be 12 operating
14 VVER-1000s in the Ukraine, and the Russians have agreed and
15 they have already started a dialogue with the Ukraine on
16 possibly using those. So then you are getting a population
17 of reactors that starts to get reasonable for accomplishing
18 the job.
19 One of the problems is that we don't know what the
20 end of life is on these reactors and will they last long
21 enough to really do this. Again you get back to the
22 question of how much do they have to do.
23 All of this is going to have to be worked out.
24 It's going to be somewhat difficult.
25 We have reached agreement with the Russians to
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1 start developing a pilot-scale pit conversion facility for
2 Russia. In the experts meeting in Paris last October the
3 French and Germans proposed building a pilot-scale MOX plant
4 in Russia. That would consume 1.3 metric tons of plutonium
5 a year, produce about 30 tons of heavy metal mixed oxide
6 fuel.
7 They proposed it but then went around and passed
8 the hat and wanted to know who would like to contribute. We
9 took the position that we didn't want to contribute to that
10 but what we would prefer to do is break off the front end of
11 that, and we will handle that in total. That's the
12 conversion of the metal from the weapons components into
13 oxide and the placing of the resultant oxide under IAEA
14 safeguards. If that oxide goes into MOX fuel it has got to
15 be acceptable oxide for that, and we will size this
16 pilot-scale plant accordingly so it's handling 1.3 tons of
17 plutonium a year.
18 We will handle that, and we have already started
19 working on it and we have dedicated some money to it, and we
20 will be requesting money in the coming years for that
21 effort. What is started on that is a feasibility study, an
22 engineering study, and some experimental work at the Russian
23 laboratories on which process to use for converting metal to
24 oxide. At the present time they don't know what they want
25 to use, and it doesn't have to necessarily be the same
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1 process we're using.
2 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner.
3 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I think I heard the
4 Russian deputy minister at the Leesburg conference talk
5 about their preference to get to the spent fuel standard by
6 putting the fuel in breeders. Does that continue to be
7 their preference? I know our preference is the VVER-1000s,
8 and you've got Kuchatov involved, but is there a disconnect
9 in the Russian bureaucracy on that?
10 MR. CANTER: No. Number one, they still love
11 breeders and we can't break up that love affair. But number
12 two, they have also agreed in the one fast breeder they've
13 got, the BN-600, to convert it to a burner, and there are
14 some early steps that can be taken. For example, the
15 removal of the radial blanket which generates weapons grade
16 plutonium and installing steel reflectors and some other
17 things. That can be done in a relatively short period of
18 time, a few years. So we can take some steps there to
19 eliminate that threat so they are not making more plutonium.
20 Of course, as you know, the Department working
21 with the Department of Defense has a core conversion program
22 for the production reactors also which we don't have aegis
23 over but another part of the Department does.
24 And we are providing technical support for the
25 Interagency Working Group.
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1 The next chart I'm not going to go through each of
2 the items. This is nicknamed the Holdren-Velikhov Report.
3 About a year and a half ago or two years ago
4 President Clinton and President Yeltsin sort of commissioned
5 an independent scientific commission consisting of five
6 members from the National Academy of Science and five
7 members from the Russian Academy of Science, and the two
8 sides are chaired by John Holdren from Harvard and Evgeny
9 Velikhov, who is the president of the Kuchatov Institute and
10 also a member of their National Defense Council. Their
11 report came out a few months ago, and it has some key
12 recommendations.
13 First of all, it endorsed the dual track for both
14 nations, and they supported getting these pilot plants built
15 and getting MPC&A, material protection control and
16 accountancy, at the sites, and we have an extensive program
17 for that. The budget for that has steadily gone up through
18 the years, and I think we asked for something in the
19 neighborhood of $130 million for fiscal year 1998. We will
20 see how that comes out. But there are some 40-odd sites
21 where that work is being done.
22 Some of the things are rather interesting for you.
23 Agree to establish appropriate managerial
24 structures. Within that recommendation were several
25 sub-recommendations. The Russians have never assigned
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1 anybody responsibility for this. So when you deal with
2 them, this task is dealt with by this office and somebody
3 else. They recommend, I guess, that they have a mirror
4 image of what we got, which I guess is another office like
5 ours or something, or a program office. And they are
6 starting toward that direction. They just recently assigned
7 a coordinator at our request and are trying to get him up to
8 speed.
9 The other was that they recommended -- we have to
10 think long and hard about this -- that both nations
11 establish offices in their regulatory agencies dedicated to
12 the disposition of excess plutonium. So that would be the
13 NRC and GAN. Obviously we are not responding to that. The
14 White House has this report and they'll probably be in touch
15 with you. I know they're going to request through the
16 Interagency Working Group comments on it at some point.
17 The next chart, please.
18 This is the thing I was mentioning that is rather
19 dramatic as a result of some meetings that we had in May
20 where we met with the Defense Council. In the Russian
21 Government there are two councils. There is a National
22 Security Council and a National Defense Council.
23 The National Security Council is really for
24 internal security but they do handle such minor issues as
25 Chechnya and a few other things.
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1 The National Defense Council, akin to our NSC, is
2 chaired by the President himself, and the members consist of
3 some cabinet level ministers and the prime minister. In
4 fact I have a backup viewgraph on that. If you could find
5 that on the National Defense Council.
6 This describes the National Defense Council. Of
7 interest is that the Minister of Atomic Energy is not a
8 member of the National Defense Council - Mikhailov. There
9 is a secretary and chiefs of staff and all that, and the
10 secretary is the analogue to Sandy Berger of the NSC on this
11 side.
12 We met with some members of the National Defense
13 Council staff and explained to them in May that the United
14 States has an interagency process. So we get the policy
15 people involved early and we don't go running off and doing
16 things on our own in the Department of Energy, and we have
17 the State Department and we have the NSC and we have OSTP
18 and others involved, so that at some point you have to
19 translate technical work into policy, and that is being
20 lined up as we go.
21 But we don't see anything similar in Russia. In
22 other words, it's all buried in MINATOM. They went off and
23 prepared a recommendation to the President, and on the 23rd
24 of July President Yeltsin signed a decree that set up this
25 standing committee under the National Defense Council.
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1 This is very important, because they assigned as
2 the chairman Velikhov, who is the only non-minister level
3 person in the National Defense Council, and the National
4 Defense Council in the Russian regime has suddenly started
5 flexing its muscles, and in fact the very day we met with
6 them they had a meeting that afternoon in the Kremlin at
7 which Yeltsin fired the Minister of Defense and the Chief of
8 Staff of the Armed Forces because they weren't going along
9 with the recommendations of the National Defense Council for
10 streamlining the military. So it's an interesting dynamic
11 that is happening there.
12 You can see that the members of this standing
13 committee are either ministerial level or deputy level. I
14 believe Vishnevsky is the head of GAN, and the Minister of
15 Finance happens to be the Minister of Finance. I don't know
16 who the representative from the Ministry of Defense is
17 because it was Kokoshin, but he moved up to become
18 Secretary. So this is a fairly high level committee. It's
19 a standing committee, and they are all supposed to oversee
20 this.
21 On the next sheet is a brief description of some
22 of their initial tasking, what they're going to do, and they
23 have to submit some recommendations by the 15th of October
24 on what path the Russians would take.
25 The second little tick under this initial tasking
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1 is really for them to develop a framework for an
2 international agreement with the United States for getting
3 rid of plutonium. That's the kind of architecture in this
4 agreement you need.
5 And they are supposed to make an initial
6 declaration of what will be excess. It may be that they'll
7 say you did 50 tons, we'll do 50 tons. I don't know. But
8 we know that they are working on that.
9 And they are supposed to oversee on an interagency
10 basis the management of this problem.
11 So we are really excited over this move, because
12 it means that at the highest levels in the Russian
13 Government they are taking some action. President Yeltsin
14 has responded also to the Holdren-Velikhov Report. One of
15 the things that they have been asked to do is reconvene that
16 committee in about four or five months and provide to the
17 two presidents a progress report on how both sides are
18 moving, and that will help keep this thing moving along.
19 It's somewhat like a giant flywheel with bad bearings, and
20 if you don't keep it rolling it will just grind to a halt.
21 So this is encouraging.
22 There is one other thing. The schedule that I
23 showed you which showed when we would do construction and so
24 forth, in meetings the Russian Defense Council people picked
25 up and they asked, would you spend money on construction if
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1 you don't have a bilateral agreement with us? My answer was
2 it will be very difficult to get money from the Congress if
3 we're not getting some reciprocity. They looked at all that
4 and decided that they had two and half years to get the
5 agreement or they're going to slow down the United States.
6 I think that was a very important conclusion and it provides
7 them an incentive to move on with this dialogue. So we are
8 hopeful.
9 That was all we had prepared.
10 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
11 Commissioner Dicus.
12 COMMISSIONER DICUS: No. I don't have any
13 questions.
14 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz.
15 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I don't have any questions.
16 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commission McGaffigan.
17 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Just following up on the
18 breeder issue. Is that going to be part of the negotiation
19 as well, the production of further weapons grade plutonium?
20 Those reactors were designed to produce PU-239 with high
21 concentration. That starts to run into their vision of
22 their energy future. How is that going to be dealt with?
23 Not the specifics of negotiating strategy, but is that on
24 the table, production of further weapons grade?
25 MR. CANTER: This whole thing is very complex,
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1 almost a web of intrigue. There is also an effort underway
2 to develop a fissile material cutoff treaty in which the
3 parties will agree to cut off the production of fissile
4 material. For example, although we are buying surplus HEU
5 from the Russians, 500 tons over so many years, they are
6 still making HEU. So when do you stop? We're not, but they
7 are. That will encompass the production of plutonium.
8 Also, as part of this disposition program, as I
9 explained, the one breeder that they have we've got an
10 agreement to work on the development of converting it to a
11 burner, a net burner. There is no intent on our part, and I
12 think most of the Western nations, to subsidize in any way,
13 shape or form construction of more fast breeder reactors or
14 probably any new reactors as long as we can get the job done
15 with the existing reactors.
16 With regard to immobilization, the Russians have
17 agreed that there are some forms of plutonium that they want
18 to dispose of as waste in an immobilized form. One of the
19 things we discovered just recently is that they had a policy
20 that if some waste had more than 200 ppm plutonium in it
21 that they had to process that waste to recover the
22 plutonium. I think now that they have to pay for things
23 they are going to find out it's an enormous burden.
24 We have got an agreement from them that we are
25 going to take on a study to examine that limit, and it will
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1 be much higher, which will mean that more material would
2 logically be wasted and go into immobilized form. I don't
3 know how much yet, but just to get them to agree to do that
4 was a significant discussion.
5 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Just to nail this down.
6 You said with regard to the existing BN-600 the goal is to
7 convert it into a burner, but I believe Yegorov is quite
8 bullish on -- I don't know where they'll get the resources,
9 their internal resources -- building future BN-800s in
10 quantity. Your answer was that we will not ourselves or
11 European countries likely subsidize Russian breeders, but if
12 using their own resources they go to breeders, will the
13 blankets on those breeders and their ability to breed
14 weapons grade plutonium be a subject of the negotiation?
15 MR. CANTER: I'm sure it will be. The work we are
16 doing on the BN-600 could be directly applicable to the
17 BN-800s that they want to construct, but we just don't know
18 where they'd ever get those resources.
19 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Canter
20 and colleagues. This has been a very informative briefing
21 on a subject that has both national and international
22 security and, I would say, economic significance.
23 The Commission recognizes the Administration's
24 view of the importance of this program to this country as
25 well as to other nations around the world and the need to
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1 successfully address the broad goals and objectives of the
2 program. The issues involved, as we can see from our
3 discussion, are complex, but the NRC is ready to carry out
4 those responsibilities within our regulatory purview, both
5 existing and expanding. In fact we tend to be out ahead of
6 the game.
7 Briefings like this are important so that we can
8 make sure that we are not overly planning or under planning.
9 to that end, the Commission would request that you continue
10 to keep a very open line of communication with the NRC staff
11 on these activities to assure that the program as it evolves
12 is carried out effectively and efficiently and that any
13 policy issues that need to be surfaced are surfaced in a
14 timely way.
15 The Interagency Working Group on Plutonium
16 Disposition should be helpful in this regard, but again I
17 stress I think it is very important that the DOE and the NRC
18 specifically have very open lines of communication.
19 Again, I thank you and your colleagues for coming
20 to brief the Commission today. Unless there are further
21 comments, we are adjourned.
22 MR. CANTER: I did want to pass something on to
23 you which isn't in the presentation. I have asked our
24 general counsel's office to work with your counsel, because
25 what we would like to do is develop whatever legislative
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1 package we need for this so it can go in with the budget
2 submission in February. So we need to do that over the next
3 few months.
4 The other thing is, with regard to budget, we have
5 requested in the budget money that will be needed by our
6 contractor as an applicant to pay for the full cost recovery
7 and everything, because we don't request the FTEs or
8 whatever is needed to provide sufficient resources in the
9 Commission staff. So we're faced with the fiscal '99 budget
10 being developed and going through OMB very shortly, and I do
11 not have any feel right now for whether or not the
12 Commission staff has anticipated a workload, because if we
13 proceed on this schedule, there will be work for the
14 Commission staff starting in fiscal '99.
15 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I can't tell you what the exact
16 plug in the budget is for this, but I do think there is a
17 need to support us with the OMB in terms of relief from FTE
18 ceilings. That then would also be part of an appropriations
19 process and an appropriation to ensure that we have the
20 necessary resources to do this job.
21 MR. CANTER: Thank you very much.
22 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
23 [Whereupon, at 10:47 a.m., the public meeting was
24 concluded.]
25
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09/17/1997