PUBLIC MEETING

OF THE

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Taken on the date of: Wednesday, November 17, 1999

Taken at the Bethesda Hyatt, Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda, Maryland

Starting time: 8:37 o\'clock, a.m., Sandia National Laboratories, Sandia
Corporation

Department 6141, MS-0718, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185-0178, Phone
number: 505-844-4791

Reported by: Donna Hall, court reporter

P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. CAMERON: Good morning, everybody. My name is Chip Cameron, public
liaison within the Office of General Counsel\'s office at the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, and it\'s my pleasure to serve as your
facilitator for today\'s meeting.

I\'d like to briefly cover what the objectives of this workshop are,
what my role as the facilitator will be and also some very simple ground
rules to guide our discussion today.

As far as the objectives of the workshop, as you all know the NRC is
planning to do an update of the spent fuel transportation package
performance study, commonly called the modal study that was done in
1987, and the NRC wants to insure that the new study addresses all the
important issues related to package performance. So with that in mind
NRC has invited the public and knowledgeable representatives of the
broad spectrum of interests that are affected by transportation issues
to share their recommendations, their concerns on the scope and
methodology of this new study. The NRC hopes that this early input will
help to insure that the design and implementation of the study will
provide the best information for furthering the NRC\'s public health and
safety responsibilities. My personal objectives as facilitator today is
try to assist you in three ways. One is to keep the discussion
organized, understandable and on schedule. Secondly, to make sure that
everybody has an opportunity to talk to express their concerns, their
comments. And third, to keep track of any action items or
recommendations that might come out of this discussion. I\'ll be using
these flip charts to do that and for other purposes.

In terms of the ground rules for the discussion, each of you has what\'s
called a name tent in front of you and if you wish to speak during any
of our discussion sessions, please turn that name tent on end like that
and that will allow me to keep track of who wants to speak without you
having to keep your hand up or waving your arms or whatever. It will
also help us to keep a clean transcript for the meeting. Donna, our
stenographer, is over here and she will be transcribing the meeting for
us and those transcripts will be available to the participants and the
public at this meeting and I believe it will also be posted on the NRC
website. I may not take all of the tents in the order that they were
raised so that we can try to follow discussion threads on related points
rather than jumping from one unrelated point to the other. And from my
experience I found that, there may be comments that don\'t fit neatly
into the agenda item that we\'re discussing and so for those items,
we\'re going to keep track of those and what people normally call a
parking lot, what I call a paddock, and we will come back to those
before we end to discuss any of those issues that were raised that might
not fit into a particular agenda item. Our focus is the issues related
to the update of the package performance study. I know that there are a
lot of broader issues on transportation generally, and although the NRC
is receptive to hearing comments on those, there may be issues that will
need to be more fully addressed in other forums or through other means.
But I would note that there is a video being made by the NRC on spent
fuel transportation and there will be some filming of our discussions
just as a backdrop for other parts of that video. We have Big Shot
Productions here doing that for us today and they may, they would want
to do some interviews not in here but during the breaks out there. They
may be asking some of you if you would like to do a five minute
interview. So I just wanted to warn you about that in advance.

What I would like to do before getting to just a brief agenda overview,
is to go around

the table and have each of you introduce yourselves to us and I should
say the focus of the discussion is here at the table, but comments from
the audience are also very important to the NRC and so after each
discussion item we will be going out to those of you in the audience for
any comments or questions that you might have. We have a stand-up mike
there but I will also bring this talking stick out to anybody who wishes
to talk. And in terms of the transcript, those of you in the audience
who speak please give your name and affiliation if appropriate for the
transcript. For those of you up here at the

table, at least in the beginning stages, please give your name so that
the stenographer knows who is speaking. I think that Donna is going to
get used to where you are and when she sees the card go up and you talk
she\'ll \-- at some stage we may be able to dispense of the names, but
we\'ll give her a chance to get that down. So let\'s go for
introductions and let\'s start at the middle of the table right here
with Susan.

MS. SHANKMAN: Good morning. My name is Susan Shankman. I\'m the deputy
of licensing and

inspection in the Spent Fuel Project Office which is part of the nuclear
material safety and safeguards office in NRC. MR. KAMPS: Good morning.
My name is Kevin Kamps. I\'m the nuclear waste specialist at Nuclear
Information and Resource Service here in Washington.

MR. VANAGS: Hi, my name is Uldis Vanags. I\'m nuclear safety advisor in
the State of Maine. I\'m also representing the Northeast High Level
Waste Transportation Task Force here today.

MR. PRITCHARD: Good morning. I\'m Ed Pritchard. I am the staff director
of the Hazardous Materials Division of the Federal Railroad
Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

MR. FRONCZAK: I\'m Bob Fronczak. I\'m assistant vice president,
Environment Haz Mat with the Association of American Railroads.

MR. RESNIKOFF: I\'m Marvin Resnikoff, Radioactive Waste Management
Associates based in

New York City. We generally work for state and local governments on
transportation such as the State of Nevada and Utah.

MR. EDLOW: Good morning. My name is Jack Edlow with Edlow International
Company, company for 42 years in the traffic management of nuclear
materials.

MR. HALSTEAD: Bob Halstead, transportation advisor, State of Nevada,
Agency for Nuclear Projects.

MR. SHELOR: Good morning. I\'m Dwight Shelor, the director of the Office
of Transportation Waste Acceptance and Integration, Office of Civilian
Radioactive Waste Management in the Department of Energy.

MS. MUSTIN: Good morning. My name is Tracy Mustin. I\'m the acting
director of the Office of Transportation within the Office of
Environmental Management Department of Energy.

MR. WANGLER: Good morning. I\'m Michael Wangler. I\'m the director of
the Package Approval and Safety Program within the Office of
Environmental Management Department of Energy.

MR. BOYLE: Good morning. I\'m Rick Boyle with the U.S. Department of
Transportation. I head up the radioactive materials transport branch in
the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety.

MR. HOLDEN: Robert Holden, National Congress of American Indians.

MS. WESTRA: Good morning. I\'m Heather Westra, coordinator for the
Prairie Island Community in Minnesota. Our interest in this workshop
stems from the location of the nuclear power plant immediately adjacent
to the tribe\'s reservation and rail lines going right through the
reservation.

MS. SUPKO: Good morning. I\'m Eileen Supko, Energy Resources
International. We\'re based in Washington, DC. We\'re a energy
consulting company.

MR. KILLAR: Good morning. I\'m Felix Killar with the Nuclear Energy
Institute. I\'m also chairing the Nuclear Industries Task Force on
Transportation. We\'re looking on things such as the Modal Study, the
implementation of ST1 and other international and national regulations.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Amy Shollenberger with Public Citizen. MR. RAWL: Good
morning. I\'m Rick Rawl. I\'m with the Transportation Technologies Group
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

MS. ENG: Good morning. My name is Patricia Eng and I\'m chief of the
Transportation and Storage Safety and Inspection Section. It is my staff
that will be overseeing the study we\'re going to be discussing later
today.

MR. HOLT: I\'m Mark Holt with the Congressional Research Service at the
Library of Congress. I\'m head of the Energy and Mineral Section.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you all very much. We might as well include
these last two here. Charles, I didn\'t mean to slight you. Go ahead.

MR. MASSEY: Good morning. I\'m Charles Massey. I\'m the manager of the
Transportation Safety programs at Sandia National Laboratories. We are
the technical contractor who will be preparing the package performance
study that we\'re here to talk about today.

MR. EASTON: And lastly I\'m Earl Easton with the U.S. Regulatory
Commission. I head a group of technical reviewers that does safety
reviews for transportation and storage, packages, in the office of the
Spent Fuel Project Office.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. We are working on getting the microphones
going here and I think the way the agenda works at the beginning here
we\'ll have time to do that.

I just wanted to go over the agenda very briefly for all of you and I
hope everybody got a copy of the agenda that was out on the front table.
What we\'re going to do is begin with four brief presentations by the
NRC to provide you with a common set of information as backdrop for the
discussions today. At the end of those four presentations, we\'re going
to go out to the participants around the table and also to the audience
for clarifying questions. I realize that the presentations could kickoff
a lot of the discussion that we\'re going to have today. What I would
like to do is save that discussion for the discussion agenda items. But
to make sure that you do understand the information that was presented,
we will have some clarifying questions after the completion of those
four presentations and we hope not to go too long on all of those four.
After we do the clarifying questions, we\'re going to take a break and
then we\'ll come back and start in on the first of our discussion items
and these are accident likelihoods as you can see at the 10:30 spot on
your agenda. I will have a brief tee up, so to speak, by Charles Massey
from Sandia Labs so that you will get an idea of what that particular
discussion topic is all about. We\'ll have discussion around the table.
We\'ll go out to the audience for questions or comments and after that
first discussion area we\'re going to go to lunch and we\'re going to
come back at 12:45, and we\'re going to continue with our discussion
issues. The first one after lunch is container performance during
collisions and then we\'re going to go to container performance during
fires. We\'ll take a break, come back and talk about spent nuclear fuel
assembly behavior and accidents, then testing and computer simulation
methodology issues. Then we\'re going to come back and address any
issues that we haven\'t talked about so far, perhaps issues that have
been up in the paddock, but also very importantly a process issue. In
other words, how do people think that the NRC should keep the public
involved during this study? I think we will get some good ideas on that.
Then we\'re going to wrap up and adjourn by 6 o\'clock. Is there any
questions on the agenda at this point before we get into the
presentations? As I said we can build agenda items in at any time.
We\'ll keep track of them and put them in the proper place. What I would
like to do now is \-- Susan, could you test your mike? We\'re going to
keep working on the mikes.

Our first presentation is Dr. Susan Shankman of the NRC. Susan is deputy
director for licensing inspection of the Spent Fuel Project Office at
the NRC and Dr. Shankman has been with the Spent Fuel Project Office
since 1996. Her office is responsible for review and approval of designs
for spent fuel storage systems and transportation package systems for
the NRC. Her group is also responsible for inspection in the development
of regulations and guidance for spent fuel storage and transportation.

Prior to joining the NRC, Dr. Shankman was an analyst at the U.S. Public
Health Service and special assistant to the Maryland State
Superintendent of Schools. She received her bachelor of arts degree from
Beaver College in Glenn Side, Pennsylvania. Her master of science degree
from Queens College City University of New York and her doctorate from
the University of Southern California. I would like to turn it over to
Dr. Shankman.

DR. SHANKMAN: Good morning. I want to begin by welcoming you all. I\'m
happy to see you

here and I appreciate that you are here. We have distinguished panelists
at the table, but we also have a group of very interested people around
the 16 room and I hope we all get a chance to participate today. As Mr.
Cameron said, I am the deputy director of the Spent Fuel Project Office
at the NRC. The Spent Fuel Project Office has convened or assembled this
meeting this morning with a very specific purpose of hearing your
concerns about the transportation of spent fuel. We are sponsoring a
study that Sandia is helping us with and that study is to look at
package performance. That\'s the container as well as contents of spent
fuel packages that will be transported throughout the United States.

I want to emphasize that there are no middlemen here. I am the deputy
director. I sign the papers that go out that approve designs. We have
with us today the members of our technical team who will also be working
on this study. The NRC and those people I will introduce later are the
people who will make the decisions about what is studied and how it is
studied. For me this is not an abstract concept. I live in Garrett Park.
It was started as a railroad town. The main line that goes from
Washington West, goes 300 feet from my house and I too am concerned
about what\'s on those trains.

My job this morning is to give you a ittle background, so I will start
by talking about what the NRC is and what we do, who we are. The NRC is
an independent federal agency. Our mission, our job is to protect public
health and safety. Like other regulatory agencies we set standards and
we enforce them. The mission of the Spent Fuel Project Office is to set
those standards and enforce them in the design and fabrication of
packages for spent fuel transportation. We don\'t actually move the
fuel, we regulate those that do. We approve the designs of the package
systems. The other aspects of fuel transport are regulated by other
agencies. NRC is a very experienced agency since 1974 when the AE,
Atomic Energy agency, was split into a regulatory side and a
developmental side. We have been regulating atomic agency at licensed
activities. We regulate nuclear power plants. We regulate medical uses
of materials. We regulate waste and disposal issues and we regulate the
transport of radioactive materials. The staff at the NRC has more than,
if you can subtract 1974 from 1999, it\'s many years of experience in
regulating these activities. We have been reviewing cask designs and
their construction and fuel characteristics and observing nuclear power
plant fuel operations for all these years. We use that experience every
day. And we try to make sure that what we are doing results in safe
transport of spent fuel. Our mission, as I said, is public health and
safety. We make rules. We approve what licensees plan to do. We do that
by issuing licenses and certificates. We review these things using
standardized guidance with standard review plans. We provide guidance to
licensees and certificate holders on how to meet the requirements of the
rules. We inspect performance and then we enforce compliance with those
rules.

NRC has several guiding principles in how we conduct our operations. The
first one is independence. That does not mean that we are isolated. Part
of today\'s goal is to hear your concerns but we do keep an unbiased and
objective approach to our work. Efficiency is one of our guiding
principles. We believe at NRC that the taxpayer, the rate payer and
licensees are entitled to the most efficient and effective management
and administration of our activities. Clarity. Our regulations are meant
to be coherent, logical and practical and we often need your help in
making sure that that is accomplished. Reliability. Another of our
guiding principles. Regulations should be based on the best available
knowledge and the reason we continue to do studies is our knowledge
evolves and we look at the information we get from our studies and look
at our regulations and our guidance to see if they are still effective
and efficient.

Openness. Anyone who has dealt with the NRC for a while will know that
we have evolved into, at this point in time, deeply believing that
regulations are the public\'s business and that public involvement is
vital to having regulations that meet our mission. So transportation,
safety of spent fuel is what brings us here today. To give you a
perspective I think most of you know that there are seven classes of
hazardous material and radioactive material is just one of those seven
classes that spent fuel is a small percentage of the shipments that are
made of hazardous material. The study we are beginning today, I should
say, will be on very technical experience and while Sandia National Lab
is the contractor that we have selected to do the work, we will be

carrying out the study with NRC staff and I want to introduce them today
because they will make the decisions with oversight by myself and my
staff. They will make the decisions on how we conduct the study and what
is studied. So let me start with Mr. Rob Lewis. Mr. Lewis is a
predicality expert, shielding expert, those areas, but he\'s also the
project manager for this. By the way, everyone I will introduce has a
name tag and I hope that at the breaks we will take a opportunity to
talk to them personally as well as in the forum.

Ms. Sara Kopel is our expert on containment. Dr. Henry Lee, structural
expert. Mr. Ron Parkhill who will be working on thermal issues and Mr.
Jeff Ponset is our materials expert. This is the team that will oversee
this project from beginning to end. The last few years NRC has been
integrating risks into our decision making. What that means in the area
of transportation is that we make sure that on an ongoing basis that we
understand the risks that we regulate. If we learn something new, new
data, we use that and we make sure that what we\'re doing every day
continues to maintain safety. That\'s what this study is about. It\'s an
effort to gain more knowledge than we have. We believe we have a
continuous mission to keep learning more. Earl Easton sitting to my
right. Mr. Easton is going to discuss the previous studies that we have
done so that we can put this study in the context of where we are.NRC\'s
goal is to conduct impartial and rigorous safety evaluations when we
issue a certificate or a license. Another way to say that is we try to
be effective and efficient and realistic how we use our guidance and our
regulations. We make decisions in an open way. We try to include the
public in the review of our rules that\'s mandatory, but we also have
all of our meetings noticed and this meeting is also part of our effort
to involve the public in our decisions.

We support our decisions with experience, facts, statistics as you know
show spent fuel transport is safe and we want to maintain that safety.
Public involvement. And I think I said this many times now this morning,
but I just want to reiterate it, is an important part of our efforts.
You can help us and you can help us throughout this study and there are
many ways you can continue to be involved besides today by telling us
what you think, what you are concerned about and especially by being
candid. The more we know about what the concerns are, the better we can
use our resources to be sure that regulatory requirements are met and
that those requirements minimize risks.

There are forms on the table outside that you can send back to us. Some
people don\'t like to say what they want to say in a public forum. You
can either put them on the forms or leave them with us today or you can
send them in. They are already preaddressed but not prestamped.

After we have incorporated the feedback from this meeting into a
comprehensive report, we will end phase one of this study in which we
will recommend, with Sandia\'s help, will have a recommendation of how
to proceed with the study. At that point we intend to involve the public
again. We intend to have more meetings. Everything that we are doing
will be on our website. How to get in touch with us through the website
is also on a information sheet. Really what I wanted to say this morning
is as the deputy director of the division, I can tell you personally
that all the ideas that we

have will be considered. They will be evaluated and they will be
explored. There is nothing that anybody says today that will not be on
the transcript and therefore we have the ideas and I urge you if you
don\'t say what you want to say today to write to us. You can also
contact us through the web. Let me end by saying this study in
particular cannot be done without your help. We need you to be candid.
We need you to express what is your concern. We need you to tell us. You
can either write to us, call us or tell us in person today. So thank you
very much for being here. I\'ll pass the mike back to Chip.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Dr. Shankman. We\'re going to continue with
providing background information to you and go to our second presenter
Ms. Patricia Eng from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff.

Ms. Eng is currently chief of the transportation and storage safety and
inspection section of the Spent Fuel Project Office and her part of that
organization is responsible for developing the regulations for transport
and storage, radioactive materials and she also oversees the inspection
of facilities and organizations that are involved in a design
fabrication, maintenance and operation of packaging and storage systems.
Before Pat came to the Spent Fuel Project Office she was, has been in a
variety of positions at the NRC, including being the technical assistant
to former Commissioner Gail Duplank (phonetic) and Pat has also served
as a resident inspector at one of the NRC\'s licensed6 power plants.
She\'s a registered, professional mechanical engineer with a bachelors
of science degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois
and Pat is going to give us an 10 overview of the regulatory framework.
Pat?

MS. ENG: Thank you, Mr. Cameron. Good morning and welcome. My name is
Patricia Eng and I am the chief of the Transportation and Storage,
Safety and Inspection Section. I am responsible for the oversight, the
study that Dr. Shankman referred to earlier and this meeting is very
important to us.

We want to establish a dialogue, an open and candid dialogue with you so
we can identify the issues that we need to focus on when we conduct this
study. In order to help focus our discussions throughout the day, I
would like to describe how the different federal agencies that are here
today work together to oversee the safe transport of radioactive
material. There are three major players. They are U.S. Department of
Energy, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. I would like to discuss a little bit about the Department of
Energy and we have three very qualified representatives from the
department here with us today and they introduced themselves earlier.

The department was given the assignment of identifying, characterizing
and ultimately operating a long-term geologic repository for the
disposal of our nation\'s high-level radioactive waste which includes
spent fuel. This was done through the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982
and subsequent amendments and I won\'t go through the legislative
lesson, but that\'s where DOE was given this assignment. At the moment
the department is actively sight as the potential place for the
repository and as part of the licensing process the department prepared
a draft environmental impact statement that was published this past
August by the office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

One of the issues that\'s addressed in this draft environmental impact
statement is the pact of transporting high level waste across the
country from 77 different locations. The nuclear regulatory commission
is currently reviewing this draft environment impact statement and we
hope to complete our review later this year. In the meantime the
department is holding a series of public meetings at various locations
to get public input on their environmental impact statement. The
department is required to ship the high-level waste in nuclear
regulatory commission certified transportation packages and they have
stated that they will comply with applicable NRC and Department of
transportation regulations.

So today we\'re joined by Ms. Tracy Mustin, Mr. Dwight Shelor and Mr.
Michael Wangler from the department. Thank you so much for coming. Next
let\'s look at the Department of transportation. The Department of
Transportation is the regulatory authority overseeing transport of all
kinds in the United States. As part of their job, they establish the
requirements for the transport of all hazardous materials, and as Dr.
Shankman mentioned earlier, radioactive material is a subclass of
hazardous material. The research and special programs administration of
the Department of Transportation has issued regulations regarding the
labelling and marking of transport packages, placarding of vehicles and
defining what needs to go into the shipping papers that accompany such
shipments. They also established training requirements for both shippers
and carriers and in the case of the Federal Highway Administration, they
have established guidelines or selecting transport routes on our
nation\'s highways.

Without going into a lot of detail, on the table outside there is a copy
of those regulations regarding route selection. With us today are Mr.
Rick Boyle who is chief of the Radioactive Materials Branch of the
Research and Special Programs Administration and Mr. Ed Pritchard who is
the staff director for hazardous materials for Federal Railroad
Administration. 11 Thanks for coming. Now let\'s get down to my agency,
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. With regards to transportation, the
NRC provides technical assistance to the Department of Transportation
and we provide assistance to them in three ways. First, we\'ve
established regulations related to the transport of missile material and
large quantities of radioactive material. As Dr. Shankman alluded to a
few moments ago, we also conduct inspections of transportation
activities and enforce the regulations by imposing sanctions when
necessary. Second, we play a role in insuring the physical security of
shipments along the transportation route. This includes insuring that
there are continuous communications capability with the shipment at all
times when it\'s in transport, that the law enforcement agencies along
the route are knowledgeable of the shipment and can respond if needed
and that predesignated safe havens are identified. So what if a driver
needs to stop for any particular reason such as a flat tire or any
particular reason? A suitable location is already known where he or she
can pull the vehicle off the road and response can be dispatched. Today
we\'ll focus on the NRC\'s third major responsibility and that is the
certification of spent fuel transport package designs. In order to
certify a design for use, we do a thorough technical review of the
proposed design and you\'ve met the technical review team and we require
that each design be tested prior to its first use.

Today\'s discussions will revolve around the scope and the content of
these technical reviews. First, why are we doing this study and why now?
Briefly let me describe our regulatory process. The Spent Fuel Project
Office is responsible for writing and enforcing regulations for the safe
transport and interim storage of spent fuel. Our regulations are based
on sound engineering judgment, experience in the fast technical data we
can get our hands on.

In a few moments Mr. Earl Easton will discuss the transportation safety
studies that we have done in the past and hopefully you will understand
how we based our regulations. Since that time the computers that we used
to do the analyses have shrunk in size and yet increased our
calculational capability in amazing ways that we never foresaw. We have
much more detailed and powerful analytical tools at our disposal now
than we did then and we\'re also starting to see that the industries
proposing new transportation cask designs that are very different than
the ones that we looked at back in the \'70s and \'80s. So it makes
sense to us that it is time for us to take another look at
transportation and look at the regulations that we put in place,
particularly before the repository opens its doors.

In order to make sure that we are providing for the safe transport of
spent fuel, we need to evaluate how all these differences and
calculational capability and new designs will perform. Therefore it\'s
very, very important that we hear from our stakeholders, which of course
includes the public, so we can focus on the issues that are important to
safety so that we can insure the transport of radioactive materials
continues to be safe. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Pat. Our third presentation is going
to be by Mr. Earl Easton. Mr. Easton is the section chief of the
Technical Review Section of the Spent Nuclear Fuel Project Office. That
section is responsible for review of shipping and storage packages and
he\'s going to give us an overview on past studies that have been done
and some background on spent fuel packaging and transport. Generally,
Earl has been with the agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, since
1982 and he has a chemical engineering degree from the University of
Maryland. Earl?

MR. EASTON: Thank you, Chip. For those of you who do not yet know me, I
am as stated Earl Easton, section leader in the Spent Fuel Project
Office. I have been involved in the area of transportation safety for
about 15 years. Actually if I calculate the date from when Mr. Cameron
said 1982, it\'s closer to 17 years. My first assignment at the
commission was as a safety reviewer for spent fuel shipping packages.
Later as a section leader I was either directly or indirectly involved
in many of the transportation risk studies completed by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.

Currently, I head a group of expert technical reviewers who are
responsible for the safety review of both storage and transportation
casks for spent nuclear fuel. Many of those reviewers are in the
audience. Some have been introduced to you and I would also encourage
you to take advantage of their expertise during this meeting. As I look
around this morning, I am particularly pleased to see the number of
experts in the area of transportation sitting at the table and in the
audience. Many of you I have had the pleasure of working with in the
past, but there are some new faces and I look forward to working with
you in the future. I am also pleased to see the number of people that
have turned out in the audience representing the public and other
interest groups. My experience has shown that your participation in this
process is vital. It is through you, through your comments and the
expression of your concerns, that help us do a better job in assuring
that transportation is safe. This morning I have been asked to say a few
words about a subject very important to all of us. That is the safety of
spent fuel shipments. It is an important subject. Spent fuel is a
hazardous material. It will be transported through your communities
perhaps or near your communities and as much as we do not like to admit
the possibility, accidents do happen. During my 15 years in this area I
have witnessed many changes. Today\'s casks are being designed to hold
larger quantities of fuel. We\'re taking advantage of new technologies
and new material. The capability of analytical tools for analyzing the
safety cask have taken leaps. And indeed the federal government\'s
policy on where ultimately spent fuel will be transported and shipped is
involved.

The latter change, of course, I think has a significant impact on the
numbers and destination of future shipments. But throughout my time at
the commission, there is one thing that has not changed and I am proud
to say that it is the NRC\'s commitment to protecting public health and
safety. How do we know spent fuel shipments are safe? And how do we
assure that spent fuel shipments will remain safe in the future? We know
that spent fuel is being shipped safely today because first, spent fuel
casks are designed to meet fairly rigorous performance standards. These
standards consider the possibility of accidents and rather severe
accidents.

Second, the safety record of spent fuel shipments has been excellent.
Third, the NRC has conducted a series of safety and risk studies on
shipping casks designed to its performance standards. All of these
studies have indicated that the risk of spent fuel shipments is low even
when considering severe accidents.

The largest factor in ensuring the safety of spent fuel shipments is, of
course, the robust nature of spent fuel shipping cask design. All spent
fuel cask are designed to meet a set of very rigorous performance
standards. And if I can direct your attention to the slide, this is a
list, depiction of those rigorous standards. These include a pretty
severe impact test, followed by a puncture test, fire test and an
immersion test.

At the conclusion of these tests packages have to retain the radioactive
material with virtually no release. These standards were developed in
cooperation with other countries at the IEA. They\'re world accepted and
they have been in place for about 30 years with these basic requirements
unchanged. If I can go to the next slide. Second, just let me briefly go
over what is the history of spent fuel shipments. From the time period
1979 to 1997, there have been approximately 1300 commercial spent fuel
shipments in the U.S. These shipments have taken place largely between
nuclear power plants or between nuclear power plants and spent fuel
storage locations such as West Valley. The exact location and
destination of these shipments along with the routes that are published
annually by the NRC and are made publicly available. Every year the NRC
puts out a tabulation of spent fuel shipments. It gives where shipments
originate, where they go to and what routes they take. This is all a
matter of public record and publicly available if you request.

Approximately 90 percent of the shipments or 1150 shipments were shipped
by truck. The remaining 10 percent went by rail. So we have some
experience with both rail shipment and truck shipment. The total
distance traveled for all these shipments approximately 900,000 miles.
However, in terms of the quantity of spent fuel shipped, 75 percent went
by rail because of the much larger capacity of rail cask. During that
period a total of eight accidents were reported, and in fact to clarify,
one of the accidents is outside of the 1979 to 1997 range. It actually
occurred prior to 1979. In four of these accidents, the casks were empty
and the remaining accidents, casks had spent fuel in them. Of the four
accidents involving spent fuel, three were by truck, one was by rail.
But in all of these accidents there was no release of radioactive
material. Now I think it\'s an important point to bring up at this point
what is 15 an accident?

You can tabulate accident rates and accidents in many ways depending on
how you define an accident. The definition that we use in counting these
accidents is based on the reporting requirements under NRC regulations
or DOT regulations. Why do we use that particular measure of accident?
Well, number one people are required to report it. So we\'re fairly
certain that we\'ll get the data. And second it is a concrete
definition. When people exceed those limits they need to record it. And
those limits are basically loss of life, exceeding a certain amount of
property damage or suspected damage or leakage. Sometimes these, this
data collected this way overestimates accidents because there are
accidents that cause property damage over the amount that is reportable,
but really not severe enough to challenge the cask or truck or route. I
would also like to note that in, and I hope I don\'t put many people on
the spot, but in the report prepared by Mr. Holt, he also reported the
experience of the British in which they reported over 8,000 rail
shipments without any release of nuclear. The final point I would like
to make in this area is this is an area that the commission monitors
very closely. We count shipments and notified of all shipments. We know
where they\'re 43 coming from. We know where they\'re going. We know
when there is an accident and we are looking to see if any difficulties
develop. So we monitor this area very closely. We intend to keep this
safety record intact. Next, I would like to begin to discuss safety
studies that the NRC has conducted. The NRC has conducted a number of
safety studies, some that came into existence in 1974. I will briefly
mention two that were done and two that are in the works. But to put it
in perspective, what are the things that we look at when we do these
studies? How are we attempting to measure this?

First, we look at the likelihood of accidents. How likely is an accident
and how severe is it likely to be? Second, we look at the consequences.
What are the consequences that can result in any given type of
accidents? You take those two facts and taken together that gives us an
estimate of risk. So the studies I\'m about to discuss are really based
on determining risks using these factors.

To put this meeting in perspective let me try to illustrate where we
are. My aim is a

little off.

MR. CAMERON: We may need to go to the nontechnological process here and
point it out on the view graph itself if you could.

MR. EASTON: If you can move down between 1987 and the year 2000. The
study done, and keep your red dot there because that\'s where we are.
The study done in 1977 basically was the first study done by the
commission as an overall look at transportation. We followed that up
with a specific look at how shipping containers or spent fuel performed
in accidents. Those have been published and publicly available for many
years and we have gotten comments from many of the experts in the
audience already on those and those have been actively under
consideration for sometime. In early 2000 we are going to release
another study that is an attempt to update risk estimates of spent fuel
shipments. One of the purposes was to see whether the original study
done in 1977 is still valid. The conclusions drawn in that study are
still valid. Over and beyond that we try to get a realistic estimate of
what the real risk of shipping spent fuel might be. This study will come
out again in February or March of the year 2000. We encourage you to get
copies of that study. We will accept comments on that study, the
methodologies used, the conclusions drawn, et cetera. MR. HALSTEAD: Is
this a draft that\'s going to come out in February or March that you are
asking for comment on?

MR. CAMERON: Could we \-- I know Bob. What I would like to do is let\'s
answer this quickly if we can and then let\'s come back at the, after
Rob Lewis\' presentation and go to all of these questions and I thank
you all for your patience. We\'re giving you a lot of background 46
information of which there is not only a lot of questions, but I\'m sure
a lot of difference of opinion on some of the things that might have
been said. Could you just answer Bob\'s question quickly for us?

MR. EASTON: Yes, Mr. Halstead. Let me answer your question but bear with
me. I\'m going to do it within the next couple of sentences. The purpose
of this meeting today is 11 basically to get your concerns on our relook
at shipping container response to severe accidents.

Your concerns will again be discussed in public workshops next month. At
the same time we anticipate considering comments on the update, the 2000
study, we will consider comments also in workshops during the next
summer, but this is a final contractor report submitted to the NRC. But
read it. I encourage you to read it. We will accept comments and those
comments will be explored and considered in upcoming workshops.

Thank you, Dr. Shankman, she reminded me 47 it will be on the web. So as
soon as this study is released it will be made available on the website.
Does that answer?

MR. HALSTEAD: I\'ll save comment. Thank you.

MR. EASTON: Let me just briefly discuss three studies that we either
have completed or have in the works. The first we commonly refer to as
NUREG 0170, the correct title is given right below that, but this was
the first comprehensive look at transportation safety undertaking the
NRC after its formation in 1974. Its objective was to determine whether
package performance standards contained in the commission\'s regulations
were adequate to insure public health and safety. As such it addressed
all radioactive material. It was not limited to spent fuel. It
considered both routine aspects of shipment as well as accidents. In
analyzing the risk for potential accidents, the study made certain
assumptions. That was in part because of the analytical 48 capabilities
present in 1977 could not model things in detail like you do today. So
largely accident analysis were based on good judgment. accidents were
basically grouped into the severities and judgments were made on which
severities led to consequences. These were in large part very
conservative assumptions. If a package was assumed to be significantly
damaged, it is assumed that all of its contents were released. Given
this, the study still concluded that the risk of shipping spent fuel was
low, given that the likelihood of severe accidents and the consequences
of severe accidents.

As a result, he likes to jump the gun, as a result the commission
confirmed that its regulations were adequate and noticed that in the
Federal Register and it committed at the same time to keep
transportation standards under continuous review.

As part of that continual review, the commission undertook a study about
1985 to do a more detailed look on spent fuel cask response to severe
accidents. This is commonly called the modal study. The term modal comes
from the fact that it considered both rail and highway modes of
transportation that\'s used as a shortcut in the this area. So when I
say modal study I\'m referring to the 1987 study on shipping container
response to severe accidents.

In this study, computer models were used to predict the behavior of
shipping cask response. What was done was generic models were developed
for shipping casks. That\'s an important point because we did not
actually look at individual shipping casks. We were looking at a generic
cask that minimally met performance standards. That is that they only
met the performance standards given in a previous design.

Many cask designs exceeded those, but we were interested in the margins
of safety provided 21 by the standards and not any particular package.
So this is why we developed generic models and 50 why individual
packages do not show up in the study. Although advances in computer
technology allowed us to model casks in greater detail, there were some
aspects of the cask that could not be modeled in detail we would have
liked. Those dealt with cask closures, impact limiters and fuel
behavior. Let me give a few words of explanation on those.

Cask closures typically are bolted with many, many bolts, 40 or so bolts
that hold the lid on the cask. The stated computer analysis at that
stage was not sufficient to model individual bolts on the lid. Fuel
behavior didn\'t actually model how fuel lines, which contained the
fuel, would fracture or break or under severe impacts.

What was done was a number of conservative judgments were made so as to
overestimate the actual consequences. This was to compensate for a lack
in detail of model. Also the study looked at several real life, but I
must emphasize nonspent fuel accidents, to see 51 how casks would
perform for those particular type of accidents. The reason we couldn\'t
use spent fuel accidents is because there weren\'t any. To give you an
example the type of accidents we looked at, there was a pretty extensive
tunnel fire which involved a three vehicle collision with a gasoline
truck. There was a fire for over three hours at 1900 degrees Fahrenheit
and involved about 8800 gallons of gasoline.

There was a bridge collision in which a pickup truck failed, was
involved in a collision and fell 64 feet onto soil. Those were the truck
accidents looked at. Two rail accidents that were looked at was a train
derailment called the Livingston train derailment, which involved the
derailment of petroleum tank cars, large fires over several days and
there were two explosives. There was also a derailment on the Alabama
River in which the vehicle, the train cars involved plunged 75 feet into
the water and mud below.52.

These real life accidents were translated into the computer modelling
and from those simulated various impacts and thermal environment
impacts. What the studies show is that for all of these accidents, all
four of those accidents, there would not be a release that significantly
threatened public health and safety. In fact the study concluded that
the risk of accidents was low and lower than NUREG 0170. It turned out
as we were able to more accurately describe accidents, model accidents,
the risks were found to be lower. This slide is concerning the upcoming
study that would come out in March of 2000. Why are we doing this? Well,
we want to keep up with change. We know that the number of shipments is
changing. When the repository opens that will significantly increase
shipments. We know that there are new cask designs with much larger
capacity. We would like to verify the performance and severe accidents.
We verify the 53 performance routinely to our performance standards, but
we would like to go over and above that and verify what would happen in
severe accidents.

We have enhanced analytical capability that we can do more detail
models. We can focus in on areas of the cask that before were not
amenable to detail computer models. This study will be published in
March 2000. I would again 10 encourage you to read it and comment.

Conclusions. Through a combination of the shipping records, through our
knowledge of performance standards and how casks meet those performance
standards, our history of doing risk studies, we know that spent fuel
can be safely shipped today. But we are not going to rest on that fact.

We are committed to maintaining that safety record completely and that
is why we are doing the additional studies. And the last point I cannot
overemphasize, is your participation from both expert members of the
public is you for questions in the audience. Rob?

MR. LEWIS: Thank you, Chip. As the NRC staff\'s project manager for the
upcoming package performance study, I did a lot of legwork for today\'s
meeting and along with the help from the technical team and several NRC
staff and also the Sandia staff, and I would like to thank you on their
behalf and my own thanks for taking your time to be here today. We all
believe it means a lot to the success of this study.

There are three points I would like to make during my talk. I would like
to build on Earl\'s talk and describe our starting point both for today
as well as for the package performance study. I would like to describe
how we will use the package performance study and the approach we are
going to use which is a little different than the approaches we used on
the past studies that Earl described.

This study that we\'re embarking upon has been called the modal study
two, has been called the package performance study. We\'re using the
term today package performance study throughout the day because there is
a lot of confusion when we first started calling it modal study two. A
lot of people believed we were starting from scratch and redoing modal
study and that\'s not the case. I will describe a little bit what we are
actually doing. Above all else as every speaker has mentioned, we are
here today to listen to and understand any transportation concerns you
have regarding accidents, cask performance in those accidents so we can
take those concerns and fold them into our study and build the most
effective study. We want your ideas on not only the technical approach
to the study, which I will describe and Sandia will describe through the
rest of the day, but also we want your ideas on our approach we are
using to involve the public. I\'ll discuss that a little more in a
second.

If you hear any issues today we\'re going to present several
suggestions. If you don\'t hear any issues that you believe needs to be
part of this project, please mention that. Provide your suggestions if
you have any on how you would use analysis or testing to resolve those
issues. Now there are three factors that influenced our approach for the
package performance study. These three factors are the way we use
accident assessments, the possible role that physical testing might have
in this project and the, our desire to use public involvement throughout
this project as opposed to after we have performed some analysis and
testing, after we have a draft or final report. Regarding accident
assessments, what we\'re trying to do in the package performance study
is to build upon our safety record that we established through the
studies through our transportation experience and our starting point is,
as it was for the modal study, is casks that meet our standards and Part
71, the four tests that were described by Mr. Easton. We will update and
improve our analysis using modern technologies. We will use assumptions
that reflect the newer cask designs and modern technologies and our
whole approach is based on our desire to focus on those issues that are
most important to safety during accidents. During the past few years at
NRC, there s an initiative to use risk informed techniques. What that
means to us we use accident assessments in all the areas we regulate to
focus our resources and our licensees\' resources on the issues that
really affect safety the most. We believe the result of that will be an
overall safer system.

We will also build upon the 19, I\'m sorry, the 2000 NUREG 0170 update
that was mentioned by Mr. Easton. Throughout the day Sandia will
describe what they did in the NUREG 0170 update. They\'re not done yet.
We are in the process of reviewing what they\'re doing. Their starting
point for that update was the 1987 modal study and work that has been
done since and each topical area for the rest of the day Dr. Massey from
Sandia Labs will provide some information about their methodology.

The second main bullet on the slide shows the methodology that we plan
on using to do the package performance study. It\'s a step-by-step walk
through of the way we approach accident assessments in transportation.

This is the same general methodology that appears in the original 0170,
the modal study and the 0170 update. The methodology is described much
better in this blue brochure that we publish. It\'s available in the
back and I believe that we\'ve mailed it to most everyone in this room.
You will note, by the way, that this methodology, this five steps
generally follow today\'s agenda as well and there is a reason for that.
The reason is that once again this is the methodology that we propose to
use for the package performance study. We\'re particularly interested in
your thoughts on our continued use of this methodology.

Steps two and four in particular on this slide are some of the more
difficult steps. They involve to a greater extent engineering judgment,
and conceptualizations of what happens. They involve to a less extent
the use of hard data and therefore we\'re also particularly interested
in how we\'ll approach those two steps for the package performance
study.

It\'s reasonable to assume that physical testing of some sort will have
a role in any follow on research to the original modal study. Therefore,
we selected Sandia Labs to start a scoping study, if possible, follow on
research from the original modal study. They\'re currently under
contract to do that. Today is part of that contract. You heard it
mentioned as phase one.

We currently have one project for phase two or any future phases. Those
efforts would be decided upon next year once we are through with this
phase one. And the end product of phase one of Sandia\'s contract is
issues and resolution options report. That report will recognize any
concerns you raise today and it\'s akin to a proposal for follow on
research. Sandia Labs was selected naturally because of their testing,
existing testing facilities and their experience testing packages for
radioactive material transport, not only spent fuel packages, they have
done a lot of tests in the past on packages for transporting large
quantities of radioactive materials. Because physical testing will have
a role, we adopted it in a public involvement approach that\'s a little
different than the public involvement approach we used for the modal
study for the 0170 update. The public involvement, of course, is
important to us in general. But specifically for this project if we do
do testing we need to be very efficient in doing that testing and we
need to do it in a way that collects data that is most relevant to
safety and most useful to guaranteeing the safety of these shipments
during accidents.

Final slide is a type of summation of many of the comments that you have
heard today. I will explain here how we are trying to involve the public
for this project. The best way to stay in touch with this project or to
be involved is to use our website. The address appears, the URL address
appears here. On that website we have several things: background
information, there is a form for comments and responses and there is a
section in the website where we will provide the comments we receive
along with each response.

As the project progresses we will update frequently this website with
project status, with new reports as they become available, including the
reports from the sister project the NUREG 0170 reevaluation project that
you will hear a little more about this afternoon. The second way we are
trying to involve the public throughout this project beginning today is
through these workshops in this forum. We will also have a workshop very
similar to this in Henderson, Nevada on December 8th. That workshop will
be geared more towards western 63 interests; county governments, state
and county governments and locals in the West that have a particular
interest in spent fuel for reasons that everyone is aware of; the Yucca
Mountain project and storage facilities and such. As Mr. Easton
mentioned we will be performing additional workshops next summer. The
additional workshops will cover both the NUREG 0170 update and the
issues and resolution options report that I mentioned that comes out of
the package performance study. That should be available sometime around
May and our goal for the 0170 update is sometime around March. So
shortly thereafter we will have these workshops to try and merge these
two projects and move forward on the package performance study in
particular and on all of our work on transportation safety.

We are also in the process of establishing a mailing list. Sandia has
produced for us these very nice forms that have name and address
information at the bottom. If you would

64 fill that out and leave that with us or mail it in to us we will
provide you as the project progresses with updates. If you don\'t like
to use the website in particular, this is a good way to stay involved.

As I mentioned, for the rest of the day Sandia will lead us through a
technical discussion of each of the issues that we will look at during
the package performance study where potential follow on work, and Dr.
Massey will provide a kickoff, five minutes or so kickoff, of each topic
to try to stimulate discussion. We also have a handout in the back that
has discussion pointers to stimulate ideas among the audience and the
table participants to keep the focus of the discussions to that topic.
I\'m looking forward to your input today and in conclusion I would like
to thank you once again for being here and I feel that what you have to
say will help us design the most effective project. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Rob. That\'s the last of the
presentations and I know there is probably a lot of questions and
perhaps even a few comments on those questions and we\'re going to go
first to Marvin Resnikoff and ask everybody to use their name tents to
signify if you want to make a comment.

There is a loose wire that will need to be fixed at the break so I\'m
going to pass this mike to you and if you could use that one to respond.
Marvin?

MR. RESNIKOFF: I have a list of questions. I have been involved in
transportation issues as you know since, before the NRC for Attorney
General Lefwitz (phonetic) involving transportation of plutonium from
Kennedy Airport that gave rise to NUREG 170 and we commented on NUREG
170 and I\'m interested that you\'re doing an update on that, but I\'m
concerned that there is no public input in that update. There should be
public input. You should issue as a draft and you should allow the
public to comment on that draft. That\'s not a question but if, you
know, if you would like to comment on that. I\'m concerned that the
previous authors of the modal study are not here. Larry Fisher, Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory \-- I\'m asking a question about the continuity
between the past study and the present study. Are they going to be
involved? Is Lawrence Livermore Lab going to be involved with Sandia? I
just have a few questions.

That brings me to another issue which involves peer review of this
study. Exactly how are you going to do peer review? Who is going to do
it? Is Lawrence Livermore going to be involved in doing that? I have a
more general question which is, that\'s very confusing to me and to some
of the states that we work with such as the state of Utah and that is
what exactly is the relationship between, I know you touched on the
subject, but what exactly is the relationship between this study, modal
study, and other studies that you are doing? For instance, you have done
NUREG 1437 which is an update of table S3, which depends on, as I
recall, on Wash 1238 an AEC publication. You are going to do an EIS for
the BFS facility in the State of Utah. How exactly does sabotage fit
into this study?

Let me give you a suggestion as to how I think it\'s going to go and I
would sort of like to know your comments on that. This study is going to
be input into the computer program which will estimate accident
consequences and incident free consequences. And that in turn is fit
into the various EISs that you are going to produce in the future. Is
that what\'s going to happen and if that\'s so, this is my final point,
my question is why are you bifurcating the process into little teeny
pieces? Why don\'t you produce a large EIS which addresses all the
issues involved in transportation, involves the economic issues, the
economic consequences of accidents, involves nonaccident situations.

In other words, a full EIS which investigates the health and economic
impact of transporting nuclear fuel.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Marvin. I\'m going to go to Susan
Shankman for answers to these and keep in mind that one of the purposes
of this meeting is to get input on suggestions such as that and we will
be discussing these issues in more detail during the discussion. But
Susan if you could provide some answers.

MS SHANKMAN: I just wanted to say that part of today is to get those
comments and I agree that as Earl discussed all the studies, there have
been many of them and each one has had a particular goal and the
integration of those studies is part of this package performance study.
The idea that you suggested about sending out our update of the 0170
assumptions as a public report and putting it out as a contract report
which is a final report, the goal is to have comments on that, put into
this study so that concerns you have about that contractor report can be
worked into the design of the study. We want to integrate it with the
work that\'s been done on severe accidents in modal study. So the idea
is to have all that available before we have our public meeting in the
spring and at that time we will look at the design of the study and
whether it meets the goals that you have discussed.

We have not chosen to do a complete redo of the EIS that serves as the
basis for our transport activities. If that\'s an idea you have. would
like you to explain why you think we need to redo the entire EIS. The
update on spent fuel transportation has meant and not to redo the EIS,
it\'s not a redo. So the EIS has been publicly available, was commented
on and was a final document. What we were looking at is whether we
needed to reopen it and that\'s the update of 0170 is. It\'s not a redo
of EIS. Does that answer your question? And if you think we need to redo
the EIS I would like you to tell me today as we go through it what parts
of the EIS or if you think we need to start all over again.

MR. CAMERON: I\'m listing issues that come out of these questions right
now on the paddock to make sure as we go to our discussion we come back
and make sure there is a full discussion of the, the integration, what I
termed the integration issue that Marvin brought up. Earl, did you want
to provide some other information?

MR. EASTON: Yes, I would like to respond to one of the questions raised
and that is the role of Lawrence Livermore in peer review. In what we
are calling the reevaluation of 0170, it was done by Sandia. That was
sent to Lawrence Livermore for peer review. We are just now getting the
results of that peer review. So unfortunately they couldn\'t be with us
today but they are involved in that study. The other study that we\'re
going to do on the update is still in its early phases. We\'re not
really settled, I guess, on who is going to do the peer review at this
point.

MS. SHANKMAN: Lawrence Livermore was invited so their absence is not
because they were not invited. The other thing is as Earl said the
design of the study, what I hear is you\'re suggesting that when we
design this package performance study we should build into the design
peer review.

MR. CAMERON: Marvin is nodding affirmatively. I know a lot of you are
going tohave the same type of comments. We\'re trying to do some
clarifications here. Rest assured that all of these issues which I think
relate to process, we will fully explore including peer review and role
of the public in this. What I would like to do now is go to Bob Halstead
from the State of Nevada. Bob?

MR. HALSTEAD: Thank you, Chip. The State of Nevada is dependent on the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to carry out its responsibilities. Because
as you know we face the prospect over the next five decades of receiving
by various estimates under different scenarios up to 100,000 truck
shipments of spent nuclear fuel and/or other highly radioactive
materials. So under other scenarios up to 20,000 rail shipments and
possibly another five to10,000 truck shipments. I very much appreciated
Earl\'s comments, general though they were, reminding us that this is a
hazardous material. The 26-year-old reactor is a 17 by 17 Westinghouse
LOPAR assembly, moderate burn up. Even after 26 years of cooling time
we\'re talking about a bundle of rods that has 80,000 curies total
activity.

I very much appreciate the attitude that the NRC is taking. And I
especially appreciate this effort because it is something that the State
of Nevada has asked for for 10 years, a reassessment of the modal study
with the type of stakeholder input that I believe you are making a
commitment to here.

I further and especially appreciate the scheduling of the December
meeting in Henderson, Nevada which is not only accessible to people of
Nevada, but many areas in the west could not be at this meeting today. I
further appreciate the fact that an evening session has been scheduled
in that meeting which will allow members of the general public who
can\'t come because they\'re not paid to deal with this issue like most
of us are. And because I came here to say these good things, I\'m going
to try to not be upset if we don\'t get to review the NUREG 0170 update
and I\'m going to take you at your word that you are going to give our
comments whatever respect they deserve on a final contractor report.

I do have a question because I\'ve looked at the website that you have
set up and I think based on our experience a website is an excellent way
to handle communications. I would ask that you add a number of materials
to the website and I know you are just beginning this. One is there are
a number of reference materials in the past that have been critical.

I understand going into this trying to look at the new conditions, but
there are some lessons to be learned by rehashing, so we would like to
see the materials generated by the Western Interstate Energy Board 1989
workshop which included Larry Fisher and C.K. Chew. There is also a
transcript of that meeting. There have been a number of letters and
review comments to the NRC that reference the modal study and I
personally have not done this literature search, but I know there are a
of conference proceedings, technical reports, journal articles, many
fine pieces of technical literature may disagree with some assumption
results, but nonetheless respect all of the work that people at Sandia
and Livermore have done I would hope that you would put someone to work
doing good bibliography survey and having that accessible in a PDF
format on the website is important because many of these documents are
hard to access. So really I\'m asking you to make a commitment to go to
what I see as the next extension with your website to allow that to be
one point source of contact for all of us who going to be involved. And
thank you very much allowing me this time.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. Let\'s get some response from NRC staff.
Rob Lewis?

MR. LEWIS: Yeah, I just want to say that that\'s a fine suggestion and
we have problem with putting them on the website and I think all along
those documents were intended be part of this phase one literature
search at least in coming up with this issues

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. We note various recommendations that we
hear throughout the day on these flip carts. I\'m going to go to Amy
Shollenberger and come back over to Bob Fronczak. Amy?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Thank you. It may not be possible to answer my
question right now, but I would like to just raise the issue of the
Department of Energy\'s EIS and how that section of that EIS addresses
transportation impacts, or claims to at any rate, and I would like to
know how the review of the modal study will play the final EIS done by
the Department of Energy, whether there are plans to incorporate the new
information into the EIS and also whether modal study will be done in
time. Looking at your time on it it looks like it\'s pretty far out
there.

MS. SHANKMAN: I appreciate your concern about the timing. We are as a
federal agency making comments on the EIS and then we will need to look
at that as we license the, whatever is proposed, and in that process we
will use whatever information we have.

MR. CAMERON: Janet?

JANET: In the event that the department finds the Yucca Mountain site
suitable for development of repository and develops a license
application that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would review, it
would be at that time that the commission would have available to the
final update of the modal study. You are absolutely correct. It\'s not
possible for us to factor the results of the study that won\'t be
complete until 2003 into our comments early next year on the
environmental impact statement, won\'t be available to others commenting
as well. I would second Chip\'s request that Department of Energy
representative also speak to that, but clearly in the consideration of a
license application, the commission would take into account any
additional information that had become available and as I understand it
the EIS will be updated in a timely manner over a certain period during
a licensing process.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Janet. That was very helpful. Dwight Shelor from
DOE.

MR. SHELOR: My main comment is I think the answer you received so far is
absolutely correct. The environmental impact, the final environmental
impact statement that we will have to accompany the side recommendation
report unfortunately will be done prior to this conclusion of this
study. If there are at any time after that some license application the
EIS will again be reviewed by NRC and if appropriate even updated by the
department.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Next let\'s hear from Bob Fronczak and then we
will see if there is any clarifying questions out there in the audience
before we take a break. Bob?

MR. FRONCZAK: Just two very questions. If we would like to supplement
comments today with written comments who do address those to and what
time frame are you looking at for those? Seems like we\'ve got some
time.

MS. SHANKMAN: In terms of timing, Sandia will be submitting their report
to us in the late spring, early summer. If we could get your comments
through the month of January they will be factored in and you can do
that through the website or you can write directly to me or to Rob
Lewis. All of our address is simple and it\'s on the sheet of paper. You
can call also.

Again, let me just encourage, and glad you asked the question, Bob.
Today is not the only chance to talk to us. We will be soliciting input
in December and Las Vegas. have three meetings scheduled there. One
similar to this evening meeting and then a follow meeting on Thursday.
So that\'s where we will physically be present to interact with people.
We are all available through e-mail. We are all available through the
telephone.

MR. CAMERON: And keep in mind I think the NRC would like to have a
specific discussion at some point today about the process for keeping
the public involved over the course of this study in whatever ways
people have to suggest.

Let\'s go to the audience and see, does anybody have a clarifying
question out here before we take a break on the presentations that you
heard this morning? Steve, are you stretching or are you questioning?
Anybody?

MR. CRAFT: Steve Craft. I was struck by the presentations about the
historical of the regulations and the one question I had I was trying to
figure out how to frame it correctly without implying something I
didn\'t mean. Is it safe to say that NRC has confidence in its current
set of regulations, that if they are followed they lead to safe
transport? Is that an accurate statement?

MS. SHANKMAN: Yes.

MR. CRAFT: So those of us who live near rail lines ought not fear
radioactive cargo these rail lines; is that correct? As long it\'s moved
according to your regulations; is that correct? I don\'t live terribly
far from the same rail lines, Susan. I\'m sort of wondering what you are
telling me here.

MS. SHANKMAN: I didn\'t mean to imply anything. Yes. The answer is yes.
We have confidence in our current regulations and in the information
that we have. But it would be foolish not to continue to look at things
and to see that we maintain that safe record. And as Rob and Earl
pointed out, I believe you know there will be a significant campaign
coming up, so we want to make sure that our information is as current as
possible.

MR. CRAFT: That\'s why I hesitated asking the question because I didn\'t
want to imply you didn\'t need to do the studies, I just wanted to
understand as you continue your regulatory programs, there are people
who will be seeking cask certifications and there will be people moving
these materials while these studies are ongoing. This is not to imply
that those shipments are somehow not safe.

MS. SHANKMAN: Right.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Steven. That\'s the type of issue that could
spur a lot of discussion at this point and what I suggest doing is we
will hear one more comment or question from the table and then let\'s
take a break and come back at 11 o\'clock which will put us a half hour
behind schedule, but I think we will be able to accommodate that during
the day. Kevin?

MR. KAMPS: Thank you. Sorry to delay our break. I would be remiss not to
make at 3 least a brief comment at this point. I am from Michigan
originally and I\'ve only worked at Nuclear Information and Resource
Service for two months. But I\'ve worked near the Palisades in Michigan
the last decade and the main point I want to share with everyone in the
room is that the casks, the ventilated storage casks at Palisades that
have been used since the early \'90s, have come with some surprises for
everybody including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The generation of hydrogen gas inside these casks was not foreseen by
all the experts at the utility, at the NRC, at the gas manufacturer. And
so our concern from the public perspective is what surprises are in
store with transportation? And so I hear a lot of confidence and I here
a lot of congratulations, but there is tremendous concern on the public
level.

In Michigan the experience with the dry casks at Palisades has left the
public \-- I don\'t think it\'s an exaggeration to say bitter and very
upset at having been locked out of the entire decision making process
from the beginning. I have a concern that this process, the
transportation process is continuing that same pattern of locking the
public out. And on a related matter of environmental impact statement,
the draft from the Department of Energy, again most of the hearings are
taking place in Nevada. There is a handful of hearings outside of Nevada
and major transportation routes are excluded from the public hearing
process: Chicago, which is one of the major transport routes in the
country does not have a chance to have a public hearing on that issue.

In Michigan again with the dry casks, the public has felt very excluded
from any significant involvement. Another issue I wanted to bring up is
the German experience with the transportation of high level waste. Far
from being a routine and smooth operation, there have been huge public
protests of the transport mostly because the dump site that was selected
was selected with total exclusion of the public and the people that
lived there were very upset about that, and so when the transports
actually began there was tremendous protest that took place.

In 1998 the protest brought out 20,000 people and 30,000 police officers
had to be deployed. It was the largest deployment of police since the
Nazi regime. There were 500 arrests of people engaging in civil
disobedience. There were close to 200 injuries and the total cost for
transporting six casks was \$100 million dollars mostly because of the
police involvement.

That was the next to last shipment that took place. The one that took
place after that was speeded up by a week. The date that everyone had
been told that it would take place was really a smoke screen. The actual
transport took place a week early. Even the police were not told until
the very last minute the transport was going to take place so they were
deployed in a rush. It was very chaotic transportation that took place
and there was even a police officer that was killed. He was struck by a
train and I attributed that myself to the chaos that was involved. It
wasn\'t the transport train itself but another train.

There is now tremendous resistance among the police forces in Germany to
be involved in this process at all not to mention the public. So I just
feel that this issue is a lot more serious and dangerous than has been
discussed up to this point and I wanted to put some of the public input
in there at this point. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Kevin, and there will be an opportunity for all
of you to put your concerns on the table during the rest of the day. I
would just note two things. In terms of what you said is that I think
that there are going to be discussion, there is going to be discussion,
there are going to be recommendations today from your colleagues around
the table to, about the surprises as you called it. Items should be
anticipated when this study is done. So I think we\'re going to be
hearing about those.

And also just note that your point about meetings and transportation
impacted cities, I think that that\'s a recommendation that the NRC
should consider and is considering also in terms of this particular
study. Let\'s take a break and be back at 11 o\'clock and we\'ll have
working microphones by that time hopefully.

(Pause in the proceedings.)

MR. CAMERON: There is a document that Bob Halstead recommended it be put
on the NRC website and it\'s a critique that the State of Nevada did of
the 1987 modal study. Bob has put copies of that out on the table I
believe. So if you didn\'t get a copy of it it\'s out there.

One of the things that we definitely are going to go back to that is in
our paddock list, it was first brought up by Marvin and also was
referred to by Bob Halstead, that may be causing a little bit of
confusion based on my discussions with people at the break, is what is
the relationship between the 0170 study to what\'s going on now? And I
think that we might need to have a more extensive discussion of that
issue so that it\'s clear and I don\'t really want to do that right now,
okay? Because I think we want to get into the first discussion issue
here but I just wanted to assure people that we will go back and discuss
that in a timing so that it won\'t interfere with your understanding of
the rest of the agenda.

Our first discussion item is highway and railway accidents likelihoods,
and for all these discussion items we\'ve asked Dr. Charles Massey of
Sandia Labs to do a real brief set up for us in terms of some background
information about that particular topic and he\'s going to do that for
each one of these.

By way of introduction, Dr. Massey is the manager of the Transportation
Safety and Security Analysis Department at Sandia National Labs and his
groups are responsible for design, testing, analysis of all types of
radioactive material, packages and the performance of transportation
safety and security assessments. Dr. Massey has been with Sandia Labs
for 10 years. Before he came to Sandia he was with Oak Ridge National
Lab, the University of Pittsburg and a ship\'s officer for the United
States Navy. He got his bachelor\'s degree in marine transportation from
the Merchant Marine Academy.

He has a master\'s of science degree from the School of Engineering from
the University of Pittsburg and a second master\'s degree from the
School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburg. And to top it
all off his doctorate is in radiation health, again from the University
of Pittsburg.

Dr. Massey, would you like to tee this first issue up for us? Thank you.

DR. MASSEY: Thank you, Mr. Cameron. By way of introduction here, what
I\'m going to do I really have two functions during the day as we
proceed with our discussions on the package performance study.

First is to present a little bit of background. This may help also with
these questions of how does the modal study and the NUREG 0170
reevaluation, how do those fit into the package performance study? So
I\'m going to walk a little bit of the evolution of where we are in
essentially our state of knowledge regarding accidents and performance
of these casks and their contents during these accidents and give you
some suggestions that we have proposed to the NRC as areas that we would
suggest be looked at in a package performance study to essentially fill
in the rest of the pieces of the puzzle that we believe still may exist.

The second function that I have is to make sure that I understand as you
may make comments or suggestions about what should be included in
looking at severe accidents involving these packages, I need to make
sure that I understand what your comment or concern is by maybe asking
you some questions because we want to sort of clarify the types of
environments and scenarios and conditions that you would be interested
in and I need to understand that so we can incorporate that in our
issues that we look at for posing what would be done in the package
performance study.

We are going to have six topical areas. The first one that we\'re going
to discuss before lunch is highway and rail accident likelihoods, but
before I want to get into that I want to give a little bit of
background. Do this quickly since I think most people are fairly
familiar with what we are talking about, but just in case I want to make
sure everyone has some basic level of understanding.

Next to the individual in the white lab coat here, you can see these are
the types of materials that we\'re looking at transporting into package
casks. That\'s fresh fuel assembly.

Now the cask itself, sort of highlight to you the features. Here you
have the spent fuel assembly typically bundled and the size of cask
matters how many of the assemblies we can fit inside. The cask walls
itself are the main part of the cask. On the ends you have impact
absorbers that are sort of made of some sort of material that in the
event of an accident hit one of these ends or a side sticking out, these
would absorb some of the impact force and then these contents which Mr.
Easton mentioned earlier some of the lids and bolts and seals and
features to close the cask.

To give a little perspective on the cask we also have, made a cutout. If
you were to look at that sort of the circular part of the cask and take
a piece of that pie out, we have made a model. This is an actual full
size of the cask that\'s currently going over the road right now and I
encourage you at the breaks or at lunchtime to come up and look at this
and pick it up if you like, but this demonstrates this outer neutron
shield that you have on the cask with the outer wall to contain whatever
materials inside here. Then really this inside piece is the cask
structure that we\'re most interested in and how this performs in the
event of an accident.

So as I go through I may refer to this cask wall piece here to help give
some context of what exactly we\'re looking at.

To bring us back to where we are in rail and highway likelihood and
sequences, in the modal study they used 1985 truck and rail accident
data from selected areas to determine on a per mileage basis what is the
likelihood that the train or the truck transporting the spent fuel could
be involved in some type of event that could possibly lead to release of
materials, like a collision or derailment. That\'s what they used was
1985 data. Modal study as you recall was issued in 1987.

Once they started they \-- an assumption there was some derailment or
collision. Then they went through a sequence of events: Collision,
impact another vehicle, did it impact structure like a bridge? Let\'s
say it did impact a bridge structure, then was there a fire or not? So
they went through and developed a sequence of accident events or
developing what could be the consequence from the accident. As a result
of their analyses, they essentially determined that there would be 20
accidents in categories where they would put mixes of collisions and
thermal environments together to determine what would be the likelihood
released from the spent fuel package. They also developed distribution.
They looked at how likely is it to be at certain speeds and forces and
temperatures and how long would the fire last as well put into the
response of the package.

NUREG 0170 reevaluation that is under review at the moment. We use
essentially three year data than the modal study 1988 accident data on
much more national average. We did some modification to the accident
sequences that were in the modal study. Instead of having the 20
categories where you could essentially bend or place each of these
thermal and collision environments, we developed 19 for truck and 21 for
rail accidents and we used the modal study collision speed and fire
duration distributions. We did not develop new ones in the 0170
evaluation.

Now to stimulate a little bit of thought and discussion on package
performance study, here are some of our suggestions of what we would
propose to do. First, we would like to update using the latest 1999
accident rate data. We would like to go in, essentially relook at these
train and truck accident sequences, how they occur.

One of the things we have now which we would like to take advantage of
is with geographic information systems that are out there, ability to
much more, more detail look at structures along roads, and roads are
very small fine detail. We can look at where bridges exactly are, where
are their hard rock outcroppings along routes; where are there bridges
that may offer if a truck or train were to fall off a bridge and fall a
substantial distance. We now have the capability to get much more route
specific information that we would like to incorporate into our accident
sequences and also when we start looking at distributions of how these
events would take place and the likelihood of them, incorporate that
into the package performance study.

Since we do not know yet how these sequences would fall out and what
type of potential environments would be seen, the number of accidents or
bins accidents could be placed in will really depend on what comes out
of the study. With that I\'m going to turn back over to Mr. Cameron.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Dr. Massey. I think it would be useful to leave
this on for the discussion. The objective here is to get your ideas on
what should be considered in terms of accident probability sequences and
scenarios.

Now Charles has talked about some of their ideas. It would be useful to
have comment on those ideas as well as anything else that you think
should be considered in the relook, the update of this study and we\'re
going to go to Bob Halstead, State of Nevada for first comment and Bob,
they, the microphones are working if you could just press that button.
Let\'s see if they\'re working.

MR. HALSTEAD: I won\'t be shy having asked for this opportunity to
reopen this discussion. I appreciate your introduction and let me give
you a few responses from the State of Nevada\'s perspective. We have
been looking at these issues for a long time and hopefully will prepare
an outline briefing paper for you by the Henderson meeting we weren\'t
able to be at because of the EIS hearing schedule.

An observation on accident rates. We have studied average and route
specific and link specific accident rates on our own highway and rail
system, although unfortunately we haven\'t had the funding like other
organizations to update that analysis for about six years. And one of
the things we have found is that the more you go down to a route or link
specific effort, the variation from year to year in accident rates is
more apparent.

So as an opening thought I think you might want to rethink the notion of
using single point accident rates. If you use a single point accident
rate you need to put some uncertainty number with it. Our preference is
to not try and put out a false sense of specificity that the data won\'t
support. We\'re more comfortable now to using a bounding approach to
accident rates. That\'s issue number one.

Issue number two, I very much appreciate the comment that you made about
GIS technology developments, allowing us to do the finer look at, you
know, what planners usually call unique local conditions. Again, we have
been doing this along the routes of Nevada partly pause we anticipate a
very contentious debate over designation of state preferred alternative
routes. Particularly we need to designate a long sequence of two lane
highways to avoid the Las Vegas Metro area and exactly the things that
you mentioned, identifying the location, the characteristics of rock
faces, rock outcrops, drops from bridges, critical side slopes, that\'s
a really important part of this.

That was frankly one of the great limitations of the first modal study,
the use of the California I-5 data on bridges, highways, soil types and
so forth. We\'re certainly supportive of that and will assist in that
effort.

And thirdly, regarding the impact types. There\'s a great deal to be
said here but in looking at our state and some other western states
perhaps peculiar vulnerability to earthquakes and particularly looking
at the California system with elevated interstates and in our own case
increasing frequency of the need to build overpasses over potential
shipping routes, the whole area of crush impacts from falling bridge
decks, falling overpasses is an area that needs to be added and a second
category again important to us because of in particular if you look at
the new construction of these overpasses and bridges in the Las Vegas
area, there is some range in the types of support columns that are used.
Some are almost diamond shaped on the edge and others are round.

I probably have to give Bill Rhine credit for raising this issue about
the center midpoint impact on a support column and a consequent
wraparound effect which obviously is equally serious, but different from
corn like gamma shields as opposed to machine and weld gamma shields,
but in addition to the things we will suggest later, we would like to
see those two types of impact accidents specifically addressed.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Bob. I would like to see if anybody
else around the table wants to add anything to the three issues that Bob
brought up. The bounding issue, the specific route information and the
example of earthquakes and what that might augur in terms of types of
impacts that you would use.

SPEAKER: Would you add midpoint wraparound? Those key words some of us
will know.

MR. CAMERON: Midpoint under earthquake?

SPEAKER: No, it\'s separate. This is an accident not an actual disaster.

MR. CAMERON: Midpoint wraparound. I noticed that Marvin might want to
comment on those so let\'s go to Marvin Resnikoff.

MR. RESNIKOFF: I wanted to add just a few points to what Bob has said.
We are interested in information on accident severities, the severity
distribution in different locations: urban, suburban and rural setting.
In other words, how are accidents distributed in order of severity in
these different locations in the United States? Is it all the same? Or
does it differ depending on whether you are in urban or rural setting.
For instance, what about location of severe fires? Do they occur more in
urban settings or rural settings?

We would like bounding accident. We would like sabotage to be considered
as a bounding accident. I don\'t know if this Sandia study wants to look
at sabotage, but it\'s been suggested by the State of Nevada that -- and
they\'ve introduced a petition to the Regulatory Commission that certain
antitank missiles be considered as leading to major releases from a cask
and we would like that considered as well.

The sequence of accidents concerns us. Generally the kind of accidents
that are looked at \-- well, just look at puncture, or there is a
sequence involving impact and fire. But we would like one of those
sequences reversed to see whether that is more important. Namely,
whether cask heat up in a fire and then puncture is also a scenario that
should be considered seriously. That at least happened in the Sandia
test in the sense that there was a fire and then the structure gave way
and then the cask fell down. So we would like that kind of puncture
accident considered where the containers actually heated first. We would
like seasonal changes considered as well when looking at accident
probabilities.

We would like a, how should I say it, a \-- confidence intervals
considered as well, not just one determined number but actually a range
of numbers considered. Those are my points.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Marvin. I will put that last point up here. But
you can see we are getting a number of specific recommendations and we
want to go and find out whether anybody has anything to add to the list,
whether they have any comments on this.

I guess at this point I would want to ask the NRC staff or Sandia if
they have any questions on what\'s been brought up so far and, Susan,
you can use your microphone.

MS. SHANKMAN: I just wanted to tell you that we do have a sabotage study
that we\'re working on developing. It is not under the Sandia contract
but will be done in conjunction with the work that they\'re doing and
right now we\'re working with the Germans and with some others who are
looking at those issues and one of my staff members who was here earlier
is going to an international meeting on that in a couple of months to
frame the issues.

MR. RESNIKOFF: Who is doing that study?

MS. SHANKMAN: We will be doing it but in fiscal year 2000.

MR. CAMERON: Can I just remind everybody if you are going to make a
reply or comment just turn your mike on and use it. I think it might be
useful for everyone if we just provide a little bit more information on
something that\'s been mentioned twice already which is the petition for
rule making that the State of Nevada submitted on the sabotage issue. Is
there someone here from the NRC staff that could just sort of give us a
quick summary of what what\'s going on with that petition in terms of
what it requested the NRC to do and what the status of the public
comment period is. I can try to do a little bit of that if that would be
helpful and, Bob, you may want to, Bob Halstead may want to supplement
that.

There is a process in NRC regulations that provides for any member of
the public to send in a request, a petition to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission that commission regulations be revised and the State of
Nevada submitted a petition that called for a change in NRC regulations
address sabotage and also for an accompanying risk assessment of the
risk of abotage in terms of spent fuel statements.

That petition was published for public comment. The comment period
closes November 29th.

SPEAKER: Just recently been extended to January 29 I believe that is a
request from the national, from the transportation research board has a
committee and certainly given the work load we have on other things, we
are very supportive of that 60 day extension. wanted to add that since
we filed that petition and then we saw the draft EIS, a couple of
different modal issues have come to the floor which we think are
important not only in the sabotage rule making but also things I
neglected to say. Really a lot of new ideas. One issue in both the
sabotage analysis for the petition for rule making and in this study is
the potential heavy haul truck transport of large rail casks.

I know that in the Skull Valley proposal there been discussion using
casks as large as 140 or 145 tons. I personally would be surprised if we
see ones quite that big, but we\'re looking at the DOE proposal at the
possibility of 125 ton rail casks being heavy hauled on the originating
end and some cases for distances as short as a couple of miles, but in
half a dozen cases maybe up to 50 miles and those have \-- again, I
don\'t know how feasible that is, but because it\'s been identified in
the draft EIS we all have to at least evaluate. But having been on the
other end and having worked on reactor shipments it\'s hard enough to do
them by truck.

Issue number one is heavy haul truck and we have a clearer sense of how
this might happen in Nevada. Again, I don\'t think if there is no rail
spur I don\'t think there will be a repository, but there is the
possibility in Nevada some very tricky long hauls on big rigs, so heavy
haul.

Secondly, barge transportation has long had some strong advocates both
in the transportation community and in the environmental community. We
have had some recent experience with it. There is at least a cursory
overview of the issue in the Yucca Mountain draft EIS and I would
propose at least for open-end the discussion, there is some literature
that goes back to the mid \'80s that came out of Argon National Labs
where it was a fairly detailed barge in Panama Canal transfer issue for
the first repository.

Thirdly, a number of people have been discussing the possibility of
running legal weight truck casks on flatbed rail cars. I also think
that\'s not a very good idea, my personal opinion, but it\'s something
that might happen and it\'s something that we need to at least in a
scoping sense identify here.

And certainly there is one other modal scenario that was mentioned to me
as recently as last week, although I must tell you it occurred in the
Little Alien Cafe, a lot of exotic ideas about aircraft occur, but a
person there reminded me there was some experience with air shipment in
one of the foreign research reactor movements and I believe it was out
of Columbia Venezuela. This person said if we\'re going to do that, and
this was an ex-air force logistics person, well maybe we need to look at
air transport in some instances. I think we\'ve generally ruled that out
as a, you know, large scale movement technique so I personally would not
argue strongly for putting aircraft transport, but I would say those
three we need to look at seriously.

MR. CAMERON: Let me clarify something for all of us. Bob, you said \--
the petition on sabotage into some other types of transport that you
think should be considered.

MR. HALSTEAD: These are issues we are additionally going to raise in the
sabotage rule making because, for example, we feel the security issues
of a large rail cask on a heavy haul truck are different than the
security issues and we have asked for dedicated trains as a condition
for rail shipment.

Let me quickly say we identified about eight specific areas in the
regulations at 10CFR73 and primarily we focused on expanding existing
regulations. For example, we\'ve asked that the route approval process
be made mandatory using the criteria identified in the guidance
document.

This of course raises some problems with trade-offs between routes.
We\'ve suggested upgrading the escort performance for both truck and
rail and declined the current guidelines for heavily populated areas to
the entire distance of the route.

We\'ve asked for some minor modifications. For example, extending some
of the planning requirements for strategic special materials to schedule
shipments to avoid civil disorders and natural disasters. Some of these
I don\'t think are going to be real controversial.

Others like the suggestion that dedicated trains should be used for all
rail shipments, we do expect to be controversial. So we on the one hand
said look at trends and terrorism, look at trends and the capabilities
of the weapons available. Look at the way that the larger number of
shipments along the routes will create new opportunities and look at the
new shipping cask designs which may or may not be more vulnerable to
attack and based on what we already know we\'re asking for immediate
relief in the way of changes in the current regulations. We\'re also
asking for a more detailed assessment because of various uncertainties
that we may not have evaluated. So that\'s the scope.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob. Let me try to wrap this up a little bit before
we go over to Amy and the rest of the panel at this point.

It has been suggested, recommended by Marvin sabotage be considered.
Very clearly the sabotage issue is in front of the NRC and keep in mind
that the end result of the update of the petition for rule making, all
of this funnels into, should there be changes to the regulatory
framework at NRC, so that there is a forum a mechanism for sabotage to
be considered. If you want to comment the comment period has been
extended. The commission will then consider whether to grant or deny or
grant in part that particular petition.

Charles, do you have a specific question because I do want to go over to
Amy, but go ahead.

DR. MASSEY: For the barge, dedicated train, these other different modes
besides just truck cask going down the road, are you suggesting that in
the accidents when we look at the overall package performance, that
those be issues that we address as well, separate from any kind of be
sabotage?

MR. HALSTEAD: Let me answer it this way. For the heavy haul truck I have
a specific concern based on knowledge of roadway conditions on certain
routes in the Nevada that there are actually greater potential for a
fall impact scenario involving a large rail cask in heavy haul
transport, than there are on any of the rail conditions that I\'m aware
of in Nevada. That doesn\'t mean that there are not conditions outside
of Nevada where the rail cask and rail environment is subjected to a
greater impact.

Secondly, specific issue for us on the truck cask, the smaller mass of
the truck cask in rail accident fire environment is a big concern to us.
We\'re basically working under the assumption that the regulatory fire
has to run about 20 hours to cause large scale fuel degradation in the
large rail cask, but only six to eight hours in the truck cask. So
putting truck casks in a rail environment may actually raise some
different scenarios.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you and a good clarification. Some of these issues
that Bob brought up in terms of type of transport also are important
outside of the sabotage area. Let\'s go to Amy Shollenberger.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: First of all I would ike to say that I\'m really
happy to hear you are planning to use the GIS system to look at route
specific data. That was one of the issues I was going to raise today.
Along with that I would really be excited that you would actually name
those routes and state where they\'re going to be and say what routes
specific data you are looking at with the GIS system.

I know we\'re in accident likelihood right now and not in public
participation but I can\'t resist saying that I would be even more
exited if you would allow the public access to your GIS system to look
at those routes. I think that would really show that the NRC is looking
for public involvement.

MR. CAMERON: Susan, do you want to just ask a question before you go on,
Amy?

MS. SHANKMAN: I\'m not clear what you are asking.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I think that, first of all, I\'m asking for the
transportation routes to be named. They are not named in the
environmental impact study that the DOE has done. I was in a meeting
where the DOE said that they didn\'t feel they should name the routes
because they may change over time. But I think, you know, you could say
potential routes or possible routes and still name them.

And as far as access to the system, I think it would be really great if
the public could somehow, I\'m assuming it would be through your
website, get into the GIS system and have access to maps of potential
routes.

MR. CAMERON: The question, and I think we should try to clarify that for
everybody, is how will, how can the update consider the specific routes
that might be taken in terms of accident scenarios and to the extent
that it does or through some other mechanism is that information going
to be available to the public? Susan?

MS. SHANKMAN: Yeah, I guess I\'m having a hard time understanding. Are
you speaking about the to the repository only?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Not only but yes.

MS. SHANKMAN: Because I think that most of the routes, potential routes
of what you asked for are already fairly laid out in terms of where the
plants are and where they move to. In terms of rail lines I don\'t think
we\'re going to have many alternative rail lines. In terms of highway
there are routes specific guidelines DOT requires to be followed in
selecting the routes.

So it will be part of the proposal of Sandia to tell us the kind of
route data that they\'re going to look at and at that point you can
comment on.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I would also like to like to follow-up on the
earthquake comment that Mr. Halstead made. I would like to see weather
related scenarios for all the different areas with that in the study. I
think that earthquakes are definitely a major concern.

I think there are some portions of the country that are very prone to
flooding. I think there are some portions of the country that are very
prone to snowstorms, sudden squalls, ice storms, tornados. I would
really like to see that factored into your study of both accident
likelihood and the impacts of, for instance, a truck, you know being
caught in a flood or something like that.

MR. CAMERON: Note the relationship to Marvin Resnikoff\'s seasonal
point. I think there is a tie in there.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Also I would like to see human error factors
addressed. I think that looking through the reports of not necessarily
technically what you would call accidents, but maybe incidents with
casks, there have been situations where a cask wasn\'t tied down
properly and it slid a little bit or whatever happened and even there is
\-- would even be human error in the creation of the cask which was not
addressed in your first study because you were using computer models and
now you have actual tests. And so I would like to see human error
factored into both accident likelihood and potential impacts.

MR. CAMERON: Not just the human error in terms of the cask construction
that\'s been mentioned, but human error in terms of this particular
issue, its application.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Right, all kinds of things that could happen.

MR. CAMERON: Go ahead, Susan.

MS. SHANKMAN: Can I frame that a little bit differently and say perhaps
we should be looking at the relationship between operational controls
and casks. Do you have do rely on some kind of operational control or
human activity because of a weakness in the cask? What\'s the
relationship of that?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I think I would like you to look at that, but I think
I would also like to see outside of that the, you know, you look at the
number of accidents and say here\'s how likely an accident is. You could
look at the number of times the cask wasn\'t tied down properly and then
say here\'s the likelihood of that happening and somehow combine that
with the number of accidents and say here is the likelihood that a cask
would be involved in an accident and it\'s not tied down properly.

MR. CAMERON: Charles, is that clear?

DR. MASSEY: Yeah.

MR. CAMERON: Let\'s go to Felix and then Eileen and come over to Kevin
and then Bob Fronczak.

MR. KILLAR: I just want to make a couple of points along the lines that
Bob and Marvin already brought up. I think one of the things we have to
be very careful of is that we do do bounding studies. Charlie can retire
doing studies but we need to have finite data to say this is the
results.

Along those same lines we do have to have sensitivity studies as part of
that. If you say the temperature is going to be X and squat, if you go
up two more degrees what difference does it make one way or the other?
So I think you need to take into consideration sensitivity studies and
provide that information. And the final aspect you have to bring in
reality. You have to make sure that when you are done with your studies
and come up with the results you have to bring in reality. I think
that\'s the one thing that the modal study particularly was very good at
doing because they did look at actual accidents and put the cask in
those type of accidents. I think that\'s one of the things we need to be
very careful of.

On the GIS system, I think it\'s important that you do this. Once again
concerned that you get too specific on routes and get too specific
because then what happens is you get into a question of sensitivity and
bounding what have you, and you say gee on my route that\'s coming
through my area I have a bigger outcrop of rock than you do or the rock
that you looked at was shale and I\'ve got granite or vice versa and
things on that line.

So I think you have to be very careful that you look at the bounding
studies and look at the sensitivities and not get too tied down to the
GIS studies.

MR. CAMERON: GIS is geographic information system?

MR. KILLAR: Sounds good to me.

MS. SUPKO: Felix covered a number of points I was going to make. I would
also like to add that while you are looking at this growing laundry list
of possible issues to address in the modal study that risk informed
analysis take place, that we really look at what increases safety. What
can NRC do and assess that will help increase the safety of spent fuel
transportation and protect the public. I think that\'s the bottom line.
You did mention that was going to be part of the process and I think
it\'s going to be a difficult exercise on the part of NRC staff to go
through all these issues that everyone is bringing up and try to apply
those and get a result that everybody is satisfied. But that has to be
the end result is what increases safety.

MR. CAMERON: Let me ask you a clarification on that. It may be sort of a
chicken and egg situation where the results of the update are going to
be looked at by the NRC in terms of whether to increase, in terms of
whether to change the regulations.

Were you suggesting that Sandia should factor into the study in the
first place what might decrease risk from a change in regulations?

MS. SUPKO: No. I\'m not suggesting that the regulations need to be
changed. The issue is there are a lot of public concerns related to
spent fuel transportation. What issues either through update of the
modal study through testing or through additional analysis can we do to
show the level of safety associated with transportation and possibly in
Sandia\'s assessment of all of the things that it might choose to look
at, it would probably be useful to try to assess certain pieces will add
to the discussion more than others might. There is only going to be a
limited amount of time, a limited amount of money available to spend on
this project. I\'m quite certain it\'s not unlimited.

So you are going to need to somehow or other address where do you get
the most bang for your bucks, so to speak.

MR. CAMERON: What you are suggesting is that the NRC and Sandia may have
to make choices in terms of whether to address certain issues or conduct
certain types of tests and that that should be a risk informed decision.
All right. Let\'s go to Kevin.

MR. KAMPS: I just wanted to follow-up on some things that I was hearing
about operational controls and cask robustness and it gets back to
something I mentioned before and someone asked me during the break what
I was referring to about the surprise, the Palisades and other
facilities that use the ESE 24 casks. What that was was unforeseen
chemical reaction inside the cask, the generation of hydrogen gas which
is combustible, highly flammable, explosive and the way that that was
discovered was an explosion at the Point Beach Nuclear Plant VSE 24 in
1996. And just the relationship to this discussion of likelihood. I
don\'t think anyone at NRC or the utility or the cask manufacturer would
have seen an explosion in a VSE 24 cask as a likely event.

So in the discussion about likelihood about transportation of highly
irradiated nuclear fuel, there are so many problems taking place with
the casks that are stationary, these casks are going zero miles per hour
at Palisades Nuclear Plant and the casks that we\'re discussing today
are going to be on our highways and on our railways going at high speeds
and so we\'re very concerned about the unforeseen problems that will
take place with these casks.

Another problem at the Palisades Nuclear Plant has been the
manufacturing of the casks. There are a number of defective casks at
Palisades and so that needs to be considered in the likelihood of
accidents, not only the severity of an accident, but also the likelihood
of an accident taking place is how will defective casks enter into that?

Also about the likelihood of events taking place and it\'s been
discussed already, but terrorism \-- in their earlier study terrorism
was not high on the priority list of considerations, but it\'s becoming
more so unfortunately in this country and around the world. And so I
just would like to reemphasize the importance of terrorism as really
taking a central place of the discussion of the safety of transporting
highly irradiated nuclear fuel across the country.

And just to reemphasize, and I feel a lot of sympathy for the
representative from Prairie Island, coming from the Palisades area the
closest residents to Palisades in the dry casks are several sand dunes
removed from that danger, but at Prairie Island the casks are how close
are they to residents?

MS. WESTRA: Approximately six hundred 15 yards.

MR. KAMPS: I\'m not sure how many hundred yards at Palisades the closest
residents ae, but I just wanted to reemphasize that the transport of
these casks will take the stationary casks at the present time and move
them very close to the homes of millions of people in this country and
I\'m happy that the NRC is saying that there is an interest in involving
the public, but I would really urge the NRC to involve the public in
very meaningful ways in this process because millions of people being
very concerned are going to change the dynamics of the discussion and it
will be removed from an academic or theoretical discussion into a very
charged one and, yeah. Another point is a consideration needs to be made
of even the safe and smooth transports of these materials and the
exposure to workers and to the public of the gamma radiation that will
flow out of these casks. That\'s removed from an accident scenario and
hearing that there is not going to be an environmental impact statement
involved with this, that concerns me because there are environmental
impacts to public health from even the smooth transportation accident
free of these casks.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Kevin. Susan, did you want to respond.

MS. SHANKMAN: I just wanted to make a clarifying point that the storage
casks are not transport casks and even cask designs where there is a
system where both the encased or contained spent fuel that has been
stored, that container may be transported but it would not be
transported in the same configuration as it is stored. So the experience
in storage is useful but it is not necessarily the same as transport.

I know your concerns about Palisades but I don\'t want people in the
room to think that the Palisade casks as they stand on the pad will be
put on the truck or rail and shipped.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you for that clarification.

MR. KAMPS: I didn\'t mean to imply that the same casks will be used for
transportation, what I was meaning is that the history of our experience
shows the problems and the NRC has recently decided to allow cask
manufacturers to proceed without a certificate of compliance on cask
designs and that was the very problem at Palisades, that the public
tried to be involved in the process with those casks that had defects
hat were not caught by the NRC and so the current policy of NRC is to
allow the manufacturer of casks without a certificate of compliance? And
so the risks are too great, I think, for those unforeseen problems both
transport and with storage.

MR. CAMERON: I don\'t want to get us off on an extended discussion of
this. Susan we may think about you coming back and presenting a
clarification on that. I guess what I infer from some of your comments,
Kevin, is the idea of unlikely events should be considered throughout
all of the issues that are addressed in the study and we hearken back to
the hydrogen that you talked about.

MR. KAMPS: And the definition of unlikelihood.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. We\'re going to try to get through some other
cards here because we do have a little bit of time left here. Bob, why
don\'t you give us what your concerns are and we\'ll talk to other
people.

BOB: First of all, I would like to support some of the previous comments
that were made. I think you\'re going to be looking at a lot less
accidents because the accident rate used in the modal study was a 1980
number 11.9 accidents per million train miles.

The other thing I would like to support Bob Halstead\'s comment about
crush loads, train transportation by definition is multiple vehicles
traveling together and I don\'t know if you ever been to a main line
train derailment, that is a very real possibility in rail, so we support
you looking at that.

Another thing that Bob talked about the collision with structures and
falls. In the modal study I think they evaluated highway wayside
conditions and rail wayside conditions are very different than highway.
You have to go through a lot more cuts and fills because you are very
limited by rail transportation and it looks like you are going to look
at that and you are going to look at wayside conditions.

A few other things I would like to bring up. We felt that the force
estimates that the modal study used were underestimated. We looked at
locomotive trains and just the standard rail car has to be able to
withstand an impact of a million pounds force without defamation.

A locomotive train can go to 3 million 8 to 10 million pounds so we
would like to have you factor that in. We think the frame impacts were
underestimated in the modal study. We think you ought to take a look at
that.

I don\'t know if this is the time to bring it up, but we also think that
the modal study took a less than considerable approach on thermal
frequencies. So we think you ought to take a look at that again. We just
had one in 1996 in Wisconsin where we had an 18 day fire and that was
done by design.

Twenty years ago those tank cars probably would have exploded and
probably would have had some fatalities. Now they\'re designed to vent
and burn. We think you ought to take a look at that too.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. I would note that, and this is good, we\'re
getting a list of items that should be considered here and we\'re not
having much dialogue on some of those items which is fine.

We\'re going to go to the others that have their cards up but one thing
for the group to keep in mind, is there anything that you heard in terms
of suggestions that, that you have a disagreement with? Not a \-- and
we\'re going to get to you right now as a matter of fact, but if there
are things that you do disagree with, and I don\'t mean need to
supplement, but if you disagree with that I think that would be useful
for the NRC to know and Jack Edlow is going to give us a sample on this,
I guess. Go ahead, Jack.

MR. EDLOW: I do wish to disagree with two items that I have heard
suggested this morning but I will agree with one other. I want to start
first by talking about this issue with, that I\'ve heard discussed as
sabotage or terrorism or similar type issues.

This is certainly an issue which needs to be addressed, that the NRC has
addressed in the past, Part 73 regulations, which needs in the future to
be addressed because sabotage, terrorism is real. However, I don\'t
think it needs to be part of this study. I think it\'s an apples and
oranges type issue. This is my understanding related to accident
conditions and the effect on the equipment and the vehicles related to
accident conditions. I think that is the specific purpose of it and that
sabotage, terrorism are not accidents. Although they do need to be
addressed. That\'s number one.

Secondly, I disagree with Ms. Shollenberger about naming the routes. I
think it is counterproductive to name specific routes for a variety of
reasons, not the least of which is I can name you a route today and it
may not exist in ten years. We don\'t know where you will live in ten
years and it\'s difficult for us to focus on that.

One should assume under existing DOT NRC regulations that material when
properly packaged and when introduced into the transportation system of
the United States, it can go on any route because that is the legal
situation in this country. So if the public wishes to know where the
material can go, the answer should be it can go anywhere when it\'s
properly packaged and licensed and ready for transport.

The fact that states have the right to designate routes for this type of
material means that they should discuss the matter with their state
authorities or those who are responsible for establishing the route
control within those frameworks. Otherwise, assume it can go anywhere
because frankly it does.

Now the one thing that I will support and don\'t fall off your chair,
Bob, I\'m going to support the idea about the barge because while this
is titled highway and rail accident probabilities, and maybe that\'s
what you want to study, I do happen to think there is some reasons for
you all to consider barge and even more so dedicated ship transports
because it is in fact possible that there could be at some time in the
future t he need to move this material coastally via water even using
dedicated ships rather than barges which have their own particular
reason. So I would support that and there are lots of other things we
could get into but it\'s almost lunch. Good-bye.

MR. CAMERON: I\'m going to make an assumption here, open the challenge
by anybody to try to maybe close off on one particular point. We talked
about the concern over sabotage. We have identified separate mechanism
to address that and I\'m sort of assuming that the important point is
that the issue be addressed somewhere but doesn\'t necessarily need to
be addressed as part of this update.

Jack gave us a contra in terms of the specific routes. Other people may
want to chime in on that if we have some time. Let\'s go to Ed Pritchard
and then we\'ll go to Heather Westra and come back to Uldis, the State
of Maine. Ed?

MR. PRITCHARD: I just wanted to first offer assistance in your studies
dealing with any of the data from our accident reporting section and
also a review of some of the severe accident derailments that have taken
place since the study was done.

Today we did come to an agreement as to some of the things that need to
be looked at and there were some severe rail accidents that took place
since that study was done. We had a train derailment caused by an
earthquake this year which we never had recorded before and it happened
to be an Amtrak train.

The other thing I want to make available to you is our safety compliance
and oversight plan for rail transportation of high level radioactive
waste and spent nuclear fuel. It\'s a partnership of the Department of
Energy and the association of American Railroads and it goes above and
beyond 49 CFR for the transportation of hazardous materials. It\'s a
proactive approach that we have taken. My staff member, Kevin Blackwell,
sitting behind me here is the author of it and I want to give him credit
for it because he spent quite a bit of time putting it together. In
fact, the department has taken this, Department of Transportation has
taken it. They have expanded it to include highway and water so we\'re
working on that with the Coast Guard and the Federal Highway
Administration. It\'s a flag ship initiative under Secretary Slater and
we also have a dedicated train study report that is due out sometime
next year.

MR. CAMERON: There may be information that other agencies have reference
to what\'s being done in other countries before \-- this, I imagine,
could either be factored into the update or supplemented, supplement the
update in terms of what the NRC should do, if anything, in terms of
regulatory change, Susan?

MS. SHANKMAN: Right. Part of the phase one is literature review and to
look at expand data that we could use and I\'d also offer that as part
of the website, although I don\'t think we can post everything, we
certainly can post references to other websites and so that if you
can\'t \-- if you have a website where you have this then we can list
that and what are our resources that someone can find them. So I guess
I\'m agreeing that we\'re going to try to keep this as our website as
informational as possible and Sandia is on the hook to be doing that.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Susan. Let\'s go to Heather Westra and then over to
Uldis and then take a final comment from Amy and see if anybody in the
audience has anything to say. Heather?

MS. WESTRA: One thing I see related to accident scenarios and I\'m not
sure whether or not it would be addressed in this study or is available
in other studies, and it\'s regarding emergency response to the various
accidents under various conditions under various scenarios. Is any of
that information available? The notification time when something occurs.
How long it took the responders to get to the site. How many responders
per each given type of accident were on the scene? Number of people
potentially impacted by the various accidents? And then the total time
needed to resolve the accident. Clean it up. That would be something we
would be very interested in seeing as a jurisdiction that would be
seeing those shipments and would likely have to respond to some kind of
accident.

MR. CAMERON: I guess maybe perhaps two questions. One is how is
emergency response factored in, if at all, into the update of the modal
study? And secondly apart from the modal study, and this is one of those
separate transportation concerns, is there a way to provide the type of
information that Heather is talking about somehow? Charles do you want
to try to answer the first one? What is the role of emergency response
in trying to, in updating the study? How do you treat that, if at all?

DR. MASSEY: Sort of answer with a question. Right now when we developed
these accident sequences, we do not take credit in the scenarios for
intervention, such as responders come on the scene, put the fire out
quickly.

That is not in our distributions right now. That is certainly something
that could be considered to be incorporated, but we tend to try to look
at it, let\'s assume there is no response? How does the package perform
under the conditions evaluated? The whole emergency response once there
is an accident, that\'s a separate issue than what we\'re planning to
look at but we can certainly incorporate that as a suggestion in our
accident sequence.

MS. WESTRA: That would certainly be part of what the public want to
know. Yeah, these shipments might be safe but how prepared are the
jurisdictions to respond to these? There are lessons learned out there
that could be argued, incorporated into this analysis.

MR. CAMERON: Let\'s go to Susan for perhaps an answer or to someone on
the NRC staff about the availability of the information apart from the
modal study.

MS. SHANKMAN: Heather, I would say that by not taking credit for any
emergency response is a conservative way to look at the safety margin.
The Department of Transportation will be working with the center on
issues related to accident response. Rick, do you want to add? I think
that there are local conditions and we could look at whether we can
factor it in.

MS. WESTRA: I\'m just wondering is that a realistic assumption though. I
can understand that it\'s a conservative approach. Is that a realistic
assumption that nobody would respond?

MS. SHANKMAN: No, I agree with you. We\'d have to look at how we\'d
factor that in given the variability of local response. The emergency
response system is developed with the Department of Transportation and
FEMA and other agencies. NRC is not involved in that specifically.

MR. CAMERON: We may want to talk more about this off-line in terms of
the information but I think the point has been made. Earl, do you want
to add something?

MR. EASTON: Just a point of clarification what the NRC\'s role in
emergency response is. We have a formal policy statement issued by our
commission somewhat dated goes back to 1985 on what the NRC\'s exact
role in responding to emergencies. That might be something you want to
put on the website also.

Also we did a survey in 1990 on the capabilities of states to respond to
emergencies done by the University of Indiana. That might be of
interest, but that was basically a survey of states.

The primary response to all accidents lies with the fire department,
police department and that varies from locality to locality. I don\'t
know if there is any real comprehensive look at the response time and
how it varies from county to county.

I think that a lot of programs related to repository have training funds
to actually, in fact, upgrade and train people along proposed routes or
suspected routes, and I don\'t know if it\'s addressed at that point,
but it might be an avenue you might want to pursue.

MR. CAMERON: Final comment, Heather, before we move on.

MS. WESTRA: Sure. I\'m just stating that it would be helpful for
potential responders to understand more, what all would be involved
under these various scenarios.

MS. SHANKMAN: Right, and I take your point. We will look at that.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you very much. We\'re going to take Uldis
and Amy and go on to the audience and, Felix, if we have time we will
circle back to you. Uldis?

MR. VANAGS: My comment really follows what Heather was talking about.
There really needs to be a reality factor incorporated into the study.
It\'s unrealistic to think that spent fuel for Maine is going to be
shipped during a snowstorm or an ice storm. It\'s just not going to
happen. There will be state controls, and emergency planning response.
It\'s going to be monitored and regulated very closely. Somehow those
being incorporated, for instance, I\'m looking at the accident rate
data. I can\'t help but think we have accidents, tractor trailers on 95
in Maine, I frequently travel that road. I see the tractor trailers all
turned over because they just don\'t want to slow down during the snow
and ice. I\'m sure those accidents are in that data. That isn\'t going
to happen. They just won\'t be traveling. We know the weather in New
England quite well. We know when it\'s okay to travel and not okay to
travel. So somehow there has to be a reality factor.

MR. CAMERON: That\'s a good point that I think we\'ve heard from Felix
and also it goes back to something that Amy said before and something
that Marvin said in terms of, of weather. Let\'s go to Amy for a final
comment from the table and then see who has something to add from the
audience.

MS. WESTRA: I just want to respond to the comment Mr. Vanags just made.
Actually it\'s a question that I have. If I understand it correctly the
states don\'t have any control over when the shipments happen. That\'s
not true?

SPEAKER: The states do have some control.

MS. WESTRA: What is that?

SPEAKER: There is a cooperation with the DOE. Right now the North East
Regional Transportation Task Force is having discussions now about these
issues, about weather related issues and so forth. All these factors
will have to be taken into account. They are big state concerns. The DOE
is being responsive to these concerns.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks for that clarification, Uldis. Amy, the rest of your
comment?

MS. WESTRA: I just have one other thing but I just want to mention it
quickly. I would like to see you all look at the likelihood of accidents
after the loading and unloading of both the shipping casks especially at
places like Palisades where they have problems with the casks and also
just in general what\'s the likelihood of an accident when you are
taking the cask off of the train onto a heavy haul truck or off of the
truck onto a train or from a barge or whatever.

It seems like in my reading of the modal study I didn\'t see that
addressed anywhere and I think that there probably is some likelihood of
that happening.

MR. CAMERON: Quick clarification on that from either NRC or Sandia in
terms of how the point of transfer, the unloading point has been or is
going to be or might be considered. Charles?

DR. MASSEY: No. I think that\'s one of the things we want to look at
that we have in our proposal is considering looking at especially
transfer points, that\'s one of the issues of concern. And are there
environments that could be present that we\'ll need to analyze. That\'s
a good point to consider.

If you have specific issues at the loading facility or at an unloading
facility or some set of circumstances that you can envision that you
would like us to specifically consider then I would like to get some
more detail about that.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I think it would be really important to look at, Dr.
Shankman had mentioned the storage casks are not the transportation
casks and so you have situations around the country where there are
storage casks that are having problems and it\'s not at all clear that
anybody knows how to get the rods out of those casks into the
transportation casks and I would like to see you address that.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Amy. How about those of you in the
audience? Does anybody have a comment?

MR. HANNON: my name is Dick Hannon. I\'m with U.S. DOT. Continuing the
reality theme, I think the reality is that I don\'t believe shipments
would be dispatched in the teeth of a blizzard and so forth, but that\'s
not to say that shipments if they went from say Maine to a far west
state to be named later, that there wouldn\'t be some inclement weather
somewhere along the line. I think steps would be taken for safe havens.
This would be part of normal planning, but shipments don\'t just stop
because of the inclement weather, but by regulation we don\'t ban clear
precise thought. People will not dispatch that way, but I wouldn\'t want
to think that a state as far as the origin. I think further down the
line you could run into bad weather as defined by whatever the state
wants to define it.

Another question or response to Heather, there is a large activity of
emergency response training that\'s done year in, year out. Section 180
in the NWPA Act to provide emergency preparedness training along the
routes.

I\'m with DOT. We have a grants program that is available to all states.
There is \-- always use more money. There is an attempt we\'re making
now to triple the amount of monies that are available to train the
emergency response community. But as Earl Easton pointed out it\'s
essentially a local response, be it the federal level provided to the
extent that it can to make them prepared at the various levels.

There is a comprehensive federal response plan that is coordinated by
FEMA, but there are steps that have been taken previously and they would
be implemented again I believe.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Mr. Hannon. Yes, sir. Please state
your name and affiliation, if appropriate, for the transcript.

MR. HANSON: My name is Allen Hanson. I\'m with a company Trans Nuclear.
Trans Nuclear has been involved in the transport of radioactive
materials for more than 35 years. I just feel I need to make a comment
in order the keep the record straight and this would be far more
appropriate coming from Dr. Shankman but she hasn\'t had the opportunity
to fully respond.

As a company that is deeply involved in the fabrication of casks for
storage and for transportation, I think the court would recognize two
fundamental regulations. First of all, no one is allowed to fabricate
casks for transportation until they have the NRC approved quality
assurance program and the NRC verifies that in fact they are using that
program appropriately.

Secondly, no cask is put into service until it has issued a valid
certificate of compliance by the NRC and the fabricators are responsible
for building that cask in exact accordance with that certificate of
compliance and the NRC is also very aggressive in making sure they
inspect and enforce that part of the regulations.

I would not want to leave the impression in anyone\'s mind that
fabricators or designers are in any case running off and building things
without first getting all necessary approvals from at least the
Regulatory Commission.

MR. CAMERON: I\'m sorry. I\'m glad you added that and I know there may
be other comments on that that I think we\'re going to have to deal with
perhaps off-line and we\'ll talk about that.

Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to say something at
this point about the issue of accident possibilities sequences
scenarios? Okay. We need to take a lunch break. And I will talk to Kevin
and Felix about their comments and how we might get that in.

(Luncheon recess.)

MR. CAMERON: I think during our first discussion period we developed a
lot of good ideas with NRC and Sandia to think about for incorporation
into the study methodology. There will be time during our final session,
it\'s sort of an open session for us to revisit some, any lingering
comments that we might have from earlier sessions.

What I would suggest that we do during this session after Dr. Massey,
after Charles tees the subject up for us, is we\'ll go to our first
discussant for an idea and let\'s see if we can test that idea or
thought out among the rest of you before we go to another concept the
danger of trying to do that is perhaps that there will be a whole lot of
ideas at the end that we\'ll sort of have to rush to get them on to the
transcript. Charles?

DR. MASSEY: Good afternoon. We\'re going to start off the afternoon with
talking about container performance during collisions. And to sort of
get you up to speed on our knowledge base to date where we would propose
areas of investigation for the package performance study, we\'ll start
off with the original modal study, what it did and how it analyzed the
performance of the spent fuel cask during collision environments.

First, it looked at a generic steel lead steel. I will try to use my
usual displayer as much as I can. You have a stainless steel lead steel
essentially intercast. This is the structural strength of the cask. It
modelled that on a generic basis did not have a particular cask design
we looked at. Just looked at essentially a cask completely constructed
that looked like this. They did not take into account the impact
limiters on the cask when they did their analysis. They did not look at,
this is probably a function of our computer capabilities after the time,
did not take into account the cask closure mechanisms and design on the
cask.

To make up for that they made conservative assumptions about how much
material could be released. They did not model the cask closure system.
And finally for how much material could actually escape from the cask,
what they looked at was the inner strain or the strain on this inner
cask wall and by looking at how much strain was on this piece, hard to
hold up, this is heavy. But this inner wall is how they determined the
leakage, properties of the cask in collision events. They looked at how
much strain was put on that piece.

In the 0170 reevaluation we looked at the effects of essentially
collision and chemical type loads on four different cask, generic cask
designs and we started to look at in some detail cask closure
mechanisms. One thing I will point out on this one, so I remember to do
it on our proposed suggestions, is that the bolts when we did the study
we essentially modelled those as square bolts, not the round bolt that
you would see in reality. But that was partly a function of our
computation capabilities at the time. So again we had to make some
conservative assumptions about how that square bolt was attached to the
cask and help secure the lid.

We looked at collision forces on the cask hitting an unyielding surface.
A hard unyielding surface is a, typically some type of a design or a
feature that all of the impact when the cask would hit that is put onto
the cask. Whatever it hits doesn\'t absorb any of the forces from the
collision. That\'s an unyielding surface. So we looked at collision of
other casks onto these hard unyielding surfaces.

We looked at forced speeds, 30, 60, 90 and 120 miles per hour onto these
hard and unyielding surfaces and looked at three orientations for each
of those speeds: a side, corner and an end. We also took into account
for weight purposes that there were impact limiters on the cask, but we
assumed those were already crushed. There was no absorbent fact or
features left in the impact limiters so they could not take any of the
crush force off of the package and finally we modelled that without this
neutron shield. This outer piece here, we did not model this on the cask
at all. This was considered structurally unimportant for us in the
collision environment. That\'s what happened in our 0170 update that\'s
under review.

Based on our examination of that\'s been done today and our analysis in
the 0170 update, what we\'re suggesting for the package performance
study is that now we have even the increases in ins computer
capabilities are amazing from point of view of how well we can do
analyses now. We would like to take some of that into account and do a
much more detailed look at the cask closure system.

For one, we can model the bolts now almost as they\'re exactly designed
and how they fit into the cask. Another thing we want to look at is if
one bolt starts to fail, how does that impact other bolts that might be
in the series, sort of like a zipper effect start to go down. How does
that impact the rest of the bolts in the system?

Little more detail look at the closure. One of the things we\'re
proposing to do is do an analysis again looking at a corner impact. We
want to explain something here, maybe use another slide. When we talk
about trying to do a test, an analysis of having the center of gravity
of the package so essentially the weight in this test, the weight is
centered over this point and what we\'d like to do is look at a crash or
drop test of the package that would be testing to compare with analysis,
but have it over in the corner so we could inspect the most damage to
the cask as possible.

So when we get into the collision area we like to do this analysis of
what we predict would happen in this type of environment and compare
that with the test. We\'re looking at some speed greater than 60 miles
an hour and get some suggestions on. What sort of speeds are people
interested in and how can we get to those speeds? And then again finally
would like to do a pretest prediction, make that publicly available
somehow so people can see how the models, how the accuracy, how that is
in comparison to a test results. With that I\'m going to turn back to
you.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, Charles. There is a number of
suggestions that Sandia is proposed to do in the study and I would open
it up for comment either on those suggestions or on new items and we\'ll
go first to Bob Halstead and, Bob, when you have your one major point
on, let me see if I can get some reaction to it also. Go ahead.

DR. MASSEY: Can I interrupt one second for one thing I forgot to add on?
In the collision analyses I forgot one thing. We would also look at
having simulated fuel weight inside the cask during these collision
events to take into account the momentum, forces caused by addition of
fuel inside the cask.

MR. HALSTEAD: There were three things that I wanted to speak to so I
will do them one at a time.

MR. CAMERON: I\'ll tell you what to be a little bit more efficient. Why
don\'t you put the three on the table and let\'s go get some discussion
on that and then we\'ll come over to Marvin and Felix. Do you still have
your card up? We\'ll go to Felix. Go ahead, Bob.

MR. HALSTEAD: First of all, we endorse more attention to modelling the
bolts. Everyone knew that was a problem with the first modal study.
Consequently discussions particularly we had with people from BNFL,
based on their testing results led them to believe, and this is, you
know, anecdotal that I\'m passing on, that inner strain, inner shell
strain as low as one percent might cause bolt failure based on analyses
that they had done. That\'s certainly an area we would endorse paying
attention to.

Secondly, the speed issue is complicated by first looking at the speed
of the transport vehicle and secondly the issue of whether you also want
to consider speed as a factor for other vehicles being involved in a
multivehicle collision.

As probably everyone around the table who has got an anecdotal
experience with driving on the interstate these days can tell you, at
least there seem to be and I haven\'t kept a hard count, but I seem to
see a lot of big rigs passing me at over 75 miles an hour and I have
seen fully placarded 1203 gasoline tankers and exotic loads with liquid
hydrogen passing me at over 75 miles an hour. So in terms of other
vehicles that might complicate the highway crash, I certainly think you
need to look at the 75 mile per hour range. With rail, and Bob I don\'t
mean this to be taken as an aspersion on operating practices, but we
have looked at a couple of runaway accidents. I\'d like to think through
a combination of good operating protocols, administrative controls
imposed by regulations as well as the common sense of the railroads that
we wouldn\'t have any runaway trains, but we do have some experience in
this country with runaway trains derailing and in some cases colliding
with nearby objects at speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour. I would
certainly argue that something in the range of 85 to 90 ought to be
looked at. And again I\'m assuming that we would operate under train
operations that are about 55 miles per hour in the western part of the
country.

The third issue is the issue of multiple bolt failure. I hadn\'t heard
the word zipper effect before, but that actually captures an issue that
we\'ve been thinking about in the context of attempting to model human
error. There are all kinds of other ways to get at the human error
issue, but I can think of about 20 different types of human error that
might result in improper unexpected performance of the lid closure in an
accident. And so a question I pose to you, because I\'m not sure whether
this can be modelled in the cost effective way, but one way to approach
the impact of human error in cask performance would be to look at a
specific consequence of any number of human errors that might result in
a condition like zipper effect around 50 percent of the closure creating
a gap say of a half inch to an inch that would effect the block regions
above 35 or 40 miles per hour or some \-- obviously there is a certain
amount of arbitrary judgment call in this. But those are the three
things I want to throw on the table but focus on bolts is good. We\'d
like to see 75 miles per hour for truck and 90 mile per hour for rail
speeds and also looking at the speeds of other vehicles impacting them
and we\'d like to look at some discrete ways of modelling the
implications of human error for cask performance under absolute
conditions.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Bob. Let\'s see if we can take the bolts and
human error together and then go to speed. I realize people have their
cards up to throw other ideas on the table, but to sort of discuss this
at one time, is there any gloss that anyone wants to add to the \--
while it\'s a good idea we\'re modelling bolts issue? How about this
idea of human error?

Ed, did you want to say something about that or are you waiting for the
speed?

MR. PRITCHARD: I\'m waiting for speed. MR. CAMERON: Anything on the
human error? We heard Amy bring this up before. Let\'s go to \-- Susan,
do you want do make a clarification?

MS. SHANKMAN: Can we frame that as human performance rather than human
error?

MR. HALSTEAD: Human factors make it a little broader. You\'re right. I
stand corrected. I\'m trying to learn to communicate better, Susan.

MR. CAMERON: Rick, you want to talk to human performance?

MR. BOYLE: Thanks, Chip. Just to make one point which I think one of the
speakers made earlier about the requirement for NRC approved quality
assurance programs for design, fabrication, maintenance, use, reuse, all
of those aspects of cask utilization. So that Looking at human
performance you should be done in a context of human performance under a
rather rigorous quality assurance program.

MR. CAMERON: This is an interesting point even on emergency response
that we had. Should human performance be factored in assuming that there
is an a rigorous and rigorously enforced quality assurance program is
the question. Do we have any thoughts on that particular issue? Susan,
do you want to say something about that before, for the group?

MS. SHANKMAN: I think we will look at it. I guess I want to couch it in
clarification that human performance and most other risk assessments
that we\'ve done has been shown to be as much a contributor as a savior,
and in many ways it\'s human performance that has prevented an area and
there are only maybe three ways to standardize human performance. One of
which is to engineer it, most expensive and most successful. And the
other is to proceduralize it which is less expensive and medium in
success and training which the least expensive overall and the least
likely to predict human behavior. So we can look at it but I think that
this is not, unfortunately my personal sense, that this is not so
significantly different than any other activity in which humans perform
a safety function.

I think we can use some of those insides from other venues and see
whether they speak to us here and so I think we should include it in the
study. But I don\'t think we have any clearer sense of what somebody
else does of danger that speaks to this particular activity. We have
some in nuclear power plants because it\'s recorded by procedural
personnel in other ways, so if you know of the database I think we
really need to know where that is.

MR. CAMERON: Let\'s explore this a little bit further. The issue is is
should the study be done with the assumption that rigorous QA program is
in place? Kevin, you want to add something on that particular issue?

MR. KAMPS: Yeah, just the experience of Palisades bears on this again in
that I\'ve heard said that quality assurance was in place with the casks
of Palisades and that certificates of compliance was in place, but there
have been breakdowns at both of those at Palisades.

The quality assurance at CR Nuclear, Incorporation which manufactured
the cask system was found to be very shoddy years after the fact upon
going back and looking locking at it, inspecting it. Yeah. Just again a
three year cessation in the loading of casks because of the explosion in
Wisconsin and this summer, the summer of \'99, in June Palisades went to
load the first VST 24 cask in three years and the whole idea for the
three year suspension was to get everything in order and again there
were inadvertent hydrogen burns with the casks and this was due to a
breakdown in the administrative controls.

So definitely human error and breakdowns in these in these procedures
and regulations are contributing factors to something that is
unprecedented which is the consequence of an accident that releases
radioactivity into the environment of this intensity that any mistakes
that occur are long lasting permanent damage to communities and to the
land. So that is unprecedented the nature of the material we\'re talking
about.

MR. CAMERON: All right. Thank you. Anybody else on the QA issue? Go to
Felix and then Amy.

MR. KILLAR: I think what you have to do when you start looking at things
like this is you have to include this with other type things that could
occur. You can\'t single out human error. Certainly we have very
extensive quality assurance programs. We have very extensive training
programs to minimize human errors, but human are humans and things
happen. So I don\'t think you can avoid it. But at the same time I
don\'t think you need to single it out. I think you can include human
error such as other type errors or problems such as you get a bad set of
bolts. You have a straight spec maybe as far as a bolt but it wasn\'t
tightened correctly or it was tightened correctly but it\'s the wrong
bolt.

I think things like that have to be grouped into a category of others or
other impacts or what have you because I think if you try to focus on
human error, it\'s going to be a continuum to where you will never come
up with an answer that is satisfactory to all people. Assuming human
errors will occur and that\'s what we do in our industry, we assume
human errors occur and so therefore we try to have back up systems and
we try to have other things. But when you\'re doing your study and
designs you\'ve got to look at what type of errors can occur whether
it\'s welding deficiency, a wrong bolt, wrong torque or the operator for
whatever reason forgot to the put the seal in or whatever could have
happened happened and see what impact it has and it\'s really the
consequences of that action not the action itself.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Felix. Amy, quality assurance?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I just wanted to say that it seems to me like all the
other factors that we\'ve discussed, we talked about conservative
approach where Dr. Massey has suggested that the impact limiters
weren\'t considered in a crash test because that was the conservative
approach. And it seems like this question is the same type of question.
So it seems like in order to take the conservative approach you would
not consider the qualityassurance program because it\'s like impact
limiters, it limits the impact of human error just like the impact
limiters limits the impact of a collision.

So I think that in order to do a correct study, a conservative study,
you should say yes there is a quality assurance program and yes there is
an impact limiter but we\'re not going to consider those things in our
test.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Amy. Let\'s go to the speed issue and then
we\'re going to ask Marvin to put some of his issues on the table. Yes,
Bob.

BOB: Before you close that human error discussion, Felix did a really
good job of stating some things that I didn\'t state very well. I just
want to clarify. I just want to make two points. One is you have to look
at human error in spite of the fact that you assume that you have
rigorous NRC approved QA QC programs.

And secondly, as a modelling proposition I\'d like to try and sum up a
range of human errors, equipment problems, and focus on maybe one, two
or three conditions that could result from any number of causes and then
try to assess so that we have some quantitative handle on how those
effect cask performance.

Felix, I really like the way you -- when I said human error I was
covering the whole broad range of things you wouldn\'t technically
classify as human performance. Thing like counterfeit parts.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob, for that clarification. We\'re going to go to
the points Bob made on speed. One is don\'t just look at the speed of
the transport vehicle, but consider the speed of other vehicles. As
speed figures to use 75 miles per hour truck, 85 to 90 miles per hour
train. I think that that got, Ed wanted \-- did you want to say
something about that? Go ahead Ed Pritchard and Bob Fronczak.

MR. PRITCHARD: Just want to respond back to the about regulatory and
runaway trains. The federal railway administration did take regulatory
action after those accidents. What the train device does for those
nonrailroaders in the room, there\'s quite a few that are not
railroaders here, it permits the engineer to apply the brakes from the
back as well as the front of the train. And it\'s done electronically
and it\'s required on freight trains over a certain size and weight and
going over certain grade. So we do have those regulations in place right
now as a clarification.

MR. FRONCZAK: One of the advantages assuming, or with the use of
dedicated trains, would be you could use electronic brakes and apply the
brakes much more quickly at the speed of light instead of speed of sound
and do that instantaneously you decrease your stopping distances or
increase them by like 30 to 50 percent.

As far as the speeds go you recommended 90 miles per hour. I don\'t know
if that\'s the right speed or not. I think you are right. I think we
would like to see track speeds, normal track speeds for freighter
approaching 70 miles an hour out west and you could have two trains
doing that or you could look at 55 miles an hour for this shipment
assuming that spent nuclear fuel would be transported at two trains
speed and then another train coming in at 70 miles an hour.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob. That goes to a couple of issues. One is the
speed not only of the transport vehicle but the speed of the other
vehicle and you said normal track speed in the west, so I guess that\'s
a regional variation. Much has been suggested along those lines looking
at regional and seasonal variations.

Let\'s go to Dr. Lee for a comment. We\'re on speed, Henry.

DR. LEE: I have a comment on speed because the study we are performing
and also in the regulation is the impact and of course you know
considering the two vehicles hit each other and the both have speed, but
then this is a more realistic situation in the real world, but I think
that the unyielding surface is not a realistic assumption and if we\'re
going to look at this very severe impact with such a high speed, then we
will really have to consider real objects and we\'ll have to \-- impact
energy has been shared by both objects and not just by one alone.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Henry. Do we have other comments on speed before
we go to Marvin? One final or perhaps two. Go ahead, Felix.

MR. KILLAR: I just want to say on speed we agreed that I don\'t think we
need to go any more than 90 or 100 miles an hour for speed on the rail
lines. The other thing I think we need to be careful of is you talk
about head-on impacts either by trailers or head-on impact by trains.
While you don\'t want to see that happen they have happened from time to
time. But if you start looking at those type of scenarios you need to
put them in relistic scenarios and that that cask is not out of the head
of the cab of the train or out of the head of the cab of the truck and
so you do have quote unquote impact limiters whether it be the
locomotive or the cab.

You need to make these things realistic as you start looking at these
analysis and don\'t go off on a wonderful analysis that don\'t make
sense to life.

MR. CAMERON: I think that that\'s a point we\'re going to come back to
as a general point. How are these various accidents, other things that
are being considered, how is the analysis supposed to be bounded? Eileen
was talking this morning about the risk in forming the setting of
priorities. That can be looked at and studied. I think it\'s an
important issue and I believe later on in the day Mike Wangler and
others may have something to say to that. Let\'s have one final comment
on the speed issue then I want to go to Marvin Resnikoff. Rick?

MR. BOYLE: Thanks Chip. Having just come back from four years in the
international arena, I can tell you that the issue of something like
test speeds probably get more attention than any other issue by all
modes of transport. The international maritime organization, the
international aviation organization are all interested in package
performance for their mode of transport. There are studies underway for
air transport, for example, to look at what are the forces transmitted
to a package. And so you end up recognizing that one has to consider
impact velocity, angle, orientation, crush of the conveyance, softness
of the target, and the relative stiffness of the package on the target.

So it\'s a very complicated and complex modelling and undertaking. But I
think as it\'s been said the important thing is using real world speeds
to use real world targets and real world crash scenarios.

The British, for example, crashed a locomotive at 100 miles per hour.
That\'s a real world speed in a real world scenario and the damage was
minimal because there was nothing behind the cask so it went bouncing
down the tracks. So there are many different analytical techniques that
can be used to predict performance, but in both cases you have to use
apples and oranges if it\'s an unyielding target then the speed has to
be modified to reflect what a real world target will be like.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much for that, Rick. Marvin, would you
like to put some issues on the table for us for discussion?

MR. RESNIKOFF: Yes, I have three more issues I want to put on the table
but this relates to what was just raised about realism, but it goes in
the other direction.

First, there is the issue of how heavy these containers are. Do you just
take into account the cask? Do you take into account the cask plus the
fuel plus the impact limiters? Yes. Or do you also take into account the
rail carriage? Does that also have to be taken into account?

For instance, if you have a high star one hundred cask you\'re talking
about the impact limiters 145 tons. But if you include the entire
carriage including the, what do I want to call it, the skiff that holds
the cask itself it goes up to 211 tons. Is that the weight you should
look at when you look at a collision? I would argue that it is. I would
have that entire package in a sideways impact to a hard rock surface and
that would be one of my bounding accidents. Because it\'s a credible
accident.

I want to bring up another issue which was raised at the National
Technical Waste Board, a Nuclear Technical Waste Board meeting and that
is the issue of where are these casks actually sitting in the train? Are
we having a dedicated train or are we having a heavy cask sitting next
to the locomotive or are we having the heavy cask sitting at the end of
the train with a bunch of light cars in between?

It\'s important to have the actual model of how the train is designed.
Because if you have a heavy car at the end of the train and there is a,
you know, derailment, then the whole cask can go flying if there are a
bunch of light cars in between.

Finally, I want to raise an issue that was raised earlier which is cask
wrap around an abutment. The modal study looked at casks wrapped around
an abutment and also more recent versions of the modal study, which
should come out by Lawrence Livermore, which looked at a truck cask. But
they did not, they looked at the effect on strain, but they did not look
at the effect on welds and bolts. That\'s an important issue when you
are looking at casks wrapped around an abutment. What is the effect of
that on that on the welds and the bolts?

MR. CAMERON: Great. Thank you, Marvin. And let\'s explore that first
issue. What weight is considered in the collision and Marvin was
suggesting that the weight of the container should be considered, the
weight of the under carriage or skiff, I\'m not sure what the correct
terminology of that is. Are there comments on what weight should be
used?

Charles, do you want to give us -- is there a usual assumption that is
used in this case?

DR. MASSEY: As Marvin noted there have been differences in what they
have assumed is the weight. What we are suggesting for the package
performance study is that we assume or take into account the weight of
the impact limiters, weight of the contents inside the package and then
the package.

We\'ll certainly explore your comment of whatever the transport vehicle
is either for the truck or rail car, that additional weight. Then we
also have to balance that against too in the consideration of now that
cask may also be protected somewhat by the undercarriage. It\'s not
always cask is flying off, has all that weight of everything behind it
if it\'s still attached to the rail car or to the \--

If your suggestion is that we look at that whole envelope of activities,
I think that\'s certainly something we\'ll take a look at.

MR. CAMERON: Other comments on what weight should be considered? Rick?

MR. RAWL: Thanks, Chip. Just a consideration that the tie downs would
play an important point because as the dynamics of the accident
progress, the cask in all likelihood will be removed from the rail car
because of failure of tie down and it would be relatively low G forces
that would happen. So considering whether to take the weight of the rail
car into account is you know depended on the dynamics one is
considering. The skid that it\'s mounted on most likely is going to stay
with the cask because it\'s typically very securely mounted in the skid,
but that the skid is tied down to the rail car in a different way.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. I think Jack Edlow has a comment on that. Go
ahead, Jack.

MR. EDLOW: Is it not considered the design that the cask should break
away from the car to move elsewhere as it\'s done in other packages that
are supposed to eject from the vehicle so that they\'re removed from the
accident. Is this not necessarily a design feature?

MR. RAWL: It ends up being that way because the tie down attachments on
the package itself has to meet the NRC requirements. Whereas, the tie
down to the rail car meets the DOT requirements which are not that
stringent. And you are right, in the end it\'s a good design approach
because that avoids having the tie downs causing failure to the package.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Henry, do you want to give us a little comment?

DR. LEE: Yes. Regarding the weight of the cask, the content of the cask,
and the impact limiters, they are all considered as part of the package
so it\'s always considered. Actually it may be a secret but most casks
that were reviewed and certified was tested, at least simulated test.

Rick just said that the tie downs, the NRC requirement really is very
stringent and actually probably is more stringent than any country in
the world because this is one part we are not completely in compliance
with. So most likely it\'s going to break away from the vehicle in a
severe accident.

About those shipping skids, these things probably if it\'s attached
towards the package probably will act as additional impact limiters and
absorbing energy.

MR. CAMERON: And thank you. Everyone keep in mind that the suggestion
that Marvin others are making, although there may be opinions around the
table on this, that suggestion, those suggestions will ultimately be
considered by the NRC and Sandia in formulating phase two of the
project. Let\'s not lose sight of that. Marvin, do you have a follow up
on your weight issues?

MR. RESNIKOFF: Actually I was hoping the moderator would be Jerry
Springer and not you so we could just have it out.

MR. CAMERON: I\'ll try to create some hostility here. I though you
people would create it yourself.

MR. RESNIKOFF: You\'re calming everyone down and we want to get at it.

I wanted to respond to what Dr. said. The whole tech design that I have
looked at, the one that has 145 ton cask and 211 ton package, are you
telling me that it\'s only a 2G tie down? Is that your knowledge, yes or
no?

DR. LEE: No.

MR. RESNIKOFF: What is the force? Is it 2G or more? It\'s more is the
answer.

MR. CAMERON: Is that the answer, it is more?

DR. LEE: Yes, it is more than 2G.

MR. RESNIKOFF: So why did you tell everyone it\'s 2G force, it\'s all
going to break away? That\'s not true.

DR. LEE: As you know I am NRC and I don\'t know exactly what is the tie
down of requirements for rail cars or highway trailers. I think they are
more 2 Gs. NRC tie requirements is 10 Gs in the direction of travel, 5
Gs transverse the direction of travel and the 2 Gs in the vertical
direction and all these three component of forces apply the same time
simultaneously. So at least to the attachment point of the package is
this 10, 5, 2 G. So these think about the weight of the package. These
tie down forces are very, very large and have been criticized by many
people that this 10, 5, 2 Gs regulation is not developed when we have
such a big heavy cask, packages in mind.

MR. CAMERON: Let me just \-- Marvin, you get, did we get the correct
answer out on the table for you?

MR. RESNIKOFF: No. The regulations are one thing but actually how the
design is is another thing. I\'ve looked at a design and I\'m going to
go back and look at the SAR and actually get the number and I\'m going
to send it to Dr. Lee.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you very much. Let\'s go to the next issue
that Marvin brought up which is, I take it, a recommendation that the
study should consider where the cask is cask located on a train. I would
imagine that the answer would be different for a dedicated train,
obviously I suppose, versus an undedicated train if I could use that
term.

Ed and Bob, do you want do talk about that? Go ahead.

MR. PRITCHARD: The requirements on train placement are the same for
dedicated train and regular freight train service. It\'s a one car train
placement for an occupied caboose locomotive.

MR. CAMERON: And, Bob, do you want to add to that?

MR. FRONCZAK: I think in practice what we have seen is a buffer car
between locomotive and first cask that\'s usually a gondola or car. We
think there are some things you can do. First of all that buffer car
ought to be a similarly weighted vehicle and if it was a gondola let\'s
say with some stone in it, it could actually act to absorb energy in
case of a derailment.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Anybody else on the \-- Bob Halstead?

MR. HALSTEAD: Two aspects of this issue are \-- again I hate to think of
these casks being transported on general freight trains, but to the
extent that that\'s still possible, even with buffer cars properly
placed you still have to consider the possibility of interaction in a
derailment with other hazardous materials.

We ship a lot of mining explosives west. We ship, and I\'ve had some
experience, one horrific one in Roseville, California, humongous
military shipment accident, bombs in this case.

There are other kinds of complicating hazardous materials. They fall in
a number of categories. Ones people usually think about are flammables
or explosives but you also have to look at cargoes like PVC chips that
can fuel a long sustained high temperature fire and chemicals like acids
that might both complicate the response which I know in this exercise
maybe we\'re not looking at it, but may also have an impact for example
on cask components themselves. The last and probably less important but
certainly the flammables and explosives need to be considered. I would
argue that you have to look at these mixed loads two ways.

One, the interaction between these other cargoes and cask car if the
cask is being shipped in a mixed freight train, but you also have to
look at the possibility of a two train collision even if you are using
the dedicated train for the spent fuel cask and the possible interaction
and I\'m particularly concerned about mining explosives and military
weapons being shipped by rail also.

MR. CAMERON: That\'s the similar point that you made in our first
discussion about what accident scenarios should be considered. We\'re
going to talk about Marvin\'s last point and then we\'re going to go
over to Amy Shollenberger for her general comments on this.

Marvin\'s last point cask wrap around an abutment, don\'t just look at
the impact on \-- look at the impact on welds and bolts. I see Bob
Halstead is definitely shaking his head.

MR. HALSTEAD: A minor clarification since that was my point. Yes, when I
brought it up earlier we were talking about looking at the wraparound on
different cask designs and materials, but Marvin is absolutely correct.
It might even be more important to look at the impact of the wraparound
on the performance of the bolts, closures and seals.

MR. CAMERON: Anybody have any other comment on that particular issue?
Let\'s go to Bob Fronczak and then Ed Pritchard.

MR. FRONCZAK: These are a few points I wanted to make anyway, but we do
think that the original study focused too much on relating accidents to
the regulatory test conditions and not enough going to real accidents.
So we do think you ought to spend some time and look at what can happen.
And we already talked about what our real surfaces, rock surfaces,
bridge abutments or whatever. I\'m sure you will address that.

The other thing is a locomotive sill. A locomotive sill is a very strong
structure. It\'s going to be in every train that is transporting spent
nuclear fuel, so it does have a real possibility of impacting a cask.
And I think the modal study looked at that not on a point basis but on
more of a distributed load basis. We think you ought to look at it on
point of impact.

MR. CAMERON: Could you just say that term again? A locomotive \--

MR. FRONCZAK: Sill?

MR. CAMERON: S I L L?

MR. FRONCZAK: S I L L, yes.

MR. CAMERON: What is that for those of us who don\'t know?

MR. FRONCZAK: It is the structure of the locomotive. It is the mainframe
of the locomotive.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much. Ed, do you want to add on the \--

MR. PRITCHARD: I just want to remind NRC to look at our Part 174 for
train placement requirements that covers not only the radioactive
material next to locomotives and occupied cabooses but also next to
explosives and other hazardous materials. That\'s all.

MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you very much. Eileen do you have a point on
the wrap around?

MS. SUPKO: I think in trying to assess what have been termed real world
accidents, whether it be the wraparound type conditions or others, the
difficulty is going to be in saying what\'s a real world accident? Where
do you set your bounds? What are the limits? You can keep adding
condition, upon condition, upon condition until you have something that
is no longer real world but is extraordinary and isn\'t an accident

that could happen. I think you need to be very careful about defining
what those real world accidents might be.

MR. CAMERON: Again, I think that underscores the need to perhaps have a
specific discussion of this whole idea of bounding real world
conservatism that we\'ve been talking about. There is a tension there
and I think we need to have a discussion on that.

Henry, do you have a quick comment on the wraparound issue?

DR. LEE: I think the impact wraparound accidents are very import. We
should look into it, but I would like to point out that the cask has
many layers of protection. We have inner shell one and a half inch thick
and we have gamma shell several inches and then we have outer shell two
and-a-half inches thick and then outside of that we have absorbing
materials. All these things in the real world will absorb energy and
even hit the real hard object.

The weight of the package is so great and it\'s hard to think that the
object will stay stationary or no damage or no yielding. But like I say
you know this is a good comment and we will look into it. Besides the
material we use to construct these packages very ductile and it can
subject to a large deformation without breaking. So I think we have
adequate protection.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Final comment on this before we go to Amy? Go ahead,
Bob Fronczak.

MR. FRONCZAK: Follow-up to you Eileen. There is a database, fairly
comprehensive database that we\'ve got that\'s got tank accident data
for years and that\'s one of the ways we have improved tank cars
significantly over the years. So that might be a place to look at what
are real forces that are experienced in accidents.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. What we\'re going to do is go to Amy for her
issues and then I want to quickly go to the audience and then I want to
go into collision by fire so that we can collision by fire. You know
what I mean. Go ahead, Amy.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I will be quick. I just have a few points. First of
all, I just want to reiterate as often as possible that public citizens
would like to see full scale testing done with real casks. Just to make
sure that\'s on the record.

MS. SHANKMAN: Full scale testing with real cask. Can you just say a
little bit more about real casks?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: What I mean by real cask is one that has been
constructed not a computer simulated model. I know you all say you plan
on doing that

MS. SHANKMAN: So you mean a physical test?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Yes.

MS. SHANKMAN: As opposed to a computer model?

MR. CAMERON: We have a whole discussion area on this issue so we\'ll
bring it back then.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I\'m not advocating putting fuel rods in your \--
also I would like to again say I think we mentioned route specific data
but I would like to bring it up again in collision data. Also I have two
questions and these are questions about whether this is a good idea or
not because I\'m not sure. I would like to see what would be, if it
could be in the study what could cause the cask to create a release?
Rather than trying to think of accident scenarios and then testing those
scenarios, can you say here is what would compromise the cask. This
would have to happen.

And then the other question I have is I know that on the trains buffer
cars are required in between the casks and I know in the study you have
a picture where if the train crashes there is a thing with the couplers
that makes it stop before the casks run into each other. My question is
if the train derails and there is more than one cask on the train, can
we look at likelihoods and impacts of cask-to-cask collisions? Because
as you said these casks are the various things that we make and maybe if
they run into a bridge abutment it\'s not going to compromise it, but
what\'s going to happen if two casks collide with each other and is that
possible?

MR. CAMERON: I want to get the answer to the first question which I
believe Charles could probably give us an answer to. In other words, in
the study Amy is suggesting look at those accident scenarios that would
create a release and this may get us back into the bounding issue again,
but if you could just briefly give her some information on that and then
we\'ll hear something about the multiple casks colliding. Do you want
Jerry to answer that?

DR. MASSEY: I think one of the things that will come out of the study is
we look at these severe accident regimes, unyielding surfaces and go to
some yielding surfaces of two trains colliding. One of the things that
we will be able to tell is get better models that can predict cask
performance and then we can start to get some feeling for where in these
regimes might we see the releases of material from the package.
Something we can vision as coming out of the package performance study.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Bob, you want to talk about the multiple train
derailment, multiple cask.

MR. FRONCZAK: One piece of technology that we use all the time, and this
is primarily on hazardous materials transportation, it\'s what\'s called
shelf couplers where you have something restraining the couples from
becoming uncoupled so the cars stay coupled in a derailment and that
eliminates or greatly reduces the possibilities of the vehicles
impacting each other. You see that commonly in an Amtrak derailment
where the cars don\'t come apart because you don\'t want the cars
impacting each other.

You bring up a good point and it goes back to the tie down requirements.
If you have loose tie downs where the casks come off, then the casks can
impact each other. We think that it\'s probably a better idea to keep
the casks on the

MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you very much. We\'re going to have one last
comment at the table in regard to your first point. Amy and then I want
to see if anybody in the audience has anything to say. Go ahead, Eileen.

MS. SUPKO: While I think that the exercise of attempting to test to
destruction acask might be interesting academically. I don\'t see the
point of it under real life circumstances and I think that as, I
mentioned earlier, we need to keep this study focussed on what is real,
what are the bounding conditions that a cask might actually meet under
real transportation conditions and use that to frame the study.

Academics aside, yes, it would be interesting what would we have to do
to this cask in order to destroy it and cause a leak, but I think
everyone agrees as I mentioned earlier, the current regulatory framework
exists that makes these casks safe for transport and we don\'t need to
push things to the limit in terms of trying to see where the pie in the
sky accident, it\'s not going to occur, what that might result in.

MR. HALSTEAD: I don\'t necessarily disagree on testing a failure mostly
because it\'s difficult to do that in the real world. But I think
modelling the failure, and I\'m familiar with some of the work that the
mechanical engineering group at the University of Reno did, University
of Nevada at Reno did under DOE funding to determine failure thresholds
by say running the regulatory fire. Actually I should say that, make the
general point here that determining failure thresholds, some of us feel
is very valuable, but it doesn\'t necessarily have to be done through
full scale testing. I like full scale testing for other purposes but it
isn\'t necessarily, I think, just an academic exercise, because in
public meetings with people when you tell them how robust the casks are
the question always comes up just how good are they? Where is the
failure point? Some studies already tell us where that probably is for
thermal. I don\'t know where those points are for impact.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. Anybody in the audience who wants to
comment on the container performance collision issue before we go on to
the container performance and fire? Bob just talked about a failure
threshold there so we\'re going to get into that.

Charles, would you set up the next topic for us and I believe that
we\'re also going to

have another member, an expert from the NRC staff come up who we will
introduce as soon as Charles is done with his set up. Go ahead, Charles.

DR. MASSEY: The next topic is the container performance during the
fires. In modal study there was a 1B (phonetic) \[1-D\] analysis of cask
response. They looked at two fires, an 800 degrees centigrade fire which
is the regulatory standard and a 1,000 degree C fire, very simplified
version of cask response to the thermal environment.

On the outer edge of these casks where they have the neutron shielding
material with some stainless steel layer on the outside, this was
modelled as having this outer stainless steel wall in place. Nothing
inside here. There was no water under \-- neutron absorbing material.
But the existence of this couple inches of air gap, stainless steel does
act as an insulator to decrease the heating of the cask in a fire. But
that was essentially modelled on the cask.

They did look at, during thermal events, that this lead layer inside the
structural strength of the cask, that there was some deformation of
melting, movement of the this lead which would increase the gamma dose,
two people near the cask. Really they focussed on response of the cask
not so much of the contents to the thermal environment.

In the NUREG 0170 reevaluation, we looked at the fully engulfing
chromium fuel fire. Essentially a fully engulfing fire as we look at a
cask suspended in air, completely engulfed by the fire, so there\'s no
heat loss or shielding or offset distance that would pass from the fire
to try to get the maximum heat meet load that we could into the cask.

We looked at that thermal environment on the ordinary cask that we
remodelled. Again, we assumed that there was a neutron shield still on
the container, but that it does not contain any water or other shielding
material. We again modelled, tried to calculate loss of gamma shielding
and the impact of that on personnel around the cask and we did take some
steps in looking at inside thermal environment. What happens to the
contents inside the cask? A little more expiration of rod performance
under thermal conditions.

For the package performance study, what we\'re proposing to do is use a
fairly new three-dimensional thermal model that can go into much more
detail looking at the thermal response of the cask and its contents to
any fire scenario.

We\'re proposing to model optically dense. What that means there is no
heat loss from the fire. Essentially all that heat from the fire is put
into the cask a thousand degree centigrade fire. Again, an empty
undamaged neutron shield tank so there is some insulating effect of
having an outer shield.

One of the things we would like to explore because we don\'t have a
pretty good handle on what the impact of this is on a cask is have the
cask lying on the ground. So it has a fire but there is some contact
with the cask on the ground because most situations the cask is going to
end up lying on the ground to be involved with fires. We want to have a
better idea of how the cask responds and is there really any impact of
having it on the ground? Any loss of heat to the ground? Those sort of
issues.

We also want to take into account that there is spent fuel inside the
package and there\'s been some criticisms in the past that we haven\'t
taken into account that there is heat generated by that spent fuel.
That\'s something we should also take into account as we look at the
temperature of the fuel as a result of a fire. We\'d like to do those
calculations then actually perform a full fire test and prepare model
predictions to the test results.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Charles.

I would like to introduce Mr. Ron Parkhill who is with the NRC staff,
Spent Fuel Project Office. Ron has a bachelors of science in mechanical
engineering. He\'s a professional engineer. Before he joined the NRC he
was with the Commercial Nuclear Power Plant Industry and also an
architect engineer for the industry. He\'s been at the NRC 15 years and
he\'s the expert on thermal. It\'s on the team for this particular
project.

Let\'s do what we did the last time and go to those of you around the
table who have either comments on the Sandia suggestions. We\'re going
to keep going this, but I will let you do it or other things that they
think that the study should address in terms of container performance
during fires and, Bob, can I turn to you again to put a couple issues on
the table for us?

MR. HALSTEAD: Yes, umh-humh. One category of fire impacts in addition to
the engulfing fire that we continue to have some concern about and
particularly this is, we have a heightened awareness of this as a result
of the potential for propane fires and also one of the Montana rail
accidents is the potential for a torch impact.

Generally speaking, we would assume that that\'s more of a high
temperature short duration and I\'m not really ready to give you the
full \-- this is one of the things I hope to address in more detail in
Henderson. One area we\'d like to add to this is the torch fire impact.

Secondly, we will be looking at the thousand degree C fire. Again, I
can\'t give you an alternative value right now. And thirdly, I can tell
you that we think much longer duration fires, particularly for the rail
environment, need to be considered and I\'m in the process now of
looking at a select group of very severe rail accidents involving fires
that have occurred between 1982 and 1988 and we\'ll be trying to give
you some more specific guidance on that.

Finally, I wanted to mention that the thermal testing that I referred to
earlier, which for the benefit of the court reporter the principal
investigators are Miles Greiner, G-R-E-I-N-E-R and Richard Wirtz,
W-I-R-T-Z, at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of
Nevada, Reno. Their primary interest was in looking at fire impacts on
fuel integrity. I may mix that issue up. They did some work on fire
impacts on seal integrity, but looking at the thermal impact it\'s hard
to separate some of these issues, cask performance from fuel, and if I
confuse that issue I hope I clarified it some.

MR. CAMERON: Three good issues for discussion.

Could you explain a torch fire as opposed to other types of fire?

MR. HALSTEAD: Fire resulting from a puncture of a propane tanker or I\'m
not familiar with the full range of other materials that might be
involved in that kind of fire a fire in which a short duration, but very
intense flame is applied to a very limited region of a cask and so you
are not looking at the distribution of that thermal input of the entire
mass of the cask because of the limited region of it.

MR. CAMERON: Marvin, do you want to comment? Anybody have anything to
say? Bob, on torch fire? Some facts for the NCR team to consider in
thinking about torch fires.

ED: We do have requirements for tank cars on transporting PIH materials
and flammable gases. There is a 30 minute torch fire requirement and 100
minute pool fire requirement so it\'s something you should take a look
at and that will also go with the information I gave youthis morning on
the fire test studies that we did.

MR. CAMERON: Amy did you want to comment on the torch fire.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: No.

MR. CAMERON: Second issue that Bob raised was the 1,000 degree
centigrade value. Does anybody have anything to offer on whether it
should be \-- yes, Marvin.

MR. RESNIKOFF: I wanted to just generalize that a little. I think the
study should look at real materials that are being transported on rail
and the flame temperatures for those materials. You should look at
profane \[propane\]. You should look at materials that are really
traveling the rails not just petroleum and look at the flame
temperatures of those.

DR. MASSEY: Also take into account the inventories or assume different
inventories of material and if you look at the higher temperature burn
for exotic chemicals and also get some idea on the amount of those
materials that are shipped. We have inventory that will help us
determine fire duration.

MR. RESNIKOFF: If you\'re looking at probabilities too, you might want
to look at what materials would be transported; the amounts, yes.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good. Thank you. Felix, you have a comment on the
1,000 degrees and then we\'ll go over to Bob.

MR. KILLAR: The point I was going to make on what Marvin just brought
up, it\'s important to look at the flame temperature of the various
chemicals that\'s being transported, but it\'s also very important to
look at the temperatures of vaporization to see how much of that is
going to evaporate rather than burn or can this stay in a liquid form or
gassy state? That makes a lot of difference how long your fire lasts.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Bob?

BOB: I just want to follow-up on the probability deal. You could look at
a lot of different materials and I think if you look at fuel oil and LP
gas you are going to get 90 percent or better of the fires that actually
occur. So you ought to focus your look at all these different chemicals.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob. Rick, Rick Rawls.

MR. RAWLS: Thanks, Chip. In the same way that speed is one aspect of
mechanical insult, flame temperature is the one aspect of thermal
insult. The NRC regulations specify the emissivity, coefficients and
also some other coefficients that go into defining the thermal flux.

In real world accidents you may have a large pool which is going to be
cooler in the center than if you have a small pool because the flame is
oxygen starved. So there are many different real world considerations
that go into trying to determine the thermal flux to the package, other
than just the maximum flame temperature, much less the average flame
temperature in other phenomena that go on.

Again, I guess it\'s just a matter of if the studies look at real world
accidents it should look at it in the real world situation as well.

MR. CAMERON: Look at the entire context I think is something that Felix
was saying too. Bob?

BOB: Quick add-on and point others have raised. In looking at those real
world fire environments, it\'s also important to look at environments
that may affect fire one way or another such as presence of a fire
occurring in a tunnel, fire occurring under a interstate overpass where
there may be an depression underneath that contributes to a pooling and
also in terms of the way that the fire is fueled. It\'s important to
consider a variety of sources.

It\'s possible that you could capture this or envelope all these in the
construction of the pool fire, but it\'s important to remember different
sources of flammables which could be a tanker travelling either by rail
or by highway. It could also be a stationary storage force like a
petroleum storage tank located near a highway. Very common, for example,
with liquefied petroleum gases and also you have to look at the
potential of fire being fed by a pipeline and you have some experience
with accidents that have occurred on top of pipelines co-located right
of ways and other cases where trains derail on top of pipelines. One
famous one in Las Vegas and fortunately there was just enough soil to
prevent rupture of a pipeline. So endorse the concept at looking at real
world but look at that broadly both in terms of sources of sources of
the fuel for the fire and then the actually contributes to the duration
and of temperature of the fire.

MR. CAMERON: I was going to add not only refers to temperature but also
duration. Bob, you said particularly for rail. I think you are going to
be developing some more information on this. Do other participants
around the table have comments on the duration of the fire, types of
fires that should be considered or effects of fire by the NRC and
Sandia? Kevin Kamps.

MR. KAMPS: Just a quick comment that came up when emergency response
discussions took place earlier and that is talking about combinations of
real world things that no one would think of. If there is a material on
the train, there may be different materials, some that are explosive in
the presence of water where the emergency responders try to put out a
fire with water and cause a worse condition. So these are the
complications that need to be looked at.

MR. CAMERON: That\'s an interesting one. Felix, do you have one comment
here on duration?

MR. KILLAR: Well, actually mine is on responders which goes a little bit
to duration. I think what you have to do is assume that the responders
will not be there for a number of reasons. As pointed out earlier in the
current situation they vent the fires and therefore don\'t try and put
the fires out. If you look at the forest fires in the West now, the idea
is to possibly not put the fires out.

I did want to point out a little bit on responders and that when you
started looking at these instances, you can\'t look at responders as
completely separate study, things on that line. Responders can either be
a help or hindrance. So clearly the responders in trying to help or not
make things worse best thing is not to consider responders in this
particular analysis.

MR. CAMERON: Is that the point that you were going to make previously?
Okay. Great. Amy do you have one point to add on what Felix just said or
a question for him?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: One.

MR. CAMERON: Okay.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Well, first of all I\'d like to say that it seems
like the venting only is true on the trains. It seems like if there is a
truck accident where there is a fire, emergency responders are not going
to get it. Just burn out. Especially if it\'s on a highway where there
are other people around that they\'re going to come and put out the
fire.

What Felix said also got to the point and again this is just a question
because I don\'t really know the answer not being a scientist.

In the study I remember reading that even if the cask was compromised
and rods exposed, they wouldn\'t go critical unless there was some
material present such as water to allow the neutrons to interact with
each other and it seems like that could be a really important question
around emergency response. If something happens to the cask and it\'s
compromised and a fire truck comes up and sprays water on it and water
goes in and the rods go critical and that could be a major thing. I
think it\'s something that\'s worth looking at.

I would like to make one more quick comment and that is this is a public
involvement question. I think one way to involve the public is to really
make sure all the information is easily understood. You are trying very
hard to do that, but I would like to point out that both in the study
and in the summary all of the temperatures were in Fahrenheit.

MR. CAMERON: That\'s a point well taken is to do a better job of
communication of this information.

MS. SHANKMAN: Particularly 0170 update, we\'re going to have a summary
like we did for the past modal study and the agency editors hopefully
will do what they have done in the past which is to insist that we give
both values and more familiar values, so familiar to you and me.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: The question is moot to me because I don\'t know what
it is.

DR. MASSEY: 1,000 degree centigrade is about 1850 degrees Fahrenheit.
The 800 centigrade is 1,475 degrees Fahrenheit.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Let\'s go to Jack, do you have comments on
these?

MR. EDLOW: Yes. Thank you. I guess I have a general comment about many
of these points that have been discussed over the last hour or so. I
think the current standards that have been developed and have been
accepted by the United States and the international community, were not
arbitrarily selected. And the United States is part of a new national
regime that has agreed on certain standards by which packaging is
designed and tested and that accident conditions are applied for
purposes of the package criteria.

I\'m not prepared to sit here today and urge you to redevelop the
international standards and I think that you have to bear in mind that
the U.S. standards and international standards are set on a basis that
are used to qualify existing packages. Any discussion that these would
be inadequate or that somehow we have to test at a higher level, we have
to design at a higher level, I think under cuts, potentially undercuts
international standards and U.S. regulatory situations. So I would urge
you to be very careful how you go forward with this process because this
can be misconstrued in some ways by not just the public but by U.S.
government officials that somehow what\'s been done up to now is
inadequate, which I think it is not based on NRC policy at this time.
Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, and we\'re going to go to Felix and then we\'re
coming back over the Marvin. But the point you raised not only in terms
of undermining the standard point, but I guess it is a legitimate
question in terms of how you bound the feasibility of what happens.

Discussion, thread that\'s been running through these discussions is how
do you consider the existing regulatory structure including QA, etc.,
etc., in deciding what accidents you are going to look at. I think we
will revisit that. Felix?

MR. KILLAR: I just wanted to bring up two points. As far as use of water
putting fires, whether it be train or truck, the fire departments use
their discretion. We had a very good instance in Springfield,
Massachusetts a number of years ago where we had a new fuel shipment
that was on a truck involved in an accident on the interstate. The fire
department elected not to put out the fire but it was their concern that
the run off could cause contamination and what have you, which ended up
being a worse fire for the container although it came out fine, but as a
result of it they burned up a truck. So whether they use water or not is
certainly at the discretion of the fire department particularly
chemicals we\'re carrying like PCPs. The fire department will not use
water or foam on PCPs because they\'re afraid the run offs will cause
more of an environmental impact and would rather let the stuff burn up.
Assumption that you won\'t use or will use water is not, I think, a good
assumption. You\'re just looking for the worse situation.

Similarly with water and criticality for a fuel cask, whether it be new
fuel or spent fuel, that is taken into consideration of design and the
assumption is that in the event of an accident that the fuel will
reconfigure into its most reactive form will be with water and it has to
be assured it will not go critical under those circumstances. So once
again water is not an issue as far as criticality of a cask in an
accident.

MR. CAMERON: I guess Amy\'s point really went to the criticality issue
which is our next topic of discussion.

MR. RESNIKOFF: Two quick points I wanted to make. With regard to this
new study that you are suggesting, and the neutron shield tank, I note
that the old modal study had used the neutron shield tank or water tank
and assume that water was not in the tank. The effect is that it served
as an insulator in a fire and essentially reduced the effect of what the
fire would be.

Similarly, you are going to take an undamaged neutron shield tank and I
think rather than that I will take a damaged neutron shield tank and in
other words I would see exactly how the shield tank decreases the heat
input into the cask and see whether if there were not, if the shield
tank were damaged how that would effect the heat input to the cask.

The second point I want to make concerns fire, but it involves how one
evaluates the consequences. In some of these older studies they assume
that deficient products that might get out of the cask plate out on the
cask wall and it accounts for reduction in the amount of material that
can get out of the cask. I don\'t think that\'s proper in case of a
fire. When you have hot walls, hot cask walls, whether the material will
actually plate out on those walls.

That\'s an issue that I would also like you to look into whether there
will be plate out of fission products on the cask\'s walls.

MR. CAMERON: That term was plate out.

MR. RESNIKOFF: Yes.

MR. CAMERON: Charles, do you have a question for Marvin?

DR. MASSEY: I just want to follow-up with Marvin for a minute. When
you\'re talking about the damaged neutron tanker, are you looking at,
consider it being crushed so it\'s flat up against the inner container?

MR. RESNIKOFF: Precisely.

MR. CAMERON: Ask the audience if there are any questions or comments on
container performance in the fire area before we go to a break? Okay,
let\'s take a break. It\'s about 3:19 by my watch. Let\'s be back and
we\'ll start at 3:45 with the spent fuel criticality issue. Thank you.

(Pause in the proceedings.)

MR. CAMERON: Can we have two more substantive topics, so to speak,
before we revisit some issues from this morning on process, the whole
relationship of the 0170 update to what\'s going on here suggestions
from all of you on how the NRC can keep the public involved in this
process.

The whole issue of what I\'m calling the bounding issue that we
mentioned and I\'ll talk to someone about trying to put that into
perspective for us for discussion. You will note that these two topics,
the next two topics spent nuclear fuel assembly behavior in accidents,
physical testing and computer simulation that we already had a number of
comments on, are shorter on the agenda and maybe even shorter in real
life perhaps, because I do want to get you out of here by 6 o\'clock. We
will finish at 6:00 and note that you can submit written comments. Rest
assured, though, that the comments that you gave to the NRC today are
just as good as written comments. In other words, unless you have
something to add, a finer point to make, don\'t worry that you need to
follow them up with written comments because the staff will consider the
comments that have been made today. I want to do assure everybody of
that.

Rob Lewis, who we introduced earlier today, he is the expert on
criticality who is going to be sitting at the table with us to offer any
information that\'s needed. I\'m going to ask Charles to set it up for
us again.

DR. MASSEY: Thank you, Chip. Before I even get started I would be
remiss, I want to make sure I point out so after this meeting if you
like you can talk to them, there are two other individuals from Sandia
with me here today Dr. Ruth Weiner and Dr. Jeremy Sprung, so if you do
have other questions or clarifications or comments please feel free to
see them after the meeting as well.

What I want to very briefly introduce is a little topic session on the
spent fuel assembly behavior itself in the event of collision or fire.
The modal study estimated the number of rods that could be damaged in a
collision or a fire based on one more collision essentially the \-- how
much damage did they expect on the inner cask wall and then they related
that to some estimation of the number of fuel rods that would be
damaged.

Then once they assumed that they had some fuel rod damage they made
assumptions based on some previous studies not particular to
transportation to see how much material in the fuel rod could get out
into the cask. Once the material was in the cask they assumed that all
of that would be released into the environment.

In the 0170 reevaluation under \-- Sandia calculated looking at the
impact and thermal forces calculated the fraction of the fuel rods
inside the cask that would be damaged. Then once we had some damaged
fuel rods we then calculated how much material inside the fuel rod could
be released to the inside the cask. Then once we had the material inside
the cask we did calculations on how much of that material would be
deposited inside the cask and depending on the thermal or environment
and then how much could be released in the environment. So much more
detailed calculations on fuel response in the event of a severe accident
condition.

For the package performance study we\'d really like to get into, instead
of using some our best engineering judgement and calculations do some
laboratory skilled experiments to get a much better handle on the fuel
behavior itself in the event of structural and thermal forces.

One thing we\'d like to look at is the rod failure. Try to get some
better handle on how many of those could be expected to fail in
collision and thermal environments. Also, look at inside the fuel
assemblies themselves. Inside the fuel rods are ceramic pellets. What
we\'d like to look at is how did those pellets also perform? How much
breakup could you get in those pellets particularly in a collision type
environment, so we have some idea how many very small particles could be
produced \-- one could partially get outside the cask.

Breakup of deposits on fuel rods, another criticism has been when the
fuel rods are in the reactor in the storage pool, we get deposits on the
outside, the CRUD. In a collision environment or thermal how much of
that CRUD that was on the fuel assembly, how much of that would come
off? So we\'d like to get a much better definition on how much of that
material would be available for potential release.

Also have on there the particle beds. There\'s been a lot of talk on if
you have a fracture of the fuel rods and small particles build up, how
much of that could come out, but also realizing that there\'s other
material at the bottom that has to be essentially filtered through that
bed of material. So we\'d like to get some data on the effect of
particle beds.

Then I guess really the overall is to get a much better definition of
how much material that\'s inside the rods in the cask is available in
the release mechanisms for a damaged cask under thermal and structural
conditions? So with that I will give it back to Chip.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Charles. Does anybody have anything to add to
what Sandia is proposing to do in the study in regard to spent nuclear
fuel assembly behavior? And let\'s go to Marvin.

MR. RESNIKOFF: We\'ve been considering these issues because they\'ve
have been to us in the PFS proceeding in Utah. So I have four different
points I wanted to raise concerning them.

One is Sandia should look at higher burn on fuel than the standard
33,000 per metric ton fuel. It can be cooled for five years but it
should be higher burn on fuel than previously considered and more
representative of fuel that may be shipped.

We\'re particularly concerned about the cladding. You actually look at
cladding which has been irradiated. It has been in the reactor, you
know, for the appropriate length of time rather than just to take
unirradiated cladding. We would want you to faithfully consider the
properties of irradiated claddings when you do the studies.

We looked at the analysis that has been done previously by Lawrence
Livermore Lab concerning breakup of cladding. There is a paper that was
done in 1987 which is inconsistent with the modal study and shows that
cladding is damaged when the G forces on the order of 60, 60 G., not
100s of Gs but a much lower amount. You should look at that study. I\'m
sure you are allowed to look at Lawrence Livermore work even if they
don\'t have the funding for this project.

Finally, there are two other points. We would like you to do a dynamic
analysis of what happens if cask is dropped sideways. In other words,
you ever cladding and then you have fuel pellets inside the cladding and
when the entire rod drops, the cladding, the pellets inside may act as,
I don\'t know how else to describe it, but a hammer force. An additional
\-- rather than consider simply the cladding weighing an additional
amount to account for the fuel pellets inside the cladding, actually
consider the cladding as a separate rod. Actually consider the pellets
as a separate rod inside the cladding and consider what would happen
dynamically when the entire rod falls sideways.

Finally, the radionuclides that you consider inside the fuel assembly
should and they weren\'t included in the original modal study, should
include americium 241. That wasn\'t included in the original study and
chlorine 36. That also needs to be included.

DR. MASSEY: Look at really a much more representative inventory inside
the spent fuel assemblies representative of the higher burn up and
higher enrichment fuels that we expect would be shipped. Does that
pretty much get to the point?

MR. RESNIKOFF: Yes.

MR. CAMERON: Let\'s go around to others to examine that point to see if
anybody else has anything to say. Bob Halstead?

MR. HALSTEAD: I know probably everyone is getting fatigued like I am,
but we have two specific values. I\'m sorry we have two specific types
of spent fuel that we\'d like to suggest for evaluation purposes.

While we have a lot of questions about the selection of the typical
fuels that DOE has identified in the draft EIS, if we use a bounding
approach to this we\'re comfortable saying that one of the spent fuel
types should be the spent fuel that DOE has identified as the quote
unquote typical spent fuel to be shipped to the repository. That fuel
would be, and I\'m trying to make this less difficult for the court
reporter, Westinghouse 17 by 17 Lopar, L O P A R assembly, that has been
cooled 26 years after withdrawal from the reactor that has a burn up
history of about 40,000 megawatt days thermal. It has an initial
enrichment of about 3.7 percent. Now that\'s one fuel type that should
use that all other things being equal may end up being typical of the
fuel that is the predominate fuel shipped over the next 40 years or so
if the Yucca Mountain goes forward.

On the other side, we would suggest as an upper bound the fuel
characteristics that the commission accepted in NUREG 1437, which is a
comparable type of PWR fuel, but in this it\'s only been cooled out of
reactor for five years, it has an extremely high initial

enrichment by current practices of five percent and a very high burn up
by current practices, 62,000 megawatt days thermal.

Again, going back to the very earliest point that I made, we\'re uneasy
about single value analyses and document like this and we may not always
agree, Felix and I or Eileen and I, on the particular values on a bound,
but I do think the issue we brought up we do want to try and take some
kind of a bounding approach here because there is a lot of uncertainty
about what will actually be shipped and the uncertainty has to reflect
the utilities need to manage the fuel in their pools.

There are some utilities that are going to exercise their contract
rights possibly and ship very hot out of reactor fuel as opposed to
shipping fuel from dry storage. DOE may decide that it wants to receive
some hotter fuel because they haven\'t decided on their thermal loading
strategy. And on the other hand, we all know that a lot of the fuel in
the inventory is very old and less radioactive and less hazardous than
the fuels I\'ve just described that indeed it may turn out that the
oldest fuel first philosophy is shipped, that fuel that\'s been cooled
30 years may be early in the queue. So a bounding approach to the
characteristics of the fuel that you select for analysis is absolutely
important.

I\'m going to waive the other comments that I have because it\'s late in
the day and I will get more into the subject in detail when we meet
again in Henderson, Nevada. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. Kevin, do you have a point on the type of
fuel?

MR. KAMPS: Yeah. I just wanted to also address that point that what
actually is going to be shipped needs to be taken into consideration. At
the Big Rock Plant in Michigan that being an experimental reactor, there
were fuel claddings that were experimented there, that were tested
there; fuel rod types; plutonium fuels that were tested there. And again
with the Palisades cask defects, the deterioration of the fuel in those
casks, what will the fuel be like that\'s actually transported? If it is
deteriorated to a significant extent, how will it behave in an accident?
So just to reemphasize that.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Kevin. Amy, do you have a separate point?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Separate.

MR. CAMERON: Rick, are you on type of fuel or kind of? Go ahead.

MR. RAWL: In looking at some of the information that\'s presented to us,
one of the things that always comes out first in an analysis of cask
response are those radionuclides which are first available for release,
the volatile out when the cask is damaged minimally. They will come out
when the cask is damaged more severely. So the calculations of release
are always building on the number or the amount of those volatile
nuclides that come out.

So in the bounding scenarios that have been set, I just wanted to point
out how important it is to have good numbers for the volatile
radionuclides in order to ensure all the other radionuclides that come
out as particulates are being added to an accurate base.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Rick. Bob, do you want to comment on
the type of fuel or you have a separate point? Let\'s go to Marvin\'s
second point and, Marvin, I\'m not sure I captured this one. You were
talking about consider the properties of irradiated cladding and you
were talking about use the 60 G force. I\'m sure others understand what
this means and I guess I would ask them if they had any questions about
it or \-- does everybody understand what Marvin\'s point is there? I
don\'t need to understand. But is there anybody else who could use an
explanation of it?

Marvin, could you just explain that, that one what you are trying to get
to there?

MR. RESNIKOFF: Some of the studies I have seen and I think it\'s the
modal study, too, look at the damage done to fuel assemblies, to fuel
cladding in particular and they have forces that are up in the hundreds
of Gs before cladding is damaged. On the other hand, there is a Lawrence
Livermore study that we have looked at which looks at cladding and looks
at this particular fuel assembly that Bob mentioned, the Westinghouse 17
by 17 fuel assembly and does a static analysis. In other words, drop it
and look at where the spacers are in the fuel assembly and look at the
length between spacers and see what the force will be when you drop it,
how much it will bend.

Those show damage for forces on the order of 60 G. In other words you
only have to drop the cask on the order of a couple feet to get that
kind of damage level. Even those studies concerned us because we were
concerned that the cladding itself may not have all the properties of
irradiated cladding. So we wanted Sandia in particular to particularly
test cladding which has been irradiated to see if it becomes more
brittle when it\'s irradiated particularly to higher levels and whether
it would shatter more easily, you know, with a lower force.

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I thank you for

14 that. I think that that\'s clear and I would just

15 ask if anybody around the table who has any

16 comments on that recommendation? We do

17 understand it. All right.

18 Marvin\'s third point was do a dynamic

19 analysis of a cask that is dropped sideways.

20 Treat the pellets as a separate rod inside the

21 cladding. Now Charles, Rob, do you understand

22 the nature of Marvin\'s suggestion? Okay. Does

235

1 anybody else have a comment on that particular

2 point.

3 The last one goes to the elements

4 americium and forget what the number was and

5 chlorine but those should also be considered. Do

6 you want to give me those numbers again and I\'ll

7 put it up for people to see.

8 MR. RESNIKOFF: Americium 241 and

9 chlorine 36. Americium 241 was not considered in

10 the modal study. They looked at fuel essentially

11 that came out of the reactor and americium 241

12 builds up over time. So in the decay of

13 plutonium 241, americium 241 builds up and so if

14 you can have fuel that\'s aged five years or

15 longer you need to look at the build up of

16 americium 241 and fuel.

17 Chlorine 36 behaves similarly to iodine

18 129 and that\'s why it\'s important because it is a

19 volatile material. It\'s important to look at

20 that in accident situation.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Bob

22 Halstead, comment?

236

1 MR. HALSTEAD: At this hour I\'m not

2 going to belabor this by fishing the number out

3 of my briefcase, but I remember reviewing

4 particularly older fuel in the 20 to 30 year

5 range. Marvin is right, americium becomes one of

6 the top six or eight of radionuclides in terms of

7 securing concentration.

8 MR. CAMERON: Thank you for that

9 clarification. Any other comments on the

10 americium, of chlorine or related radionuclides?

11 MR. KAMPS: Just one I forgot before.

12 The Department of Energy\'s proposal to burn mox

13 fuel in U.S. reactors also introduces different

14 quality of highly irradiated nuclear fuel that

15 would be transported. That needs to be

16 considered.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Let\'s go Bob Fronczak for some points on
criticality.

MR. FRONCZAK: Actually my points aren\'t as far as criticality. It\'s
the response of thecask including the contents. Our understanding is
that the modal study didn\'t consider the contents of the cask or said
that they would have little effect and it wasn\'t explained very well
because there weren\'t a lot of details provided so we\'d just like that
that be clarified.

The other thing is that we felt the contents of the cask could also add
stiffness to the cask that wasn\'t considered in certain impact
scenarios. So we\'d like you to consider that too.

MR. CAMERON: Any comments on Bob\'s suggestions? Felix?

MR. KILLAR: Just a clarification. When you are looking at the contents
of the reaction

of the fuel, I assume you are going to take into consideration the space
and the bundle containers as far as adding to the weight of the cask but
also adding to the structural strength and stability of the fuel itself.
I also want to point out that americium 241 is very important because
that\'s what you use in your smoke detectors at home.

MR. CAMERON: Bob, you have a comment?

MR. HALSTEAD: I found that value. It\'s 1,700 curies of americium 241
per pressurized water reactor of the reference type so while it has
many, many good uses, Felix, this is one we could do without.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob. Amy? I think we\'re ready for a different
comment.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Again I have a question about whether this is viable
for the study or not. My question is if there are accident scenarios
where fuel rods get jostled where pellets come off, I wonder if the
study could somehow consider then what happens after that. It seems like
all of the scenarios in the study ended with the accident. Here\'s what
happened. This much came out or this much didn\'t come out, but it seems
to me that at some point after the cask has fallen off the train or the
truck has fallen off the bridge and you have to fish the cask out of the
river and you have to put it on another truck and you have to still take
it to some point in the West yet to be named, and get it into the
mountain which will be in a different container so it\'s got to come out
of the cask and into another container and I\'m wondering if somehow the
effects of that could be looked at in this study or if not in this study
in another one.

MR. CAMERON: The point is, and it may not be a point for this study, but
nevertheless an important point is if a cask is involved in an accident
how is that cask, if there is no I guess apparent damage or whatever,
how is that cask treated when it gets to the repository? Maybe the NRC
could answer question although there may not be a lot of experience with
this is what would happen if a cask was damaged en route to the
repository or if there was somewhere else.

Rod, do you want to do that or Susan?

MS.SHANKMAN: I think the point of the study is to look at the dynamics
that would create that accident and the recovery from it has to take
into account what would happen if there is no release and the cask is
undamaged then you have a physically large heavy object that has be
resited on its vehicle and moved exactly, but I don\'t think that that
would be any different from another heavy object that has to be
reaffixed to whatever it\'s transporting.

If there is damage to the cask there are ways to recover from that and
we have to figure out whether the probability is so high that we needed
to change the training of the emergency responders. I think that\'s
where it leads us and why we\'re doing the study.

MR. CAMERON: Rick, you wanted to say something?

MR. BOYLE: I think it\'s safer to say if a cask is involved in an
accident, even if it does not appear to be damaged, I\'m sure the cask
will be inspected greatly. In this case or in that transportation case
the first thing the Department of Transportation is going to look for is
to go to the NRC and say is that cask still as described in your
certificate? If they verify that it is then that it could continue on
more than likely than an different carriage, probably, whatever rail,
vehicle or truck that it was on is no longer serviceable so it would be
off loaded onto a different one.

If it is not as described in the certificate, then whoever the shipper
is is going

to have to come into the Department of Transportation and get a special
approval we call

it an exemption, from the regulations, because if it\'s not approved by
the NRC it\'s not allowed to be transported domestically under the
regulations which will kick in a whole application process and a whole
review process and consulting with NRC and in this case it would be the
Department of Energy to say if it\'s not in accordance with the
regulations, what special precautions are you going to take? And I think
the Department of Transportation\'s view there is you will be better to
move it to a safe location. That wouldn\'t be a siding on the road, it
might not be the final repository. It may be the closest reactor to
repackage it, but you are going to have to get it out of the community
and the transport approval will take all that into account as to how it
should be moved.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you for that information, Rick. Let\'s hear from Jack
and then Marvin. Jack Edlow.

MR. EDLOW: That\'s a very good question I appreciate your question about
what happen in the case of an accident afterwards. I would like to say
that there are thousands of shipments of radioactive material every year
and millions of shipments of hazardous materials every year. Of course
there are accidents involving various materials hazardous and
radioactives not necessarily spent fuel all that often, but other types
of materials as well. So that clearly industry has already faced this
kind of situation before both haz mats and for radioactives.

These kinds of procedures have been looked at and have been dealt with
in accordance with the way that Rick has said in the past. For spent
fuel shipment it would be effectively no different in the process. It\'s
just that this particular type of material is viewed by some as more
hazardous and more heavier and somehow it\'s special, but in any case it
would be dealt with in the same way. But thank you very much. It\'s very
thoughtful.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I just wanted to clarify I wasn\'t suggesting you
didn\'t have a way to do it I was just asking if the study could address
what the effects of it would be. I wasn\'t saying you didn\'t know how.
I don\'t know if you know how or not. What I was asking, since this is a
study about the transportation of spent fuel, and so it should address
the scenarios that can occur because of the transportation of spent
fuels.

MS. SHANKMAN: The study is meant to look at some of the factors that
would be involved in the stresses that might lead to damage of the
container or the contents. It\'s not a definitive study of the
transportation of spent fuel. But it isn\'t, I mean may be another way
in which we consider that and so I\'m glad you bring it up. But I\'m not
sure how we work that into this knowing what stresses we created and
what we would have at the end would help us understand what kind of
response we have to prepare for.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Susan. Marvin?

MR. RESNIKOFF: I think the point is well taken for a more a couple of
reasons. One is my experience that in reviewing the BFSSAR in Utah,
we\'ve raised the issue what happens if a cask has surface contamination
on it. And the answer to that, which is in the SAR, is that cask is
shipped back to the reactor. No matter with the levels of contamination,
the SAR says that cask goes back to the reactor. Even if it\'s above DOT
regs, there is no provision that the facility for actually cleaning the
cask.

So the issue is I think well taken at least in that situation where a
cask is contaminated. You know, somebody has an idea how that\'s going
to be handled, some private contractor coming in, I don\'t know, but BFS
says it\'s not going to be their job.

The second reason I think the point well taken is that there actually
was an accident. Which isn\'t listed in one of the six or eight
accidents that were listed previously, which involved the shipment fuel
to the Batelle, Columbus facility in 1980 in Ohio in which a fuel
assembly was put in that was too hot. Contrary to the certificate of
compliance, the workers put a fuel assembly in that was too hot and the
effect of that is the fuel oxidized and when they opened up the cask
under water large amount of radioactive contamination came out of the
cask and into the pool. Of course it was evacuated, but workers were
contaminated, workers were exposed in the process of decontaminating the
entire pool.

I think the NRC also, I should say, has taken steps so that won\'t
happen again and since they now inert the cask, they have helium inside
the cask rather than oxygen as they had before or water, but I think
point is well taken because there is one specific example that there was
something that was shipped contrary to regulations and it led to certain
consequences at Batelle, Columbus.

MR. CAMERON: I think we had some reaction to that, Marvin.

Before we go to Rick Boyle, PFS stands for private fuel storage and that
is a licensing hearing before the NRC to approve a spent fuel storage
facility in the State of Utah and I hope that that provides enough
information on that. Rick?

MR. BOYLE: Thank you. I completely disagree. The packages that are not
in compliance with DOT regulations are transported anyway, be that for
contamination, labelling, anything else. And it doesn\'t matter if the
safety analysis report for the package does not address what would
happen in this case.

I think if you are looking at that, customs has stopped packages because
they\'re hot and then we have to deal with it from there. If you go to
any scrap metal facility they have meters going in and when the rail car
comes in and its hot, it\'s sent off to the side. That scrap metal
facility has no license to possess and we have to work out an exemption
so it can be sent back. The same is true of landfills.

It\'s just not true that if a violation is found it\'s marked return to
sender and sent back. That\'s no way. No how. I\'m sorry, we just have
to correct an inaccuracy in that matter.

MR. CAMERON: Marvin?

MR. RESNIKOFF: I suggest that he direct his anger toward the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, that he respond to the EIS and the SAR. They come
out as a cooperating federal agency. You tell PFS, you tell the NRC that
that\'s wrong. I suggest you submit comments as a cooperating federal
agency. I encourage that.

MR. CAMERON: Apparently maybe there needs to be more exploration of this
particular point that we don\'t necessarily have to explore it at this
point. But thank you for those comments and I would ask if there is
anybody in the audience who wants to make a comment on spent nuclear
fuel assembly behavior in accidents and then we\'ll come back up to the
front.

Final comment on this from Kevin and, Rick, I didn\'t know whether you
wanted to say anything else at this point on this issue but you can if
you want after we go to Kevin.

MR. KAMPS: Just wanted to bring up German experience again. A transport
of highly irradiated nuclear fuel returning from France was found to be
3,000 times the appropriate level or the acceptable level and so this is
a very significant issue that needs to be addressed. And again that
contamination event and the locking out of the public in Germany have
led to a situation where the transport of highlyirradiated fuel has been
stopped for reasons in Germany. So it\'s a very significant issue.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Kevin. Rick?

MR. BOYLE: I think that point is well taken because Kevin is completely
correct that there were high contamination shipments made in Europe and
it highlights the point that once they were identified shipments
stopped. They didn\'t continue and say we know they\'re hot and we
shipped them anyway. And I think you would seein several European
countries they aren\'t making shipments today because once the problem
wasidentified, shipments were stopped.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Are we ready to move on to the next discussion
point? Yes?

MR. KAMPS: Just that it took years for that information to come out to
the public the cover-up involved is a pretty significant issue.

MR. EDLOW: That\'s ludicrous.

MR. CAMERON: There\'s some disagreement here about whether was a quote
\"cover-up\" unquote and I think we\'re just going to move on to the
next discussion area which is the whole testing computer simulation
methodology. Go ahead, Charles. And I don\'t mean that I want to stop
anybody from getting into these issues. We can do that if that\'s what
people want to do, but I think at this point it\'s most profitable to
move on. Go ahead and we\'re bringing our NRC expert up to the table who
we\'ll introduce in a few minutes. Charles?

DR. MASSEY: Thank you, Chip. The next topic area is physical testing
simulation and here I just want to give a little background, I think a
lot of this we covered earlier, a little bit of background on the
progression and the study regarding severe accidents and how we have
calculated and predicted response to the cask.

The modal study was all computer simulation, mathematical models
developed to permit cask response and collisions and fires. There was no
testing done specifically for the modal study. The models were based on
test data from other experiments and test that were done, but there was
nothing specifically done for modal studies.

For the NUREG 0170 update that we recently submitted to NRC for review,
we\'ve used improved computer models based on data that we\'ve gotten
from other test and experiments have been conducted, but again there was
no testing specifically conducted for NUREG 0170 reevaluation.

Where we sort of differ from that past history in the package
performance study, we would suggest that simulation and testing be done
of some representative cask and we actually take a cask design, looking
for comments on this, what that would exactly be, but use our models
that we have developed, thermal and structural models, look at the
collision and thermal scenarios that we have discussed, but do that sort
of pretest prediction on the cask response, then actually do the test.
And then compare that and see how well you can predict performance of
the cask. And with that I\'m going to turn back to Chip and get moving.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Charles. I just wanted to introduce Jeffrey
Hornseth who is a materials engineer, an expert in metallurgy and is
involved in this issue as are expert on physical testing. He\'s been
with the NRC since 1991. He has a master\'s of science degree from
George Washington University. Let\'s go right into this for comments.

Bob, you have your card up. Do you have some points on the physical
testing computer simulation issue?

MR. HALSTEAD: Yes. As a person who has pursued this issue for 20 years,
I\'ll give you a short version and this is one the issues that we plan
to discuss in detail at the meeting at Henderson.

First point, I think it would be a good ground rule to say in this
discussion that we separate the issue of cask testing for the purposes
of this modal study update from the larger issue of whether full scale
testing should be required as a condition of certification. I think
we\'ll eat up all the time we\'d like to talk about if we try to resolve
that larger issue about the desirability of testing, for licensing.

I would restate briefly the arguments for that larger testing issue. The
State of Nevada has argued in favor of full scale testing as a condition
of certification which it requires full scale testing of a prototype of
every cask that goes to the NRC. We have developed cost estimates on it.
We have developed an outline of what the testing protocols would be. We
published a report by Dave Snediker (phonetic) who many of you know
worked as a cask designer for many years, looking at some of the pros
and cons of full scale testing, documenting the past experience with it.

We are also cognizant of the improvements in the codes that allow us to
address some of these questions through computer simulations and we\'re
certainly open to a discussion of a combination of something less than
\-- let me say before I say this \-- we are not satisfied with the
current test requirements which allow one tenth and one quarter scale
modeling and generally combine simulations to provide the information
required in the safety analysis report and constitute a basis for
certification.

The question for us is given inadequacy of the system, do we need full
scale testing and a lot of additional simulations or is it possible at
least with some package designs that have scale model testing allows us
to capture small details like performance of bolts, for example. So
we\'re open to a discussion there.

For technical validation purposes. In terms of public confidence we
would argue that (A) there is probably no substitute for full scale
testing; and (B) the full scale testing must be the boring, repetitive,
laboratory condition testing that was conducted with the true pack two
\[TRUPACT-II\] container rather than the kind of dramatic public
demonstration testing which is what I would argue the Sandia test in the
\'70s constitute. I would even argue the testing in the U.K. of the mox
fuel flask falls into that category because when they did the drop test,
they actually found that the drop test did greater damage to cask
integrity than the locomotive hitting the cask test.

In terms of what you do for this particular effort, I\'m just going to
throw an issue out that I think as much as I would like to see you take
a particular design that we think is likely to be used, someone would
have to pay to have GA4 constructed, for example, so that you could test
it. I hesitate to say this, but I\'m not sure it\'s a good idea for you
to take on physical testing of a cask as part of this effort if you
think it\'s going to address the criticisms that those of us who believe
there should be full scale testing have raised.

I don\'t think it\'s possible within context of this study to take that
issue on and walk away leaving anyone satisfied. And my primary concern
is that the package that I think is most in need of testing in terms of
meeting the concerns of most of the effective

stakeholders have is a GA4 cask, which is probably, if anyone wants to
pony up the money to have say 10 or 15 of them constructed, the cask
that would be used for early shipments to a repository for truck
shipments to a storage facility.

It is true that there are some casks, multi-canister and dual purpose
canister that are certified like the GA4, and I\'m not sure Marvin may
know or someone from the NRC may know, if there is going to be one of
those casks out. I think it is an incredibly bad idea to test a cask
which is not one of the actual casts that will be used in the largest
upcoming shipping campaign, i.e., Yucca Mountain, if the department
decides to go forward and submit a license application.

And so I think you really want to think very carefully about how you
want to pose the cask testing question and I will certainly try togive
you a little more guidance of our thinking about it when we meet in
Henderson.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob. You made a number of points there including
the one that, there is separate issue here on cask testing in terms of
the actual certification. I think that you said that this mix of scale
model simulation full scale testing would depend on type of package, but
you gave us a caution on the, what the potential value might be of doing
a full scale test for this study on a cask that\'s not going to be
representative of the major cask that\'s going to be used in shipping.

MR. HALSTEAD: Slight clarification. You amazingly managed to get most of
it pretty accurately. In terms of Nevada\'s position right now the
current requirements are inadequate. That is the combination of scale
models less than half scale plus simulations constituting sufficient
evidence that the cask performance criteria are met for certifications
purposes, that to us is unacceptable.

The question of whether we would accept something less than full scale
testing, suggested half scale testing, we\'re willing to consider that
which frankly has not been our position for most of the last 10 years,
but I think I captured the other points very carefully.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much. Susan, do you have a question?

MS. SHANKMAN: Little clarification. I\'m interested in what other
setting full scale testing is done of every design where you feel that
it\'s been beneficial. I\'m not familiar with another industry that does
that and if you know of another industry we could look at that and how
it\'s proved its efficacy for safety if you know of one.

MR. HALSTEAD: I\'m not going to address that larger issue right now
because frankly I can tell from the last discussion that a lot of
people\'s tempers and attention spans are perhaps getting to a point
where we need to wrap this day up and I think you need to consider
planning for Henderson how you want to pace the day.

I think what we learned this is a very intense topic and since I just
had a cappuccino I\'d probably run for another 30 minutes, so I think we
want to make sure if you have a real important question, I will pose it
to you another way: The only truly acceptable, politically and
technically in my mind shipping campaign that\'s currently in progress
is the Transuranic (phonetic) shipping campaign to WIEB \[WIPP\].

You may wonder how it is that states like Nevada that have very little
good to say about the Department of Energy, sometimes about the NRC and
sometimes about the industry, have generally accepted the WIEB \[WIPP\]
program (phonetic)for transportation.

One issue is the operation of protocols for accident prevention and
emergency response. That\'s an important part of it. Those were jointly
developed by the states in DOE.

Another part has to do with routing. I don\'t want to reopen that issue,
but the bottom line is a different approach was used there. The routes
were identified in the EIS. It took 10 years to work them all out and it
was a consensus that the safest roads and routes were chosen.

Third issue, for a variety of reasons, not this one, the NRC decided to
require full scale testing of the true pack two and indeed in the
testing we found that things that hadn\'t been anticipated. I can tell
you that without making this a largely theoretical issue, the very fact
that those tests were subjected to rigorous full scale testing is (A) a
major reason why governors of the western states based on the advice of
their technical advisors, have all signed off on protocols in support of
this shipping campaign. (B) It is a major reason why people like myself
are willing to stand in front of a sometimes incredulous public, who is
used to hearing us do nothing but criticize the NRC and DOE industry,
and say look you can like it or not like it. I\'m giving you my best
judgment as a person who has worked on these issues for 20 years. The
bottom line is I can stand up there with confidence and say not only on
the technical issue, but on the institutional issue the NRC and DOE were
willing to demonstrate that. That\'s not the best answer I would like to
give to you, but it\'s the only example I can give you where both the
people who give technical advice to political decision makers and the
political decision makers have said okay we are satisfied with the
safety of this program. It\'s not all about full scale testing, but I\'m
willing to bet you that if there had not been full scale testing to true
pack two, there would still be enormous state government opposition in
at least half of the western states.

The thing I want you to think about at the NRC is whether you want to
risk hanging the validity of this modal study update on an issue as
volatile and difficult to predict the outcome of as full scale cask
testing, unless you are willing to go to the great lengths of testing
one of the casks that\'s going to be used for the future shipments.

So I\'m trying as a person who is a long time advocate of full scale
testing, and I remain an advocate of full scale testing, I really want
you to seriously rethink whether you want to tie that issue to this
particular undertaking which I think is very valuable and something that
we\'re fully supportive of. I just don\'t know that you want to tie full
scale testing into it. I think that\'s the issue today, not whether full
scale testing is necessarily a good idea.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob, for both drawing the distinction between
full testing and also for that caution for the NRC to consider. Let\'s
go to Eileen and to Felix. Eileen?

MS. SUPKO: I had a different reaction to the possibility of testing than
whether or not we were testing, proposing full scale cask testing or
something else. What I thought I heard earlier in the day as part of the
purpose of physical testing is the fact that there are new cask designs
that are coming out that may not be accurately reflected in the computer
models and part of the testing program would be to benchmark your
models, which is basically what you said you would run the predictive
models first, do the testing and find out how those components behave
compared to what you predicted.

One of the things I would encourage in doing that is laying out very
clearly prior to embarking on the testing program and whether it be
individual components or scale models of casks, the stated purpose of
your tests, what do you hope to accomplish, are you testing an
individual component, is it a seal, is it a bolt, is it the behavior \--
the fact that you have canistered fuel now instead of fuel sitting in an
basket. What the are the acceptable testing requirements that would
yield the results that you want? If it\'s a bolt do you need to do a
full scale test on a bolt? What analytical codes are you planning to use
and is one of the end results possible changes to your analytical codes?
Because we have do have different designs that are potentially going to
be used in the future. And then basically identifying the testing
parameters that you are planning on doing. You may not need to go
through the thermal tests for all of the different parameters, it may be
drop tests, it may be something different, but laying all that out with
what your stated objectives are and again I\'ll back to my initial
statement about getting the most bang for your buck and looking at what
it is you are trying to achieve by doing the study.

I think that it may be that the issue isn\'t we\'re going \-- trying to
address the concerns of groups, full scale cask testing, but your
purpose is something different.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much for that, Eileen. Let\'s hear from
Felix and then let\'s hear from Mike Wangler over here on end.

MR. KILLAR: My comments are along the same line as Eileen and also on
the same lines as

Bob.

I think if you are looking at testing for this program you have to be
very careful what you use in testing because I think what the question
will come up is that you tested this why didn\'t you test that? And then
you end up in an infinite dooloop and you\'re never solving and come to
a final answer to the question.

I think what you have to do is identify where you have questions and
where you need testing to validate your computer codes and computer
models and then do the testing appropriately, but not just do testing
for the sake of testing because what\'s happening you will never get to
the end of your testing.

MR. CAMERON: Your message, Felix, the NRC is to be very cautious about
getting into the full scale testing area. Mike?

MR. WANGLER: I think I might be the fourth person to kind of support
that idea. I think that you do have to be careful in how the test data
is used.

On the question of full scale testing I\'m neither an opponent or
proponent of full scale testing. I\'m one of the three groups within DOE
that\'s authorized to approve radioactive materials packaging for the
type A, type B. For my type A packages I require full scale testing
before approval.

MR. CAMERON: Mike, could I just stop you right there and just tell
people what type A packages include so there\'s no confusion?

MR. WANGLER: Type A packages are the much lesser quantities of
radioactive materials that you might find being transported in the U.S.
Spent fuel falls in a very, has a lot of radioactive material and falls
into the so-called type B category. Some medical isotopes and things of
that nature fall in the type A category. Again, my point is for those
type of packages I require full scale testing. However, for the type B
packages, I think full scale testing is one method of getting to the
answer that you need or get to the answer that I need to certify a
package.

I generally rely on engineering analyses to help me understand whether
the package will meet the regulatory requirements. The use of the
engineer analysis means I use analytical tools for any confirmatory
analysis. These tools facilitate my review especially on large packages.
What these analytical codes allow me to do is to look at multiple
scenarios that one can\'t do with drop tests.

A drop tests generally can do at least one scenario. Let me back up. I
wouldn\'t even call them scenarios. I\'m looking for data points. The
drop test can be used to get you \-- we have some data points.
Engineering analyses will let you run a series of analyses to see how
the codes will tell you that package would perform under various
scenarios.

Now being part of the Office of Environmental Management that appeals to
me because using computer codes means I don\'t have to worry about any
environmental impacts from having to deal with fires or even some
impacts. So the engineering analyses gets me some of the answers that I
need.

Where I find testing would be helpful to me is if the testing was done
to give me data points to insure that my analytical codes do what they
say that they\'re supposed to do. A drop test, for example, at the
regulatory test doesn\'t really \-- it\'s one point. It doesn\'t tell me
how my code is going to perform either beyond that range or within that
range. I\'d like to know what my margins of safety are. The analytical
codes can help me determine what those margins of safety would be.

If Sandia is going to be testing, what I would rather see is that the
testing be used to support validation of the computer code or computer
codes that we all use in this business to try to insure the performance
of these large packages.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Mike, for that comment. Earl Easton has a comment
on that.

MR. EASTON: I couldn\'t resist. Having been around long enough I happen
to have been the project manager for true pack two \[TRUPACT-II\]
certifications for the NRC and very instrumental in the decision to go
ahead with the full scale test. The reason we did so for true pack two
\[TRUPACT-II\] was because we did not have faith in the existing
computer codes to model that type of closure. That type of closure was
radically different than what we had seen, for example, in spent fuel
where you had a bolted lid and we felt that that was well understood and
that we could rely on analytical tools.

True pack two \[TRUPACT-II\] had a large lid that had a closure around
the outside much like an aspirin bottle. We had an absolutely no
confidence that we could really model that by computer. So I agree with
Mr. Wangler from DOE. One of the good uses of testing is to validate
tools. Because when you do tests you can usually only afford to do full
scale testing in one or two different orientations. Whereas, if you have
some sort of reliable code, like Mike said, do very different tests and
perhaps get a better insight where the real safety points are on that
cask.

I just wanted to make that comment based on the experience why it was
that we did choose true pack two \[TRUPACT-II\] as a candidate for full
scale testing.

MR. CAMERON: It confirms what Mike Wangler was suggesting then. Let\'s
go to Bob Fronczak and then we\'ll come over to Amy. Bob, I don\'t know
if you have something else to say? Let\'s go to Bob Fronczak.

MR. FRONCZAK: Unlike Bob Halstead, I didn\'t have cappuccino so I\'m
wearing out. I\'ll be very brief.

MR. CAMERON: He\'s a strategic thinker. The rest of us failed.

MR. FRONCZAK: All I have to say is the computing capability has
increased since the study was done and I\'m sure you are going to
incorporate that in the work that you are going to do. There is all
kinds of things you can model that we have already discussed. I\'ll
follow-up with some written comments.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: I have a question. My question is, if I understand it
correctly, and this question is sort of directed at Mr. Edlow because I
think he\'ll know the answer, if I understand it correctly there is a
possibility that the transportation cask can be used more than once to
transport fuel rods. You know, come from the reactor to the repository
and go back, and if that\'s true I\'m wondering if the study is in any
way planning to take into account sort of normal wear and tear on a cask
and look at how many times can a cask be used before it gets to a
certain level or if the cask has been used say five dimes \[times\] and
bounced around on a train, does that have any effect, for instance, on
the bolts and how tight they are.

MR. CAMERON: Those are good questions are the casks used multiple time
us and is that something that should be factored into the study.

JEFFREY: The transportation casks are designed to be used multiple
times. Part of the certification process is a review of the in-service
inspection program that must be developed for each cask where all the
components are routinely inspected before the cask can be either on a
periodic basis or a time scheduled basis or on a per shipment basis so
that each time the thing goes out, it goes out in acceptable condition;
in condition that\'s up to compliance with the certificate.

MR. CAMERON: Did we get to the point about whether that should be
considered in the new study? All right. Good.

I think Bob Halstead is correct in the sense that we have been at this
for a while and it\'s been pretty intense and I think maybe we should
switch gears a little bit and talk about process.

One of the things that Dr. Shankman, Rob Lewis, a number of people have
talked about is how does NRC keep people involved in this process, this
study update? And of course there is going to be many different
milestones along the way and we\'ve heard peer review mentioned. That\'s
one aspect.

I just wanted to open it up to people around the table to see if there
is any suggestions about how the NRC should keep the public involved
through the course of this study and at what points that should occur
and how. Does anybody have any suggestions to start us off with?
Heather?

MS. WESTRA: Just a question regarding tribes. How do you anticipate
involving Indian tribes beyond this meeting? I understand you have the
meeting out in Nevada and I anticipate that more tribes would be at that
one, but often times tribes are kind of left out of the loop and don\'t
have access to the internet, federal register, all these other
publications. So that piece is also lacking.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. I don\'t know if we have any answers to that at
this point but we need to consider that. Does anybody from the NRC want
to say anything?

MR. LEWIS: One thing we can say we will have the mailing list in
addition to the website. Both have very similar functions and if you
could help us identify names for the mailing list that would be very
useful.

SPEAKER: Be glad to.

MR. CAMERON: I guess there were some other ideas. Susan?

MS. SHANKMAN: We\'ve spoken about the fact that once we have phase one
of this project completed by Sandia, they have given us the
recommendation about the scope of the study and potential methodology
and we\'ve also talked about the fact that that point the Sandia
contractor report will be issued on 0170 with its peer review by
Lawrence Livermore. And so we\'re planning on having another series of
meetings. What I would like is if somebody could speak to whether this
format would be useful and whether the sites that we choose for those
meetings, particularly in response to what you are saying, perhaps we
should be in \-- thought about Atlanta, we thought about Chicago,
Minneapolis. There are other places that we could hold the meetings.

The NRC has been holding meetings in Nevada because it is an area where
there are a lot of concerns about this, if that\'s appropriate. The
meeting in Washington allows people who are involved in the policy
setting to also be part of it, but we\'re open to other venues an other
formats.

MR. CAMERON: Let me just make sure that we all understand. The phase one
recommendations \-- in other words, Sandia is going to and the NRC are
going to take the comments that come out of this meeting and the
meetings in Nevada, as well as any written comments we have, and
they\'re going to put together a recommendation for how to proceed. Will
that be the subject? Is that what you are referring, to the subject of
future meetings? Future public comments?

MS. SHANKMAN: Yeah, along with having the information that is coming out
of the contractor report that we have been talking about, the update of
the assumptions in 0170. So you will have two new pieces of information
before we go ahead and contract or spend more money in this area because
we don\'t want to say okay we\'ve heard you, we\'re going to design a
study and we\'re going to do it. We want to have another point where we
get public comment and that will be after the study and designed but
before we do it.

MR. CAMERON: Does that perhaps explain the relationship between the 0170
study and this study is that they will be both looked at together. I\'m
going to go to Robert Holden now before we come over to this side to Bob
Halstead. Robert?

MR. HOLDEN: I just want to go back for a second to a point Heather
brought up and I guess from a policy standpoint Nevada is microcosm of
this national meeting here and that\'s that tribes in that area have
very little resources to come to Washington, DC. Even Las Vegas can be a
burden. We have held meetings in Reno and we have held meetings, there
is a halfway in between Vegas \-- I can\'t remember what the name of it
is \-- but there are several options there and there are several tribes
that will be impacted by rail shipments up in the northern part and you
might even touch base with Bob Halstead because he\'s quite familiar
with the area and the tribes and the locations as well. But that also,
to pick up on a policy point, that\'s some of the things I plan to be
doing, talking with commissioners in terms of the outreach that NRC does
on notice, on consultation as well as the technical assistance that you
have to offer in terms of breaking the issues down and providing that
type of technical assistance to help them better understand that that\'s
part of NRC\'s duty as the tribes see it as those governments see it.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Robert. Susan?

MS. SHANKMAN: I was just going to say we\'ll be glad to work with you
and we\'ll talk afterwards. I\'m sure you are familiar with the staff
and our office and I agree that the outreach may need to be different
and we are willing to work with you.

MR. HOLDEN: That changes from time to time. I\'m not sure whose is on
first at this point.

MR. CAMERON: Bob Halstead.

MR. HALSTEAD: On the issue of Nevada Indian tribe participation
representation, that\'s a very difficult issue as Robert said. First of
all, the distances involved; travel just within our state is very
difficult. And secondly, as many of you know there is both an income and
a telephone connection issue in internet connection and this is now a
larger issue of isolation of many people on the reservation.

Without belaboring the point you going to have to make special efforts
to get the Nevada tribes involved and frankly you are also going to have
to struggle as I have and many people working for the State of Nevada
struggled with to develop a sufficient cultural sensitivity to know that
when tribal representatives come to a meeting and they may be spiritual
leaders, may be political leaders, they may be both, they may not feel
comfortable fitting themselves in to the tightly scripted meeting agenda
which I think has worked very well in this meeting, but may be
considered offensive by many of them.

We don\'t need to belabor, but there are a number of things you can do
and I appreciate your expressing sensitivity. I don\'t want to bog us
down on that issue it\'s very important, but I don\'t think we can
resolve it around this table. I do think you have to show the same type
of sensitivity you\'re showing today in dealing with the counties in
Nevada who have a very peculiar legal status because of their effective
county status under the NWPAA and the litigation enforced that.

And again I\'ve spoken with many of the county representatives and most
of them know Chip by name and you\'ll probably see most of them involved
in Henderson. So I ask that in addition to your continued sensitivity to
the tribal participation issue, that you keep in mind the nine Nevada
California counties that are involved.

I don\'t want to belabor this again, but I will raise two points. I
think at the end of this meeting or the next meeting you have some
serious stakeholders who will be following the peer review issue as well
as the conduct of the study. One of the lessons learned from the modal
study and some of the other studies that have been done over the last 20
years the practice is that the peer review has not always been very
impressive, to put it bluntly, and as a stakeholder I don\'t believe at
least involved in reviewing what\'s going on in peer review

Secondly, while there are a number of mechanisms you have used and other
agencies have used to continue participation by those stakeholders who
will choose to be deeply involved, one mechanism might be a standard
advisory group on the study in addition to whatever public meetings you
might want to have to take input from the general public, but I\'m sure
there are a number of us around this table who are intimately interested
in this.

I imagine the modal study two being as central to discussions of
container safety as the modal safety one has been, or the last 13, 14
years, and so I even though that three year time period is something
that makes a lot of us gulp, I know half of Nevada would like to be
involvedin an ongoing way. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. I would ask you if there were standing
advisory committee on this, I suppose the standing advisory committee
could sponsor public meetings, also. Thank you.

Let\'s go to Felix and Amy and I want to make sure that I get Marvin\'s
input on some of these issues particularly the review of the peer review
that you brought up, Bob and advisory committee. Felix?

MR. KILLAR: I think the NRC has done an exceptional job of getting the
information out to people making them aware of the meetings. I\'ve been
involved with the NRC for 25 years and I feel that the last five to
eight years the NRC has bent over backwards to try to get information
out.

Now being a governed bureaucracy is hard because sometimes understand
how the public works versus not everybody reads the Federal Register
over their coffee in the morning. I think the idea they go on through
with the idea of the postcards, the mailing lists, the internet, things
on that line, I think the NRC needs to be applauded for their efforts.

The NRC is now having a tendency to beat up itself because it doesn\'t
feel it\'s doing enough. I think there is only so much the NRC can do in
order to get the word out.

I think it\'s incumbent for people around this table \-- I know that
Sierra Club does it and I\'m sure the Indian Federations do it as well
and we certainly do it because we put information out on our internet,
our members\' website. We also put information out on our publications
and stuff about upcoming NRC meetings, location, contacts, things along
that line. You have got to rely on word of mouth to some extent because
you can\'t rely on every system there is because you will never be able
to reach everybody.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much. Amy?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: First, I think the advisory committee is a great
idea. I think that would probably allow you to reach a broader ripple
effect of people because people sitting at this table represent a lot
more people behind them so I think that would be a good idea.

Second, I\'m glad to hear there is mailing list because I think the
tendency with all federal agencies now is to rely on their websites a
lot and I think that\'s very dangerous. Native Americans are mentioned
as people who don\'t have access to internet and I think that lots of
people don\'t have access to the internet.

I was at a meeting last week where I was told you can just go to the
library and then you will have access which is true in most communities.
However, I have printed this modal study out at work where we have a
really nice big server and dedicated printer that\'s a really nice
printer and it took me two days. It\'s a huge PF file and PF files take
a long time to print and you can\'t do that at a library plus the cost
is a whole new factor. So I just caution you to look for ways other than
the web. I fully enforce using the web.

Lastly, I would just like to say I think it\'s really great following up
on what Felix said. I think it\'s great that you are making this effort.
You know, definitely you are doing better than you have in the past.

I think the number one way that you encourage public participation is to
show that it has an effect and I think that really what you could do is
you could take the comments that are here today and comments that you
will receive in the future, and you can do a modal study that addresses
the public\'s concerns. Then you can take that modal study and do
meetings like this. I think if we had to choose between Washington and
Chicago that would be great, but if we could have it in both Washington
and Chicago that would be wonderful.

I think one more thing would really show

16 in a big way that you are really committed and

17 that is this summary is nice, it\'s a good summary

18 and then I read the summary and I read the study

19 and I felt like the summary did a pretty good job

20 of summarizing the study. However, this is still

21 written to a certain level of education and

22 certain level of knowledge about high level waste

286

1 and transportation.

I think you need to go one step further if you really want the general
public to participate. Either you can do another study. I think there
are technical communicators out there that could write a summary from
this one that would still be technically accurate.

I think also a week before the hearing, two weeks before the hearing you
could have or whatever you are calling this round table discussion, you
could have a work sheet where schedule it in the evening, two or three
hours, people can come and you do a presentation and you say here is
what the study says. Here\'s what we did. Here\'s what the results were
now you have two weeks or a week or however long to think about it. Here
are the questions we\'d like you to address. Please come back in two
weeks and talk to us. So that people aren\'t walking in, picked this up
when they walked in today. I was lucky. Mailed it to me a couple weeks
ago. A lot of people only get it when they come to meeting and to try
and sit there and listen to the discussion, figure out what an
irradiated cladding is and have a comment that\'s at all worthwhile is
really difficult.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much for those thoughtful comments.

I want to allow Dr. Shankman, the top manager from the NRC today to just
close the meeting for us. Marvin, how about process issues?

MR. RESNIKOFF: I want to say a word about this advisory committee
suggestion. You stay around these issues long enough everything comes
around again and I was involved in one of these advisory committees
between 1978 and 1980 when the Regulatory Commission had Sandia do this
TRUE study, Transportation of Radionuclides through Urban Environments
advisory committee for that. And from that I have a couple of
suggestions that may be helpful.

You get out of the advisory committee as much information as you give
them. So the better advice you\'ll get is if you give the advisory
committee a lot of information and then they can give you better advice.
If you give the advisory committee nothing, you get nothing back. It
would be a useless committee.

Secondly, it would be important to have the advisory committee write up
their own report

and have that attached to the modal study report. And furthermore that
advisory committee report should allow for minority opinions not just
have a majority review.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Marvin. I should mention in this regard that any on
the advisory committee, the NRC as well as any other federal agency that
wants to establish an advisory committee must meet the requirements the
federal advisory committee act, which are all good requirements in terms
of open meetings and minutes of the meetings and although it doesn\'t
specifically flow from the Act, reports, minority reports, all of this,
the one requirement that sometimes can be daunting but not is the fact
that the committee needs to be chartered and the charter has to be
approved by, I think, GAO as well as O and B, which doesn\'t mean that
it\'s an impossibility by any means, but

time involved in that and I\'m not trying to spread any skepticism about
that, I just wanted people to understand what the regulatory framework
was for that. Thank you for those comments on the advisory committee.

Eileen, do you have a comment?

MS. SUPKO: I just wanted to follow-up on what Amy said. I think that in
putting together the modal study obviously there were different
audiences for different documents. The audience for this is probably a
technical audience. This was written for more of a nontechnical
audience, but probably could be worded a bit better and one of the
things that I found talking about nuclear waste transportation to the
general public, there is not a good understanding, for example, the
hypothetical accident tests that are done. What do they mean physically?
What is a 30-foot drop to an unyielding surface? I think there\'s not a
good understanding of what an unyielding surface is.

And to the extent, not necessarily in the updated modal study itself,
but maybe a public document to try to put some of those things in
perspective.

Also use of cask testing and computer simulation. Mr. Wangler mentioned
earlier the benefits that he sees from being able to use computer
simulation in certifying the package and I think that the general public
would probably benefit from understanding what those benefits are. Keep
all those things in mind and who your audience is for the different
products that you put together.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Eileen. Bob Fronczak?

MR. FRONCZAK: This is a real goodopportunity to discuss the issues. The
question is is Henderson \-- you asked me if I participate. Are we going
to try to recreate what we did here today or do you want to address all
new questions in Henderson?

MR. CAMERON: Maybe I should leap into that one and be corrected by the
staff if necessary.

The idea was is that we would put together a similar format for one of
the meetings in Henderson all day format and that we would have mostly
different people around the table in order to get their take on these
same agenda items. It may be that the take we got here is going to be
the same that we get in Henderson particularly if some of the people are
similar.

But we also wanted to allow the people of Nevada the opportunity to see
an exchange among knowledgeable people in the area on this issue
including their county representative, their state representative, their
tribal representatives. So there is going to be that same format.

We\'re also going to do a public meeting after the round table that will
be a simpler format in terms of the information that\'s presented by the
NRC and an open questionand comment period from the public. We\'re also
going to do that same type of meeting on December 9th from 10 to 12
which is more information than you needed, I think.

But, yeah, we were going to do this same format for a couple of
different reasons in Nevada. Susan, do you want to add anything to that?

MS. SHANKMAN: Not a great deal just that the idea was to have a
different mix of people, some of the same because of, because they\'re
unique or they represent a particular organization that doesn\'t have a
representative in Nevada, but to expand and have a significantly
different group that could speak to the issues and maybe have different
issues.

As Chip said the idea was to recreate this same format in the all day
meeting which I think we\'ll have to shorten the NRC talking little and
make that a briefer introduction and so we\'ll have more time to talk
about the issues. We were already thinking about that, so we are
learning from this. The other meetings will be more informational and
less round table.

MR. CAMERON: Susan highlighted an extremely important point which is
that although we use this same format for one of the meetings in Nevada,
we do want to learn from what happened here. And we know that, for
example, Bob Halstead has already told us that he will have some more
detailed information on a couple of topics for discussion there. So I
think we\'re going to hear different types of information and we need to
plan for that also and how we do the agenda. Bob?

MR. HALSTEAD: A couple of things. First of all, without at all being
critical of the people who gave the opening presentations, who I think
did a nice job, I think if you can shorten those to no more than 20 and
preferably shoot for 15 minutes and have handouts for people and handle
some of that information in question and answer thing you will be well
served by that.

Secondly, I think you should inform all of us who are participants today
if you don\'t expect us to be at the table, at that meeting very
shortly. I made a commitment to be at this meeting because I think this
is absolutely critical, but, for example, that means I will not be
providing technical assistance to people in the central part of the
state the day before when there is Department of Energy all day EIS
hearing in Austin and that\'s caused some people to be angry. Why did
you have to schedule? I understand. I\'m not trying to beat you up. I\'m
just trying to explain while you were in the southern part of the state,
on the 7th DOE has a major all-day meeting in Austin, and the 9th a
major all-day meeting in Crescent Valley both of which are on a high
priority rail corridor and also are the areas that people of the
northern part of the state would go to and concerned about truck
transportation. You just need to know that for purposes. I have to go to
the airport and I\'m sorry I can\'t stay.

I would like to thank you for the way this meeting was organized and
conducted. It\'s a particularly important thing for me personally and
for the State of Nevada generally that you have approached this the way
you have. Because as I said I don\'t want to belabor the negative, there
has been a lot of bad feeling in the State of Nevada over the way
another part of the NRC handled the transportation issue; such bad
feeling that there has been lots of talk about litigation and so I\'m
not saying this completely eases the situation, but it\'s a very
important thing for you to demonstrate to people in Nevada who rightly
or wrongly feel themselves more affected by this issue than all the
other folks that are affected by it.

And so I appreciate the way you set up the table. At first I couldn\'t
imagine this agenda was going to work and the way you set the agenda was
good. I want to thank you Susan because I know the way the federal
system works that people take some political risks to even get involved
in meetings like this. Particularly Mr. Massey, I don\'t think I have
ever seen anybody who had technical responsibilities to do as good a job
of standing in and dealing with technical and nontechnical fire from all
directions.

While many people deserve congratulations on this meeting, you have
certainly handled yourself today in a way that enhances the credibility
of the study. With that said, I hope nobody will succumb to the atrophy
of organizational vigilance, because the way you dealt with things today
is the way we have to deal with things for the rest of us. I\'m very
sorry I can\'t stay. Thank you very much.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob, for your comments and participation and I
have already talked to a number of people about the issue you raised
about Nevada and I will be in touch with all. Amy, do you have one more?

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: It\'s a procedural question. We check the box if we
wanted a hard copy of the meeting transcript from this meeting. I\'m
just wondering will we also receive transcripts December 8 and 9th
meetings since most of us will not be at those meetings?

MR. LEWIS: Yes.

MR. CAMERON: That was the longest yes I ever heard. Let me just ask if
anything in the audience has a comment on process?

MR. HOLDEN: If I could I just want to revisit one particular point and
ordinarily there are some things you say you don\'t want to belabor but
I find myself having to belabor, belabor, belabor this particular point.
I appreciate that suggestions, you know, that the word of mouth is going
to get things out to Indian country which we do and we do what we can to
provide that type of outreach, but I guess the point is that not
everyone may be, totally understand, maybe not giving everyone their due
credit, not everyone may understand this tribal federal relationship And
what the basis of that is and what\'s required in that context and
that\'s to do that government to government protocol outreach. It\'s
mandatory. It\'s something that is incumbent upon them and it has to be
done regardless of how many numbers there are out there, how many tribes
there are, regardless of how much it costs them, that\'s what is
requisite, long standing and that\'s also the reason why Department of
Defense has developed an Indian policy, which this organizational board
helped with. That\'s why FEMA developed their Indian policy. That\'s why
in almost every major, almost every agency under the administration has
developed an Indian policy. NRC is the exception. They have not gone the
distance on that matter yet, but something I think they will embark on
and that\'s why the organization I work with is redeveloping, reviewing,
revisiting the DUE policy. So there is a basis for this and it\'s quite
important. I don\'t think anyone was trying to belittle it but, I\'m
just trying to clarify what I was trying to say a while ago.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Robert. That\'s a significant specific item to
achieve what you are talking about.

Charles, can you talk to this and then we\'ll see if there is anything
on this as well as this bounding issue and then have give, see if we can
give people an opportunity to have final comment.

DR. MASSEY: There are a few things we just wanted to use as discussion
stimulators if they hadn\'t come up during the meeting today. Nuclear
criticality was brought up a couple times by Amy. That was something
that we were considering for including as suggested areas for inclusion
in the performance study.

What happens after these collisions and thermal environments, how does
that impact criticality of considerations and also get into an area that
really hasn\'t been explored that well in the previous studies, look at
sensitivity of results of the analyses so we\'d have some idea of the
thermal conditions were a little different than what we looked at, how
much of a difference does that make? What\'s the impact? Sort of go
through the analysis that we will conduct and look at the sensitivity of
the results to the different scenarios and parameters that we would put
into that analysis.

With that I just want to stress if you do have other thoughts on this or
other issues either now or after the meeting, if you want to put them on
the card or e-mail them or write into Rob or Dr. Shankman, please do
that.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Charles. I wanted to do give everybody a chance to
respond on these issues, but we talked in a number of segments today
about what some call bounding; what Eileen called best bang for your
buck point. Amy mentioned conservatism.

I just want to do give Mike Wangler and Mark Holt a chance to say a few
words on that so that people can understand what that\'s all about,
because there\'s been a lot of I credibly good suggestions that have
come out of this meeting. But when the NRC and Sandia go to integrate
that and consider it, there may come a point where not all things can be
done. So how do you work with this?

Mike you had a comment that you made. You keep pointing at Mark Holt,
but we\'re not going to let you do that. Mike, how about a comment on
the issue of bounding? We\'ll go to Mark Holt and then open it up for
everybody else to comment on bounding or these issues.

MR. WANGLER: I\'m not sure I remember any more what I was thinking about
whenever I made the comment.

I guess reminds me a little bit of a story. When I started out in this
business as a health physicist some 28 years ago ICRP2 was the
predominant publication on the, that provided those conversion factors
that relate to various environmental or radioactive pollutants as it got
into the body converted that quantity into dose.

Some years later ended up with ICRP2 and 30 where we made some changes
but what we generally got was more decimal places behind the numbers
that we already had. Then five years ago, six years ago, we ended up
with the ICRP 50 and 51 which basically just reaffirmed everything that
has been done for the last 30 years. There were some changes in that one
kind of went, kind one in ICRP 26 and went back to ICRP 2.

It\'s not really related to bounding per se. What I want to express a
concern about is that we have the NUREG 0170, we have the Lawrence
Livermore NCR Modal Study. We have some good information there that I
hope we don\'t throw out for the sake of a new study. I suspect that
what we\'re going to find is that we\'ve sharpened our pencil. We\'ve
taken out our data which is going to go from four decimal places. We can
now take that out to eight or ten decimal places and find out we\'re
probably in the same ballpark and here we\'ve just spent a lot of effort
to reaffirm what we\'ve already done.

What concerned me about the Livermore report concerns me about this one.
Someone brought it up a little bit earlier was the uncertainty in the
data that\'s used to generate our final numbers. The Livermore report
had three significant figures. Had one plus I think three decimal
places, had three significant figures probably with data that was no
better than one significant digit. Yet there were no error bars, no
uncertainties that were identified in the report as showing where that
number fit. Was that number good to five percent, 10 percent? I suspect
it\'s was probably good maybe 100 percent, but there was no analysis
that was done. I\'m hoping that perhaps in this report we can get a
little better sense of where these numbers fit. And in that sense I will
use the term bounding, in that if we know where the number is plus the
margins that we have on either side, we kind of know where our number
lies. We can have a little bit more \-- we I guess in the scientific
field can have a little bit more confidence in the numbers that we get.

I realize that probably the general public likes a single number that
they can work with. Unfortunately when you have systems with significant
uncertainties and data, it\'s hard to rely on just a single number.

I like the idea of looking at numbers that are risk informed so that you
can kind of figure out where you want to be. You can do screening
methods much like Livermore did in their report to kind of say we\'ve
considered these numbers but they fall outside of where we think they
should be. We\'re going to consider this subset.

It\'s still not clear to me from listening to the Sandia discussion how
their going to actually present the data. I realize there is some
criticism in the way Livermore did their number of looking at strain at
a certain point and temperature at a certain point. But in that regime
they came up with a grid that had a, had some logic to it.

With the discussions that have been done here, we talk about using
analytical models and we can do some precise calculations on the
responsive things, but it\'s not clear to me how we\'re going to put
this thing in an order so that we can determine where the bounds are
that we want to, we want to look at the transportation of spent nuclear
fuel. Thank you, Chip.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Mike. Mark, let\'s go to you for some comments.
Mark, in case we didn\'t mention it earlier, is the author of the
congressional research service report on spent fuel transportation which
I think was very helpful to a lot of people in terms of putting this
into an understandable perspective.

MR. HOLT: From my perspective is certainly the perspective of trying to
help inform the congressional debates. This has been a very useful
exercise, particularly because I would presume a lot of the issues were
raised today, if not all of them, would be issues that you would see
when the nuclear waste bills come to the floors of the House and the
Senate probably next session. So I would I wouldn\'t expect to see a lot
of results from the study in time for that, but certainly for my own
purposes and for purposes of Congressional policy makers, the more
answers to these questions we can get or at least the more analysis you
can see, everybody will accept the answers would be very valuable. But,
of course, as was mentioned can every one of these issues be fully
analyzed in the study and should there be some rebounding on some of
them? Obviously you got to make the decision on how much time and money
you have available to do that, but the more you can do the better it
would be in my opinion.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much for that. Bob, do you have a comment on
this?

MR. FRONCZAK: We can throw a lot of money at it and we\'re trying to
figure out what really makes a difference before we decide where to
throw our money, so we encourage that.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. I see Halstead\'s cappuccino is still
working. His name tent is still up with us.

Why don\'t we start Rick Boyle and I want to give all of you an
opportunity who want to, you are not required to, to offer any final
thoughts for us before we close. Rick?

MR. BOYLE: Thank you. The one comment I\'d make and it is a little bit
on the bounding issue, I will be interested either off-line or later on
on a comment that I would submit to the NRC, but it may be to Sandia, we
have had a lot of ideas in today but at what point do they become such
low probability events or the sequence becomes such low probability
that, I don\'t want to say they\'re discarded, they have been studied
and they\'ve been determined to be such low consequence that they\'re
discarded. Will we go in before we even start and stay if they are one
in a million or less in probability they would be discarded? Should we
do that up front and possibly with public input or will we do this after
the fact and say we can only do the top 10, so our probability becomes
maybe 50 percent.

I wonder what the thought of both Sandia and the NRC are on such, where
do you draw that cut off and do you do it before you start the study or
as you get into it and do it based on your funding? Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: I think that\'s an important point to consider and maybe
that will be something that\'s in the phase one recommendations and
analysis.

Mike, do want to say anything more than you already have?

MR. WANGLER: I want to support Rick on his comment on looking at low
probability sequences. I guess the parting comment I would like to make
is that in the study we need to be very careful that the studies don\'t
do anything to undermine the regulations that we currently have.

We are operating under 30, 40 years of excellence, excellent
transportation under very similar regulations. I\'d hate to see that
we\'d have to revisit everything that we have done in those regulations.
Some of the impacts that would have is these regulations are worked
through with the international community. Congress even binds the U.S.
to be generally compatible with international regulations so that we can
insure commerce and be able to move things back and forth between the
countries.

Along those lines it troubles me a bit I think that Jack Edlow made the
comment earlier about Sandia looking at a thousand degree C fire for the
duration of one hour. This is certainly extra regulatory and it makes
one wonder that if we pass that, are we now going to ratchet the
regulations toward a different number and if we fail that are we going
to have to look at higher numbers? So I think we need to be very careful
in what we look at and officially propose for these studies. Thanks.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Mike. Tracy?

MS. MUSTIN: I\'d would like to for including me an a learning
experience. I thought it was very valuable. I think I agreed to what
Rick and Mike said. I think the real challenge is going to be over the
next few months perhaps in the next series of meetings, how all this
input, there was a lot of interesting and valuable input provided today,
but how this input is sort of collated and then a study is proposed that
allows us to, whether the right term is address in a bounding way all
the things that were said, all the input that was provided today,
suggestions that were made. I think we all have a vested interest in the
study and the results will be used for years to come.

We\'ll see that the study does validate a system and a process that is
conservative, and has provided safe transport for years. But it\'s also
a tool that we can use, hopefully help build confidence.

The suggestions that were made about taking the opportunity to explain
to the public what some of these things mean and what system is about is
going to be very useful.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks. I think we should all pay attention to the fact
just what the importance of this particular study is.

Dwight, do you want to say something?

MR. SHELOR: I certainly agree that there are, there is a cutoff on the
low probability of that. Need look at very carefully. It would save you
a lot of money when you scope it.

I commend NRC, particularly Susan for starting this effort and getting
involved in it. I personally believe that as Tracy said we will use this
for years to come, but the real value in this study is going to be the
public involvement and personally I encourage you to go all over the
country and talk to everyone because for the general public and those
that are particularly interested to understand the safety case is really
important. That\'s our biggest struggle when we talk to the public and
we want to convince them this is safe enough. You have burden and I
think you are doing a great job.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much. Jack Edlow?

MR. EDLOW: Three points. First of all, I\'d like to thank the Regulatory
Commission for the really superb job they\'ve done today. There\'s a
sense of openness in this meeting and the sense of decorum, and I think
the term decorum is appropriate because I have been to many hearings and
I\'ve been subjected to many hearings in the past and things where
decorum was certainly not the issue. I want to applaud everybody for the
way they worked on this today. I hope that it can continue especially at
Henderson. That\'s the first point.

The second point is I would like to thank the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission for their statement of confidence they made this morning in
the existing regulatory framework. I think it\'s very important that the
public continue to get that sense from you and I hope that you will
continue to make that point everywhere you go. Things are good and this
is just a question of continuing your analysis of the circumstances.

Thirdly, I would like to make the point that many people are saying
let\'s keep it real, deal with issues that can be dealt with and should
be dealt with. Let\'s try to do scenarios that are meaningful and not
get hooked into all the what ifs that you can get into because even
though Chuck would like to spend your money in looking at all those
things, I don\'t think the taxpayers should have to fund so many things
that are on the outside bounds. Thank you very much. On to you.

MR. CAMERON: Marvin Resnikoff.

MR. RESNIKOFF: I would also like to thank the NRC for doing this and for
your openness. I want to think about the question that Susan Shankman
asked. This happened so long ago this morning which was why should we do
an environmental impact statement? I\'m going to think about that
question because I\'m comfortable with these technical issues and
proceedings, but I\'m a little uncomfortable in sort of excluding the
public in holding sort of these what I think of as more back room
meetings involving a much larger constituency out there and the EIS
allows certain legal safeguards which we don\'t really have sort of in
this kind of setting. And also allows more political element to enter
and this is, after all is a democracy, it\'s not being run by technical
people in the back room. It\'s being run by people who are elected. So I
have some concern about this aspect of it. And so I\'m going to think
about why an EIS \-- the question you asked \-- and I will send you a
letter about that.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Marvin. Let\'s go to Bob Fronczak.

MR. FRONCZAK: I think NRC did a great job. Chip, I thought you handled
the meeting real well.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you.

MR. FRONCZAK: One thing I would like to follow-up on Mike\'s comments is
that I think you said that the regulations that we have now are good. We
all believe that. The only thing I would change about that is if
something in the analysis, let us look to a point where the regulations
needed to be changed, and I think that ought to be done.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. Ed Pritchard.

MR. PRITCHARD: Thank you, Chip. I also want to thank the NRC. I echo
what\'s been said

by the other speakers here. I would also like to again make the Federal
Railroad Administration available to you and I hope you do utilize us
and our concerns about fire tests, crashes and what have you. We will
start gathering information on some of the more serious accidents as of
tomorrow. So I again thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Ed, and thank you for that offer of assistance
too. Kevin.

MR. KAMPS: I would just like to you for the invitation to be here today.
I just like to echo the importance of environmental impact statement
process to give the public meaningful and legally binding part in the
decision making process. It\'s ironic that the spokesman from the
Department of Energy, Mr. Shelor, said that these meetings should happen
all over the country because there is growing, there is a growing
feeling along the transportation routes that they have not had, well,
they\'re not getting public hearings along major transport routes in the
draft environmental impact statement process.

For the Yucca Mountain repository places like Chicago, do not have a
public hearing and so there is efforts on the grass roots level to to
get public hearings on the draft environmental impact statement from
DOE. So I fully support that idea that the NRC should take this to the
places that are most impacted by the study. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Kevin. We\'re going to come back to Susan for last
words. So we\'re going to go over to Mark Holt. Mark?

MR. HOLT: Thanks again for inviting me today. I think this will
definitely be helpful for me in helping to inform the Congressional
Debate.

I just once again I\'d reiterate that these issues that were raised
today will be issues in the debate and any analysis that can be directed
at them will be extremely valuable.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Do you want do say something since you are
the project manager? I think you probably should.

MR. LEWIS: I just want to say that these discussions have been very
useful to me same thing and I think those from Sandia will say the same
thing. For this issue report that we\'re going to produce next May or
so, what I have learned today is we need to be very clear in our message
and in particular regarding whether we want to use bounding, but still
representative assumptions in approach or whether we want to use these
more realistic assumptions and for both of those cases we need to think
about how we\'re going to use sensitivity analysis to support these
approaches.

We need to be very clear in this issues report about how we will use
testing in this project and what we intend the testing to show. I think
we need to be very clear in this issues report regarding whether or not
we want to use some sort of risk to address lower probability accidents
below some probability threshold where the consequences may be great but
the risk is small because probability is so small.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you much, Rob. Rick?

RICK: . Well, it\'s always good to see the regulators are vigilant and
interested in continuing to evaluate the level of performance. This is
provided by compliance with the regulations. I think that\'s been going
on since 1961 when the first regulations were set up and it\'s something
that needs to continue because every year we get smarter concerning
accidents that have happened and understanding frequencies and forces
involved in accidents and keeping that sort of information up to date is
a necessary part of being rigorous regulators.

On another point, what I think really it comes down to is an explanation
to all involved of the system performance of the spent fuel cask. It has
contents inside of it, a lot of details about the pins, pallets, the
cladding, cask, the seals, impact limiters.

In the end it\'s a system that performs and understanding how that
performs in a deterministic sense where the regulations have said you
must be able to withstand an accident up to this particular point, I
think explains to people what they can expect, the level of safety they
should be confident in each and every cask having.

The next step then is the performance when it exceeds the regulatory
requirements and in some cases it\'s been called graceful failure and
other cases it\'s the so-called graceful failure depending on how you
view what the cask is going to do when it exceeds what it was designed
to do. If the study can explain how the system performs in the
deterministic range and problemistic range, up to the point where you
have drawn the bounds of it on a basis of probability perhaps, then that
in the end will help everyone, I think, leave with a better and more
comfortable understanding of just what the safety is and transport spent
fuel.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Rick. Amy Shollenberger.

MS. SHOLLENBERGER: Thank you for having this meeting and I particularly
appreciate it because it\'s not often that I get to ask questions and
have request access to the people who actually know the answers to those
questions.

I think it\'s one thing being a member of the public as opposed to the
industry. That\'s a real handicap because it\'s hard to get the answers
to questions. I appreciate a forum where I can get those answers. I
would also just like to follow-up on a couple things and just add my two
cents.

First, I would like to thank Eileen for asking you to consider your
audience, I think

that was a really good point and I\'m glad to agree with you. I think
it\'s really crucial that you consider your audience and you think about
how to explain this stuff to people who are going to be watching the
cask driving by their houses every day. And so I just like to say I
would also like to follow-up on what Kevin said and I was going to bring
up the same point of I thought it was very ironic that the DOE was
encouraging the NRC to hold meetings like this all across the nations
when the DOE is refusing to do the same thing, even though we are
requesting it. We being American citizens, taxpayers.

So I\'d like to urge the NRC to encourage the DOE to do the same thing
being partners and all. And just one last comment that I would like to
make, and I hate to end on this kind of a note, one thing that kind of
made me sad in the meeting is several people said we all agreed that the
regulations are good enough and I\'m not sure that\'s true. I think
that, I know public citizens \-- the regulations aren\'t good enough
until they say zero release is acceptable. Thanks for having us.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Amy. Felix, go ahead.

MR. KILLAR: I would be remiss if I didn\'t thank the NRC because
everybody else did. But I do, I think these are helpful for the industry
to also hear the issues that people who obviously share our view of
perspectives have and help us understand this perspective so that we can
help provide additional information and maybe address some of those
concerns and certainly make changes where changes are needed.

The one issue that wasn\'t discussed, the one issue that\'s near and
dear to our hearts is that this program is basically funded from our
fees we pay the NRC. I know this morning Susan mentioned that she wants
to do this thing effective and efficiently and we certainly endorse
that. There are limited resources out there and there are limited
resources at the NRC and so I think one of the things is very incumbent
upon the study is to find out where are the big issues? What are the
issue that need to be studied in-depth and what have you, and spend the
resources where you get the most benefit because you do have limited
resources and it\'sour resources you\'re spending and we want you to
spend them wisely.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Felix. Eileen Supko.

MS. SUPKO: I think building on what Felix just said would be beneficial
for the NRC and Sandia to focus on what\'s new and what\'s changed since
the last modal study. Talk about some of the things that have changed.
Cask designs have changed, some of the accident statistics have changed.
They may have improved or degraded. Also put in place the process such
that the study doesn\'t necessarily get redone every 10 years just
because 10 years have passed, but because something new that\'s
significant has occurred. I think that\'s an important thing to keep in
mind and also the fact that you have enhanced analytical capability now
and how does that factor in.

One of the things that I think everybody in this room agrees is that
spent fuel transportation is an issue more important both to nuclear
industry, to members of the public, to different groups and this type of
a meeting where you get everybody\'s opinions and perspectives, I think
is very important. This has been less painful than I thought it was
going to be spending the whole day here. The last comment is is I would
love to know what they\'re doing next door.

HEATHER: Thank you, Chip, and members of the NRC staff for organizing
this meeting. As usual I got a lot out of it. Like many tribal
environmental or technical staff, I deal with many issues, not just this
one. I appreciate all I heard today and take that information back and
help the people that I\'m here to represent. Thanks.

MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Heather. Robert Holden.

MR. HOLDEN: Thanks to the NRC staff and Chip Springer for ramrodding the
session, and keeping us all awake. But just in closing just to say that,
you know, the folks I represent they\'re impacted by a lot of things in
this program area. The cask integrity can be important to cultural
integrity. In the event of an accident consequences are great,
probability is small. However, that one consequence is, it\'s \-- do
tremendous, harmful everlasting damage to tribal lands and some of those
folks live in areas where there is cultural sensitive matters where the
things that set them apart and distinct from other folks, this being
their homelands, is an integral to their culture. These same scientist
who have worked in these areas have a tendency to dispute the fact that
there may exist phenomenon, that there may exist spiritual beings that
exist there in which those native peoples communicate with.

It\'s my understanding that scientists aren\'t supposed to disprove
anything or they can\'t disprove they can eliminate certain
possibilities. However, you know, they discredit and discount many of
the things that tribal people try to share with them.

In terms of sharing this information and developing the outreach
materials, remember that a lot of these folks may be second generation
English speaking people so this is entirely a foreign language to them,
not the mention the technical jargon that they will be hearing. Just
quite difficult for them to comprehend particularly when \-- and to
understand that this material that\'s traveling through homelands, which
they have no place else to go if something happens there, that they set
up these lands in reserve for them a long time ago in exchange for other
lands.

Not only that, the resources that \-- this uranium came from their
lands, extracted from their lands and those places were not cleaned up
in that mining and so forth and now it\'s coming back through their
corridors and homelands, so be mindful of that and be respectful of that
and I\'m sure they will be respectful as you go down this path. Thank
you.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Robert.

Before I turn it over to Susan for closing, I would just like to thank
the group. You have been a very thoughtful group and constructive and
courteous. Thank you very much. Susan I will give it to you to close.

MS. SHANKMAN: I want to thank you all for being here, for your patience,
for your perseverance and I\'m not going to get into any issues. We\'re
going to look at the transcript. When we go to Nevada I\'m sure we will
get other comments.

The one thing I wanted to say is that we brought all the staff who are
working on this project with us. People from Sandia, people from my
office. Janet came who is with the division of waste management.

The reason we are here is because we sincerely wanted to do this \-- I
won\'t say right \-- because we can all define it differently. But we
certainly want to do it in ain which people with different issues are
fully considered and fully explored. I told at the beginning of the
meeting we will do that.

We will come back with the design our study. We will get other comments.
I thank you very much. I imagine we all want to go home and if you have
any ideas, I get my best ideas when I\'m driving home. Please send them
in to us. There is a lot of information we talked about today. I hope
maybe you don\'t go away with the sense we have any answers, but I hope
you have a feeling that we have listened to the questions. Thank you.

(Whereupon, at 6:15 p.m., the conference was concluded.)

1 CERTIFICATE OF REPORTER

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3 I hereby certify that the foregoing is a

4 true and accurate transcript of the proceedings

5 in the aforementioned matter this \_\_\_\_\_ day of

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DONNA M. HALL, Court Reporter