BEFORE THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENTS

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION

Taken at the

Henderson Convention Center

200 Water Street

Henderson, Nevada

Taken on the date of:

Wednesday, December 8, 1999

START TIME: 8:40 o\'clock, a.m.

Sandia National Laboratories

Sandia Corporation

Department 6141, MS-0718

Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185-0178

Phone number: 505-84-4791

Reported by Stella Butterfield, CCR7

APPEARANCES:

Facilitator:

CHIP CAMERON, Special Counsel/Public Liaison

Office of the General Counsel Nuclear

Regulatory Commission

SUSAN S. SHANKMAN, Deputy Director Spent Fuel

Project Office Nuclear Regulatory Commission

ROBERT LEWIS, Spent Fuel Transportation

Studies Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Morning session page: 3

Afternoon session page: 192

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

MR. CAMERON: Good morning, everybody. We\'re going to get started now.
My name is Chip Cameron and I am the Special Counsel and Public Liaison
at the Office of the General Counsel of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. And I\'d like to welcome all of you to the meeting on Spent
Fuel Transportation Package Performance. I\'m pleased to serve as your
facilitator today. And what I\'d like to briefly cover before we get
started are the workshop objectives, my role as facilitator and also
some of the ground rules for our discussion today.

As far as the objectives for the workshop are concerned, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission plans to update the 1987 study on Spent Fuel
Transportation Package Performance that we all know as the Modal Study.
And the NRC wants to insure that the new study addresses all the
important issues related to the Package Performance.

With that in mind, the NRC has invited the public and representatives of
the broad spectrum of interests that may be affected by the Spent Fuel
Transportation gathered around the table here up front to share their
recommendations and concerns with the NRC on the scope and methodology
for the new study.

And this early input from all of you will help to insure that the design
and implementation of the study provides the best information possible
for furthering the NRC\'s responsibilities that affect health and
safety.

Now, my personal objectives as facilitator includes assisting all of you
in keeping the discussion organized, understandable, and on schedule,
making sure that everyone has an opportunity to talk, and keeping track
of action items and recommendations that may come out of today\'s
discussion.

The ground rules that I would suggest are fairly simple. All of you has
a, what\'s known as a name tent in front of you, and when we get to the
discussion part of the meeting, which will be the bulk of the meeting,
if you want to say something, if you will turn your name tents up like
that (indicating), and that will relieve you of having to keep shooting
your hands in the air, and will allow me to keep track of who wants to
talk. And it will also help us to keep a clean transcript.

Stella is our stenographer over there, and she is going to be taking the
transcript today. And always identify yourself by name so Stella can
recognize who will be talking. If I don\'t, if you will just make sure
that you say your name before you talk, and that way, we will have the
correct remarks attributed to you.

I may not take all the name tents in the order they come up, so you can
follow the discussion. And generally, I think what\'s the best thing to
do will be to go to one member of the panel and ask them to start us off
with an issue on a particular agenda item, and then I\'d like to go
around the table with anybody else who may have an opinion on that
particular issue. And then we\'ll just keep going like that.

Now, there will be issues that come up that may not fit squarely into
the agenda items that we\'re talking about, and I will come back to
those. I keep track of them up here on what I will call the paddock
(sic), which some of you may know as the parking lot, and we\'ll make
sure we come back at the end of the day to address any of those
particular issues.

The focus of this discussions is going to be at the table among the
people up here today, but it\'s just as important to hear from the
audience, all of you out there, and after each agenda item, after we\'re
done with the round table discussions, we\'ll go out to you for
comments. And I\'ll call on you, and I\'ll either bring you the talking
stick, or you can step up to the mike in the middle of the room, and if
you could just give your name and affiliation, that will be very helpful
in terms of the transcript.

The focus of this discussion is on issues related to Package
Performance. But the NRC also realizes that there is a whole host of
Spent Fuel Transportation issues that people may be interested in. They
may be beyond the scope of this particular study. They may need to be
addressed in another activity that the NRC has planned. But if there are
issues like that, we will note them and follow up on them.

Now, before we go to the agenda, and I have some suggested changes or
proposed changes for you to consider on that, why don\'t we go around
the room and have everybody introduce themselves to one another, and if
you could give us your name and your affiliation and one or two
sentences, if you would like, on what your concern or interest in this
particular issue is.

And I think we\'ll start over here with Bob Alcock. Bob?

MR. ALCOCK: I am Bob Alcock, Senior Policy Advisor, Department of Energy
for Transportation Issues. And I\'m here representing the Department of
Defense and the Department of Energy that will be moving things in the
future. You also have somebody here from part of the Department of
Energy that will be moving things in the state. I am representing that
part of moving things out.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. Jim?

MR. WILLIAMS: I am Jim Williams. I am here representing Nye County,
Nevada. Nye County is the site county for potential shipment of Spent
Fuel. It is also the site for Yucca Mountain, adjacent to the Nevada
Test Site, which is the basic site for DOE shipment of radioactive
waste.

MR. CAMERON: Jack?

MR. EDLOW: Good morning. My name is Jack Edlow. I am president of Edlow
International, a management company which has been involved in the
shipment of radioactive materials. We ship all kinds of materials,
everything from low-level materials up to and including Spent Fuel, and
it has been a critical shipment within the United States in the last
month.

MR. DILGER: Good morning. My name is Fred Digler. I am here representing
Clark County, as we are all here in Clark County. We want to thank the
NRC for holding this meeting here. We really appreciate that.

Clark County has a unique interest in this upgrading under the \-- as
you are all aware, the Department of Energy recently released its
updated Environmental Impact Statement. Based on the information
contained there, there are certain scenarios \-- mostly truck scenarios.

Clark County may expect to be the recipient of \-- at the end of 7.1
percent of all the shipping miles for the national transportation
program for Spent Fuel. So we have a big interest in this.

MS. TREICHEL: My name is Judy Treichel. I am the Executive Director of
the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force. The Task Force is a public advocacy
organization, and we\'re here and in many places providing a corporate
voice.

We have just finished doing a lot of workshops \-- well, we haven\'t
quite finished, but we have done a lot of workshops on the Department of
Energy in EIS in the rural areas. And as a public advocate, I think I
have a responsibility to say that it\'s very unfortunate that the timing
of this meeting is at the timing of the people in the rural areas who
are participating in those hearings, and they are doing it at this time,
so they are unable to be here. And they especially are very interested
in Modal Studies and Transportation, and I do need you to take note of
that.

MR. CAMERON: Perhaps later on, at the discussion, we might have the NRC
just say a few words about what our future plans are in terms of
involvement of more of the people in the rural counties.

MR. SCHUMANN: Good morning. My name is Klaus Schumann. I am representing
the Nuclear Waste Management Committee of San Luis Obispo County,
California. We are a group of citizens in local government in new
development of the upper canyon of our county, so we are interested in
the shipment of nuclear waste through the county, I want to say about a
quarter mile away from one of the potential routes.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Klaus.

MR. VINCENT: My name is John Vincent. I work for G.P.U. Nuclear
Corporation. G.P.U. has conducted a couple of essential shipping
campaigns in the past, but my more recent concern is regarding Spent
Fuel Transportation and the practical support project (sic) and in the
future TSS (sic) will be shipping a similar amount of Spent Fuel to our
storage facility, and we will be starting in 2003.

MR. LAMBERT: I am Ray Lambert from Electric Power Research Institute,
and for about 20 years, I have been working in the development and
research in the area Sent Fuel Storage and Transportation on behalf of
the Electric Power Research Institute and a grouping of \-- of all
utilities, nuclear utilities in the United States.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Ray. Ron?

MR. POPE: I am Ron Pope, head of Transport

Safety Unit of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna,
Austria. The IEA is responsible for issuing the model of the regulations
that are used by international modal organizations and various what we
call member states in various countries for their own domestic
regulations.

So, the IEA Transport Regulations, a copy of the latest I have with me,
is used as a model for both NCFR and the Nevada C.F.R. regulations in
the U.S. I have experience in transporting radioactive materials for
safety dating back to the mid 70\'s.

MR. CAMERON: Bob?

MR. HALSTEAD: Bob Halstead. I am Transportation Advisor for the state of
Nevada for this project, and as State Advisor part of my job is as a
watchdog for the DOE for the activities in southern Nevada.

And I am here this morning to remind you that the reason the NRC has
undertaken this reassessment of the modal study in this type of review
has been security. Under the NRC\'s recently-approved final rule, the
N.C.F.R. 51, DOE is authorized to ship five-year cool high burn-up TWP
(sic) fuel through the Yucca Mountain Depository.

But that fuel assembly, I am sure, would pose a means, as my friend Ron
has already received an L.D. 50, a lethal dose 50 percent population
gamma neutron exposure.

And although my friend Ralph over here doesn\'t like this example, it\'s
important to remember that that fuel has a thing called inventory that
is so large, several hundred thousand therms, you can take all the water
in Lake Mead, which you flew over and drove by, to dilute those fission
products down to a drinkable level standard, and in fact you will
probably have to have two Lake Meads.

It\'s important to remember that the reason we\'re here is because this
is indeed what other people would call Dangerous Goods rather than
hazardous material.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. Ron?

MR. ROSS: I am Ron Ross with the Western Governor\'s Association Staff,
which is the association of over 21 Western Governors who are very
interested in the material that is being shipped through the western
states.

MR. CAMERON: Jim?

MR. CAMERON: MR. REED: Jim Reed, with the National Conference of State
Legislatures. I\'m the Program Director of Transportation, and this has
been an issue for about 15 years with a cooperative agreement with the
Department of Energy, who had a working agreement with the National
Transportation System for a number of years.

When I came in about 12 years ago, my first assignment was to do a
summary of the modal study, so I dug that up and stayed around long
enough to do business and to recycle it into research.

The state legislatures who we represent, and their interest in state
transportation and spent fuel and all hazardous naterials, and also the
protection of the public, safety and the environment. We are happy to be
here.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Richard?

MR. SWEDBERG: I am Rich Swedberg with the Office of Motor Carrier Safety
Administration and soon to be, in fact, formalized on the first of
January with headquarters, DOE, and my specialty in what I do \--
charged to do is routing of highway difficult counties (sic) and
registering and recording (unintelligible).

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Rich.

MR. BOYLE: Good morning. I am Rick Boyle, Department of Transportation,
and I work in the Office of Hazardous Materials. We cover all nine
classes of hazardous materials that was previously mentioned. There is
more than just radioactive material. There is poison, there is
flammables, there is biological hazards.

I\'m the Program Manager for Radioactive Material, and we develop
regulations so that this material can be transported safely. Once the
regulations are developed, I am in charge of coordination on the subject
today with the general public as well as with other organizations \--
Richard Swedburg\'s department, the federal highways, there will be
somebody from federal rail, there will also be FAA and the Coast Guard.

We also work with government agencies, again, the NRC and the DOE, my
prime contact, because I am in the radioactive field. And lastly, with
people like Mr. Edlow representing industry, primarily the
transportation industry rather than the power generation industry. Thank
you.

MR. LAKE: Good morning. My name is Bill Lake. I am with Department of
Energy, Office of Radioactive Waste. As Mr. Alcock mentioned earlier,
our interest in this area is the fact that we will be transporting fuel,
commercial fuel from commercial nuclear reactors as well as some other
fuels. And my personal background, I have been involved in
transportation in the packing technology are for the past 27 years. And
I am happy to be here.

MR. LEE: I am Bill Lee, representing the American Nuclear Society. I am
employed by NAC International. We are cask designers and supply casks
for shipping to the U.S. and throughout the world.

My concern is that we update the study and update it with our current
activity and operations that we currently do in licensing caskets,
actual the also transportation operations ongoing. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON: Great, thanks Bill.

MR. BLACKWELL: Good morning. I\'m Kevin Blackwell. I am with the Federal
Railroad Administration. I am out of the headquarters D.C. office. I
guess you could say Program Manager of the Headquarters office. deal
with the radioactive materials as well as hauling casks and other
materials transported by rail. And obviously, our concern is to continue
to ensure the safe transportation of all hazardous materials, including
radioactive materials such as low-level radioactive waste.

MR. CAMERON: Pat?

MR. BRADY: Good morning. My name is Pat Brady, and I am assistant
director for hazardous materials with the Burlington Northern Railroad
Company. Today I am representing the Association of American Railroads.
And our goal is to have incident-free transportation of spent fuels, and
we want to ensure the craft worthiness.

MR. BAUGHMAN: My name is Mike Baughman, and I\'m here this morning on
behalf of Lincoln County and two rural counties, routes three and six,
which are routes which have been identified as possible candidates for
transporation, and there\'s an alternate for the Las Vegas valley in
Lincoln County and the mainland.

MR. LEWIS: Good morning. I am Robert Lewis. I am a Nuclear Engineer in
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Project Office. I work on a variety of
transportation safety issues, but I am here today as the NRC Staff
Technical Coordinator.

MS. SHANKMAN: Good morning. I am Susan Shankman, and I am the Deputy
Director of the Spent Fuel Project Office, which is within the Nuclear
Regulatory commission ,and I will be talking to you about this a little
later.

MR. MASSEY: I am Charles Massey. I\'m the Manager of Transportation,
Safety, and Security Analysis at the Sandia National Laboratory, and we
are the contractor who has been selected by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission for the laboratory analysis and future study of that.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Charles.

I think you can see we have a knowledgeable and experienced group around
the table today, so we should have a good session this morning on the
issues.

There are people in the audience from federal agencies, local
governments including county governments and city governments; also
people from the citizen\'s groups. I think we will get to know you as we
go to you for your questions when we go on to the audience, but I just
want to introduce one person just briefly. Tom Storey is the District
Director for the representative Shelley Berkeley.

He\'s not here? (No response.)

In terms of the agenda, I guess I\'ll get to the cut-off point, which is
4:30, when we have to be out of here, so that they can set this room up
for the evening\'s meeting. And for those of you who weren\'t aware of
this, the NRC is going to do a more informal, that is, not a round table
discussion tonight but here in this room to try to provide information
to the public and hear their concerns about these transportation issues,
and that starts at seven and runs through 9:30.

The NRC is also going to do another meeting tomorrow morning at 10:00,
from ten to twelve in Pahrump, Nevada, out in Nye County at the Mountain
View Casino and Hall, and if anybody has any questions about details on
those meetings, please ask one of the NRC people that are here.

We have Susan and Robert, who will be at the table, and maybe try to
answer questions. Charles is going to kick off with a brief description
of each of the discussion items as we go through.

There are other NRC staff in the audience, and some of them will be
coming up to the table, depending on what the specific topic is, and we
will introduce them, but I would urge you to talk to them during the
break and at lunch, and we will get around to introducing all of them to
you.

The NRC presentation this morning, Susan and Charles are going to be
brief, and then I would like to give everybody around the table in the
room the opportunity to ask any clarifying questions you might have
about the presentation.

I don\'t want to start the discussion with them, because obviously a lot
of the issues that they raise will be the very issues that we are
discussing. Save those for the discussion items on the agenda, that if
there is something that you need to understand to more fully
participate, we will get those out after the two presentations.

I\'d like to make one suggestion on the agenda. If you look at the 9:15
time frame, we were going to discuss physical testing and computer
simulation, which is a very key topic. But it really depends on a lot of
the issues that have gone \-- that should go before this in terms of
container performance and nuclear fuel assembly, highway and railway
accidents.

So I would suggest that we start with highway and railway accidents, and
then we will get to container performance and Spent Nuclear Fuel
Assembly behavior, and then get to physical testing.

And we want to make sure that we do give attention to that physical
testing item, but we want to put it further back on the agenda.

Does anybody have any problem with that, or any other suggestions about
the agenda before we go to Susan for presentation?

Okay. We will hopefully get you a revised agenda later on this morning.
But for now, let\'s go to the NRC for some pre-presentations, and we\'re
going to start with Dr. Susan Shankman. And Dr. Shankman is the Deputy
Director for Licensing and Inspection at the Central Project Office at
the NRC, and she\'s been with that office since 1996, and her group is
responsible for the review and approvals of the design for Spent Fuel
Storage Systems and Transportation Package Systems for NRC licensing of
radioactive material. And her group is also responsible for inspection
and development of the regulations and guidance for storage and
transportation.

And Dr. Shankman joined the NRC in 1982, and she has held various
positions with the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulations at the NRC. She
has also served as Regional Coordinator for the Executive Director for
Operations for the NRC, and also has been a Deputy Director in one of
the NRC regions.

Before she came to the NRC, she was an analyst for the U.S. Public
Health Service and a Special Assistant to the Maryland State
Superintendent of schools.

Dr. Shankman has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Beaver College in
Glenside (phonetic), PA, and a Master\'s Degree from Queens College City
University of New York, and a Doctorage from the University of Southern
California. And I\'ll turn it over to Dr. Susan Shankman.

DR. SHANKMAN: Good morning. I want to begin by welcoming you to this
public forum. And as was said, I am the Deputy Director of the Spent
Fuel Project office, and the Spent Fuel Project Office is the office
that is convening this meeting. We are conducting the study, and it will
be among the contractors that the NRC will make the decision about what
to study and how.

This is not an academic exercise for me in Washington, D.C. We are about
a half mile from the I-95 interstate. So today I want to say that our
job today as the NRC is to listen to your comments. We are at the very
beginning of developing this study.

Let me give you a little background about the NRC. Many of you may know
this, but I\'d like to say it for everybody so we all start out on the
same foot.

The NRC is an independent federal agency and we have one job \-- to
protect public health and safety, and like any other federal regulatory
agency we set standards and we enforce them.

The mission of the Spent Fuel Project Office is in the title the Spent
Fuel Project Office. We license and inspect the design for storage of
spent fuel and for transport of not only spent fuel but all radioactive
material licensed by the Commission. We do regulate the design and we
approve and inspect the containers and the casks and the packages that
contain spent fuel for transport.

The NRC has substantive experience in that we were formed in 1974
independent of the Department of Energy, that works on the technology
issues related to the spent fuel. And so we are an independent agency.

We have experience in nuclear power operation. We have experience in
radioactive material in medical issues. We have experience with
radioactive waste disposal. And we also have experience in the design
and transportation.

My past has been more than 20 years in reviewing cask design
construction. We have reviewed the fuel characteristics and spent fuel
operations at power plants. And I want to tell you that we use that
experience every day to make sure that what we do is done safely. We\'re
confident that the current spent fuel transportation activities are
being done safely.

How do we conduct ourselves with our mission of public health and
safety? First of all, we approve a design before anybody uses them. And
we issue licenses and certificates. We also use this review using
standardized criteria, which the public can find on our Web site. And
there is a standard review plan for our casks and for our review of
transports.

We provide guidance, and those standard review plans are used by
licensees and certificates holders to be used in the requirements of the
regulations. We inspect performance against those regulations and when
we have to we enforce compliance.

The current study that we\'re conducting is to look at the transport of
spent fuel. Radioactive material, as Rick Boyle pointed out, is just one
class of hazardous materials that can be transported and sent through,
is a very small percentage of that.

Our contract with Sandia Lab is going to be carrying out the study that
the NRC is responsible for. Sandia is contracted to us.

I wanted you to meet some of the people who are here today that are part
of the NRC review team that have been available to you today. And I hope
you will take some time at the break to talk to them as well as to me
and the people from Sandia.

Earl Easton is here. Earl is responsible for the technical review group
in the office. And his staff is part of the team review.

Sarah Kolpo will be working on this study, and Ron Parkhill. Rob Pence
\-- where are you \-- provided the support for this meeting. And Debbie
Saviano (phonetic), who is outside the door, and if you need a piece of
paper she can give it to you.

Rob Lewis, who views himself as the project manager, is also going to be
looking at issues related shields. Sarah will be looking at the
containment and Ron Parkhill will be looking at the thermal. Pat Ames
(phonetic)\[Eng\] is sitting in the front row and is the manager of the
group that is conducting this study.

Those are the people that are here from NRC. Charles Massey, who was
introduced; Jerry \-- Stratton (phonetic)\[Sprung\]? MR. STRATTON
\[SPRUNG\]: Yes, I\'m okay.

DR. SHANKMAN: Jerry. And Ruth \-- is Ruth around, Ruth Wiener? Those are
the people from Sandia. So all of these people are involved in the
study. And I hope you will take a minute to talk to them at the break.

Rob will tell you \-- there are several ways you can keep in touch with
this study \-- by email, by regular mail, by telephone numbers, by Web
site, and that is all detailed for you.

The reason I introduced all the people, so that you will know that the
NRC has dedicated sufficient resources to work with them. We not only
have a budget to pay Sandia but also the dedicated staff. It is serious
for us. We do not want to take our responsibilities lightly.

Over the last few years we have been integrating risk insight into the
work of the Commission. And this study is also going to do that. We
understand that we need to know the risks of what we are regulating. And
as computer simulation and analytical methods have improved, we have
tried to apply them to work that we\'re doing.

As new ideas come along we re-assess where we are. The goal of NRC is
simply to make sure that we use the best tools available to assess the
risks of what we are regulating. We try to do this effectively,
efficiently, and realistically, as risk insights come in.

We also want to maintain safety. We feel what we\'re doing now is safe
and we want to make sure it remains that way. We also would like to
increase our interaction with the people, and this meeting is part of
that goal. 28

As you may have heard as we went around the table there is more than the
NRC involved in this endeavor. And this is why I am giving you a little
thumbnail sketch of some of the people involved.

Shippers, who are ultimately responsibility for the shipment, and who,
under DOE regulations, we have to train their personnel; the carrier who
is responsible for the vehicle operation. And following the shipper\'s
plan of regulators. The U.S. Department of Transportation and its mobile
agency, NRC

We set the standards for the casks and we review the designs. And we
also set the standard for the physical security departments. The state
will, of course, have a role. And this of course varies from
state-to-state, but every state is involved with this. The emergency
responders for most of the states have their role as well.

FEMA has a role, should there be a problem. And then the governor\'s
designee \-- every state has a governor\'s designee related to this
issue and they are always notified of a Spent Fuel Transportation.

Let me reiterate to you what I just talked to you about, what I think
our goals are for this meeting. Ron will go over some of the past
studies we have done, which is referred to as the First Modal Study. We
have budgeted time, people and money to look at these issues. Instead of
preparing the study and then sending it out for comments, this time we
decided to go out to the public first and ask for your ideas.

Then DOE is going to kick-off each of the sessions we have with some
proposed ideas. They are only proposed. NRC has not adopted them. They
are meant to stimulate the conversation. We are here today and our staff
is here with us listening to what you have to say. Before we start the
design of the study we want to hear what your concerns are, so that in
the design we can include those concerns.

I can\'t promise you that we will do the study and encompass every
single issue. But I can promise you that every single issue will be
considered. We will be transcribing your ideas.

Sandia is going to develop a design for the study based on this meeting.
And then we will hold additional meetings to hear comments on the design
of the study before we begin the study. So we will be having changes in
the final design.

I thank you for being here. I appreciate the time and I appreciate the
effort and, as I said, our job today is to listen. Please be candid and
please be objective and give us your suggestions. And if you don\'t get
those in the transcript by telling us, there are forms to fill out to
write in.

MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Susan. We will go right to Rob Lewis.
And let\'s see if there are any clarifying questions. And Rob Lewis is
the Project Manager for this study and he is a staff member of the Spent
Fuel Project Office. He has a Master\'s in Aeronautical Engineering from
the University of Arizona. Rob Lewis.

MR. LEWIS: I want to reiterate, we thank you for taking the time to be
here this morning. My main goal is to describe this upcoming project a
little bit. It is just getting started. Charles will take us through the
rest of the topic throughout the day, the technical issues we have
identified.

Before discussing the Modal Study, I\'d like to talk a little bit about
the safety of Spent Fuel shipments, because we\'re confident that the
system we have right now is working. And that confidence establishes our
starting point for this upcoming Modal Study.

I should say throughout the day you will hear the study that we\'re
going to doing called several things. They all mean the same thing. The
Package Performance Study I think is the preferred term right now. But
it has also been called Modal Study Two. The idea is that all these
things are the same, if you look at what happens to the Spent Fuel Cask
Study.

As I said we\'re confident in the safety of our current approach. And
the reason we\'re confident in it is described by these three main
reasons. We have rigorous standards for the casks to survive in order to
be used for transportation. We have accumulated a very positive history,
and we have performed several technical studies in risk assessment that
confirmed our belief.

The Cask Performance Standards test that all casks must meet include the
theory of \-- that there is an impact test, the puncture test, the fire
test, and immersion in water test. And I think you have available to you
a slide, which I am going to call the back-up slide, which illustrates
the test sequence and some of the details of the test. I don\'t really
want to get into that at this time. If you have any questions about the
slide I will be happy to talk to you during the break.

So our starting point for the Package Performance Study will be a test
that meets the Cask Performance Standards in our rule. That is CFR Part
71.

Regarding the history, we have made about \-- we have made about 1,300
shipments in the U.S. Half of them were certified by the NRC in the last
20 years. There have been some accidents, I think there have been eight
accidents. But there has never been a release of material during those
accidents. And the reason why is because the casks are doing their job
every time.

The information about those shipments, the routes that they took, the
destinations, and the origin \-- we publish that information annually,
just to anybody in the NRC. Anybody in the NRC can get that information.

Lastly, what we\'re here today to talk about is the technical study we
have done and the technical study we\'re about to embark upon. But the
most significant study we have ever done at the NRC is the 1977
comprehensive look at transportation safety. It\'s called NUREG 0170.
Everything we have since then is really a supplement to that original
work.

That work looked at all transportation, not only spent fuel, but
everything \-- medical shipments, shipments of pressed fuel \-- many
type of radioactive materials. And it looked at all modes of shipments
\-- by air, by rail, highway, and boats.

Now, it also looked at routine shipments, the risk from routine
shipments, as well as the risk from accidents. And shortly after the
1977 Study was finalized and issued, the Commission, the Commission
meaning the NRC Board of Commissioners made a finding that the current
regulatory approach that the NRC is using and DOE is using is adequate
to provide for public health and safety.

But the NRC staff needs to continually look for ways to improve the
approach and for quality in the approach we now have. And that\'s what
we have been doing ever since.

In 1987 we published a follow-up to the

7 1977 NUREG 0170 Report, called the Modal Study. It was

8 called the Modal Study because it looked at spent fuel

9 shipments by truck and by rail. Now that report looked

10 at what could happen to spent fuel casks in commuter

11 accidents, very similar to what we are looking at today.

12 And it was done because they though that since computers

13 were available that weren\'t available in 1977, and they

14 could do a better computer analyses of spent fuel cask

15 performance under the actual performance under a

16 collision or performance under a fire \-- two conditions

17 in the tank truck that could cause a threat to the

18 casks.

19 There is another study. I am putting up

20 the main study for today\'s discussion. The two left

21 bullets are what we\'re here today to talk about. The

22 ones on the left bullet, but we\'re also going to talk a

35

1 little bit about the update to Spent Fuel Risk Estimates

2 that we\'re about to publish some time next year, and

3 that\'s really a logical follow-up to the 1977 Report.

4 But it only deals with spent fuel. It is not about all

5 transportation.

6 And we\'re also here to talk about

7 primarily the Package Performance Study, which we\'re

8 just starting, and we will have a design for the study

9 starting next year, and it will be about three years

10 before they \-- before we have any results of that.

11 Dr. Massey will describe throughout the

12 day what Sandia is doing or plans to do, to discuss

13 these two studies and how they live together.

14 The reason that we\'re doing both of the

15 last two studies is because the cask has changed. And

16 our ability to assess the cask has changed since 1987.

17 The casks are larger today. These new materials, these

18 new technologies and analytical tools we use to assess

19 the casks have improved vastly. Computer power, as

20 everybody knows, has really taken off.

21 So \-- and also another reason we\'re doing

22 this now, the number of shipments, the destination for

36

1 shipments, the schedule for shipments \-- all the

2 concepts are closely registered projects, such as the

3 Yucca Mountain project, and any efforts to centralize

4 the center storage facility.

5 Regarding the up-coming Package

6 Performance Study, our goal is to build upon the Modal

7 Study, and to look at severe accidents. We\'re also

8 going to look at severe accidents. And as a result of

9 this, this Study is taking the nickname Modal Study Two.

10 It is somewhat unfortunate because we are not legally a

11 Modal Study. We still believe in the Modal Study, the

12 approach to it. What we are doing is, we are trying to

13 build upon the Modal Study.

14 We are going to use the Package

15 Performance Study and focus our resources and focus our

16 licensees\' resources and those issues \-- in fact, those

17 design features in a spent fuel cask that are most

18 important to see, and this is what we call a Risk

19 Informed Approach.

20 The risk assessment \-- we look at the

21 issues that are most important to safety and focus our

22 resources on those issues, and the net result we believe

37

1 is the overall safety.

2 The second note shows a step-by-step

3 method we will use for the Package Performance Study.

4 It should look familiar because this is the same method

5 that was used in the Modal Study. As I said, we still

6 believe in that approach and we still believe in the

7 method of that approach. That is, the step-by-step

8 method is the same which I think is decidedly much

9 better than I could do in trying to explain \-- it is

10 available in everyone\'s handout and everybody has

11 received it.

12 Steps two and four that estimate the

13 severity of the various impact forces and also estimates

14 the release, those are some of the more difficult steps,

15 because they involve more engineering information

16 judgments, as compared to hard data that we have

17 developed.

18 The result is we think those are some

19 areas we need to focus on for following the study, that

20 Dr. Massey will describe. We\'re particularly interested

21 today in your thoughts on the continued use of this

22 methodology.

38

1 The last point talks about physical

2 testing. None of the previous studies uses physical

3 testing specifically for that study. They were computer

4 analyses and engineering judgements with their

5 foundation. We believe it\'s reasonable to assume

6 physical testing will have a role. What role that would

7 be is one of the things we\'re here to talk about today.

8 It is believed that physical testing will

9 have a role that would really define the study for us

10 and define the way for approaching that study.

11 First of all, it is one of the main

12 reasons for selection of Sandia Labs. They have

13 experience conducting these tests. They have tested

14 many radioactive materials. They have experience in

15 packaging material in the past. And they have the

16 ability to analyze the tests and interpret the tests.

17 Secondly, this greater public involvement

18 process in this particular project directly comes out of

19 the possible role of the physical testing. Now public

20 involvement is always important to us. But if we\'re

21 going to do tests, even more so because we need \-- in

22 doing such tests we need to be efficient and collect the

39

1 best information we can as it relates to safety, because

2 testing is a really expensive endeavor.

3 Where we are today in the Package

4 Performance Study is back in Henderson, Nevada. We have

5 a contract for, what we are calling Stage One, with

6 Sandia Lab. Sandia is performing what we call a Scoping

7 Study at this point. Part of this Scoping Study is to

8 collect all the views of the public. Part of the

9 Scoping Study is to review any existing literature. And

10 Sandia\'s task is to combine the information they have

11 gathered and make it available next spring in what we\'ll

12 call an Issues and Resolutions Options Report. Any

13 issues that you bring up today will be acknowledged in

14 the report \-- that\'s the name of the report.

15 We are going to share that report with

16 you and anybody else that\'s interested before we proceed

17 with any Package Performance Study.

18 There is also the ability to write in

19 comments if we don\'t get the voiced comments today. Out

20 on the table we have these forms that have \"Welcome\"

21 across the top. We have three leading questions we

22 thought of. But feel free to write in any comments you

40

1 wish. If we receive them by the end of January we will

2 make sure they get into the Issue Report that is coming

3 out in May. If you know of someone who couldn\'t make it

4 today, we encourage you to share these forms, mention to

5 them the write-in process here.

6 Finally, in conclusion, I want to let you

7 know how to stay involved at this point in a little more

8 detail. We believe we need public participation in this

9 project to design the most effective study.

10 This slide shows the interaction plan.

11 Generally, we have an interactive Web site for

12 conducting workshops throughout the country. And we

13 have established a mailing list.

14 The best way to stay involved by far is

15 the Web site because they have a forum for interacting

16 with us. If you write in a comment on the web site

17 form, we will provide a response, and it will be

18 frequently updated as the project evolves.

19 If you don\'t like to use the Internet for

20 any reason, we are in the process of establishing a

21 mailing list, and there\'s a form at the back that says,

22 \"Stay in touch with this study.\" It is a colored form.

41

1 And if you fill that out and leave it with us today or

2 mail it in, we will make sure your name gets added to

3 the mailing list.

4 And finally, the workshop. Today\'s

5 discussion is the second in a series of workshops that

6 we are conducting. We have held them \-- what we believe

7 to be fairly successful interaction in Bethesda on

8 November 17.

9 We are going to go over to Pahrump

10 tomorrow at the request of the Nye County government,

11 and we are going to go over there tomorrow morning.

12 And next May, I mentioned that there will

13 be several things out next May. One of which is the

14 update for the year 2000 report. And in addition, the

15 Issues Reports that will follow up for this project will

16 be out, maybe next May.

17 So, shortly after next May, we plan on

18 having additional workshops. As I said, we will make

19 the Issues Report available to you before we proceed. So

20 next spring and summer, we\'re going to hold additional

21 workshops. We don\'t know where yet. We don\'t know

22 when, exactly. We will use the web site and mailing

42

1 list to inform you when these will occur.

2 So, today has a very ambitious agenda.

3 We know that, if we don\'t get to your point today,

4 please come back tonight, and there will be a forum for

5 you to voice your concerns.

6 And in conclusion, thank you for your

7 attention. We look forward to your discussion.

8 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Rob. Before we go

MR. CAMERON:

9 for clarifying questions, just let me introduce a few

10 other people in the audience. Senator Lawrence Jacobson

11 from Nevada, and Assemblyman Bob Price, who is also with

12 us. And both Senator Jacobson and Assemblyman Price are

13 members of the Nevada Legislative Committee on Waste.

14 And let me thank the City of Henderson

15 for allowing us to use the Convention Center.

16 We will close off with some suggestions

17 about the process, and I just want to note that before

18 we end today, we would like to get your suggestions on

19 the process. In other words, what else can we do to

20 keep people involved over the course of this particular

21 study? So we will revisit that.

22 Let\'s go to Bob Halstead for clarifying

43

1 questions. Bob?

2 MR. HALSTEAD: First, Chip, I want to thank

MR. HALSTEAD:

3 you for having this meeting in Nevada. Frankly, there

4 is hard feeling on the part of people in those rural

5 counties in the central part of the state who can\'t be

6 here today because of a conflict. Nonetheless, it\'s

7 very important that you are here in the state of Nevada.

8 I have a question about the Sandia

9 Scoping Study, and I don\'t know if you can answer this

10 or not. But while you are still in the literature

11 review phase, I see you\'re also simultaneously doing the

12 rail. I would like to review your work. They are

13 probably going to be useful to you to see them now

14 rather than seeing them as criticism when the study

15 comes out from the Department of Transportation. So we

16 would like some opportunity to review your bibliography

17 for completeness, and then we will offer to supplement

18 that, if necessary.

19 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s hear from Susan Shankman,

MR. CAMERON:

20 and then, if Charles wants to offer any help, he can.

21 DR. SHANKMAN: I think that\'s a good idea. I

DR. SHANKMAN:

22 think it is important that he be included. I would also

44

1 ask Bob if you or anyone feels they have a document they

2 feel that should be included, that you let us know about

3 it.

4 I think Sandia would also want to know \--

5 it may not be on the agenda, and it may be a document

6 that exists somewhere that they don\'t know about. So I

7 would ask you as well as reviewing the pages, it would

8 be well if you would let them know about it.

9 MR. CAMERON: Okay, fine. Other clarifying

MR. CAMERON:

10 questions around the table about what the NRC is

11 embarking on now? Let\'s go to Judy and then go over to

12 Jim.

13 MS. TREICHEL: I just wanted to know what you

MS. TREICHEL

14 meant when you showed the slide that had your Package

15 Performance Study, and you linked Public Involvement

16 with Physical Testing. Now what is the direction.

17 DR. SHANKMAN: I will let Rob answer in more

DR. SHANKMAN:

18 detail, but there\'s an issue that a lot of people want

19 us to do some kind of physical testing, and before we

20 can do any testing, very extensive, we would like to

21 know what control you have for that physical testing.

22 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. That will go to Rob

MR. CAMERON:

45

1 for clarification. Jim?

2 MR. WILLIAMS: This is Jim Williams. In your

MR. WILLIAMS:

3 presentation \-- I think this study was focused on

4 accidents, severe accidents and accident risks. And so

5 I had a question, and taking into account these cask

6 designs, I wanted to ask whether the study will also

7 consider the implications of cask design at the front

8 end and at the back end of shipments. At the front end,

9 in terms of loading canisters \-- at the back end, in

10 terms of unloading their fuel for storage or disposal.

11 DR. SHANKMAN: I\'m not sure that I exactly

DR. SHANKMAN:

12 understand, but let me try and help. This study is

13 focused on severe accidents during transport. It

14 doesn\'t deal with routine and what we refer to as normal

15 transport that we believe is bound by the regulations.

16 As far as storage is concerned, there is

17 another study going on in our Office of Research, what

18 we call CRA \-- Probable Risk Assessment of Storage, and

19 I think what you\'re talking about would be more in that

20 arena than it would be during transport not loading

21 canisters.

22 Does that help?

46

1 MR. WILLIAMS: Yes. Let me clarify what you

MR. WILLIAMS:

2 are up to and what others may be up to. I would

3 suggest, however, that the two things go together, and

4 the design and the shipment would be on the shipment

5 campaign (sic). \_\_\_

6 DR. SHANKMAN: Right. I agree with you. Let

DR. SHANKMAN:

7 me just say that the NRC regulations for the review of

8 storage and canisters are separate reviews. They have

9 separate standard review plans, both of which are

10 available on the Web. And storage is under Part 72, and

11 transport is under Part 71 of NCSR in the regulations.

12 And they issue two separate certificates for licensing

13 and storage. There is no dual-purpose review. We make

14 sure that the canister, as certificated or licensed, is

15 for each of the applications.

16 MR. CAMERON: Rick? MR.

CAMERON:

17 MR. BOYLE: Point of clarification. While the

MR. BOYLE:

18 study is going on, there is as well a request by the

19 state of Nevada and also supported by the Western

20 Governors, for a review on the terrorism issue. Will

21 that be used as part of the study, or included as part

22 of the study or can you clarify how that may or may not

47

1 be addressed.

2 DR. SHANKMAN: We have a separate effort going

DR. SHANKMAN:

3 on. We are now conferring with several other countries

4 that have data on stress assessment and stress risk of

5 transporting spent fuel, and we have a study slated to

6 begin in the fiscal year 2001. So any comments which

7 you have on that, which may be in the transcript, we

8 will include in our design. So it\'s not part of the

9 Spent Fuel, but it is part of the NRC.

10 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Klaus?

MR. CAMERON:

11 MR. SCHULMANN: I would like to say something

MR. SCHULMANN

12 about what Mr. (unintelligible) was saying. We are very

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

13 much concerned about the terrorism attacks and the

14 sabotage attacks, and we feel, to make this frequent

15 study \-- first of all, when you were doing this

16 presentation, you mentioned several groups being

17 involved, and our office the public itself, and to

18 estimated 50,000,000 Americans who will be using this

19 transportation route, and I think they are part of this

20 as well, and you might want to include them in your

21 presentation list.

22 DR. SHANKMAN: Okay. That\'s a point a well

DR. SHANKMAN:

48

1 taken. I would hope that the people who are here will

2 help us by getting the word out and that the media will

3 assist us in getting the help we are asking for. We are

4 preparing a video on Spent Fuel Transportation, and we

5 are anticipating that today, and any suggestions you

6 have, besides the web site, that we could be more

7 specific, we would like that.

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Great. And we will be

MR. CAMERON:

9 getting into more on all of these issues.

10 Rich, you have some clarifying questions?

11 MR. BOYLE: One comment, one very quick

MR. BOYLE:

12 comment. As far as sabotage and terrorism, as far as

13 the Department of Transportation is concerned, as we

14 develop our regulations for hazardous material

15 transport, we do not consider terrorism and sabotage a

16 transport scenario. We consider it eitehr a criminal

17 activity or an act of war, depending on who would

18 undertake such an activity.

19 So as far as the transport regulations

20 go, we do not include that, and we would caution others

21 from including it in a transportation-oriented study.

22 MR. CAMERON: We are going to come back to

MR. CAMERON:

49

1 this particular issue, too. Thank you for that

2 testimony, Rick. Kevin?

3 MR. BLACKWELL: A clarifying comment to what

MR. BLACKWELL:

4 Rick just said in the scenario that the Department of

5 Transportation neglects the security issue completely.

6 They are aware of security issues. They are \-- they

7 have an office in the office of the Secretary that deals

8 with the Office of Intelligence and Security, and there

9 are initiatives underway in the department, that they

10 are looking at various security issues across the

11 different levels of administration. So there is work

12 being done in that area.

13 But as Rick said, when it comes to

14 regulatory development, we look at it in a different

15 light. But the department is not turning a blind eye

16 towards security issues involved in such transportation

17 of materials.

18 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Mike Baughman?

MR. CAMERON:

19 MR. BAUGHMAN: Yes. Question. You stated we

MR. BAUGHMAN:

20 are confident that the system we have in place now \--

21 you mentioned the safety of our current approach. That

22 brings to mind the adage, \"If it\'s not broke, don\'t fix

50

1 it.\"

2 So I wondered if \-- I guess what I am

3 wondering is, will you state those conditions and their

4 characteristics of the anticipated shipments over the

5 next several years that may cause you to question your

6 confidence for the future?

7 In other words, why are we doing this

8 study, and I have to assume that perhaps things may be

9 changing in the future. And the question is, what, so

10 will you state those assumptions about what may be

11 different in the future that results in some of these

12 changes?

13 MR. CAMERON: Is there anybody \-- the

MR. CAMERON:

14 suggestion is to make sure that the rationale for why

15 we\'re doing this is clearly stated in the study itself,

16 as well as the technical reasons.

17 MR. LEWIS: Now, we have to characterize the

MR. LEWIS:

18 reason that we are doing this study itself is the

19 anticipation that the system \-- that it has the ability

20 to change as the technology we use changes. We have a

21 responsibility to verify the conclusions on the other

22 projects, which we have not thought \-- frankly, we have

51

1 not thought about identifying some of the qualifying

2 criteria to implement the project. If you find

3 something that indicates the current system we use is

4 not safe, we would have to change our rules, and we

5 would change our practices. It is up to you to keep us

6 informed.

7 MR. CAMERON: Susan? MR.

CAMERON:

8 DR. SHANKMAN: Let me just say that I don\'t

DR. SHANKMAN:

9 know that we know of anything in the system today that

10 would cause us concern. But as Rob stated,

11 (unintelligible) and the studies to make sure that the

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

12 information we have on casks in today\'s design as well

13 as the design on the processing, which reflects the

14 state of the process, and that it would be, you know, it

15 is just as important to update, it just makes sense as

16 we know more to make it better. And as Rob said, the

17 minute we know something, we have taken action.

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And as we proceed on our

MR. CAMERON:

19 discussion today, there may be suggestions about why

20 this should be done, so let\'s put those on the table.

21 We are only doing clarifying now.

22 Let\'s go to Bob, and then we\'ll go out

52

1 and see if anybody in the audience has a clarifying

2 question.

3 MR. HALSTEAD: Yes. On this issue, I prepared

MR. HALSTEAD:

4 an index that gives the State of Nevada\'s summary of

5 account of cask shipments. The state of Nevada, along

6 with the Western Interstate Energy Board and the Western

7 Governors Association, have been the lead critics of the

8 modal study since 1989. In fact, we were somewhat

9 astounded to hear about the plan, because we were

10 getting ready to submit a petition for remake (sic)

\_\_\_

11 after we developed the various parts of NCFR between

12 part 71, 72, and part 73. So we are not sure exactly

13 what went into your thinking.

14 But our thinking is that since \-- if the

15 Yucca Mountain facility goes forward, you have 35 times

16 more spent fuel shipped per year than in the last 20

17 years, this being over the last 30 or 40 years \-- eight

18 to 24 times more shipments per year \-- a 500 percent

19 increase in the average rail shipments, a 200 percent

20 increase in the average truck shipments, and all the new

21 issues that are related, from long distance hauls to

22 western terrain to weather is very different from what

53

1 has happened in the industry for the most part over the

2 last 20 years.

3 We would argue that the primary reason

4 for reassessing the modal study is not the increase in

5 the sophistication of the computer, although we

6 acknowledge that. And not even necessarily the new

7 design of the shipping casks, although that\'s important,

8 too. But it is the profoundly radical change in the

9 nature of the nuclear waste transportation operations

10 that are likely to occur over the next four decades,

11 compared to the past four decades. Okay.

12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. Let\'s go to

MR. CAMERON:

13 Jack Edlow for comment, and then we will go on to John.

14 MR. EDLOW: Thank you very much. I\'d like to

MR. EDLOW:

15 return to the previous discussion that took place

16 regarding the current shipments. I think it is

17 important to note that there are many shipments of Spent

18 Fuel that take place in the United States through the

19 year. These shipments are regulated both by the

20 Regulatory Commission and by he Department of

21 Transportation. Under the NRC, you have federal safety

22 regulations. You also have security regulations.

54

1 Over the years that we have been involved

2 in shipping Spent Fuel, and many of you may remember our

3 first shipment in 1963, the regulations have changed

4 quite a lot, as things have become necessary. In 1963,

5 there were no security regulations. That was prior to

6 the time of general terrorist activity that was

7 prevalent in the United States. Since that happened,

8 regulations have been put in place.

9 I think it is important that the public

10 understand, and that it is just a matter of record

11 today, that the current regulations, as they are placed

12 for the DOE and the NRC, are sufficient to manage and

13 regulate shipments as of this time.

14 I think it\'s worthwhile. I think it\'s

15 important that the NRC has undertaken this study to use,

16 for whatever purpose \-- whether it is Bob\'s view,

17 because of the radical change \-- that I disagree with \--

18 but in any case, whether it is the radical change,

19 whether it is more security power, whether it is just

20 time to do it again, I think it is worthwhile to go

21 through this exercise and answer all these questions

22 that people have, that being people who can\'t be present

55

1 today to participate in the hearing.

2 I think it is wonderful that we do this.

3 I think it is important to understand that the system

4 that works today is effective, and that the public is

5 protected today, both for security and safety.

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Let\'s see if

MR. CAMERON:

7 there are any questions that need to be answered out

8 here before we get into the discussion of this.

9 John? State your name and your

10 affiliation.

11 MR. HADDER: My name is John Hadder with

MR. HADDER:

12 Citizen\'s Alert. And I just wanted to follow up on one

13 of the public questions. Is it correct to assume that

14 the initiation of this process has nothing to do with

15 public comment on cask safety transport at this point?

16 MR. CAMERON: Clarification? Susan?

MR. CAMERON:

17 DR. SHANKMAN: I am not exactly sure what you

DR. SHANKMAN

18 are saying. Will you say it again in another way?

19 MR. HADDER: In the way that you have stated

MR. HADDER:

20 so far, there is a lot of language out about improved

21 computer models and the nature of future transportation.

22 I didn\'t really hear anything about public involvement

56

1 and your requesting or asking for a more detailed study.

2 Wasn\'t that part of your decision to move ahead?

3 DR. SHANKMAN: Sure, of course it is part of

DR. SHANKMAN:

4 our decision. And also the fact that we are trying to

5 get the study completed before the initiation of the

6 request. It is also part of our study, but I think it\'s

7 easy to do it as extensively as we are planning to do it

8 because we do have the ability to do a better study with

9 the computer power and the resources that we have.

10 Earl?

11 MR. EASTON: Having been at the NRC for a very

MR. EASTON:

12 long time, first of all, the NRC, when we put out the

13 initial study in 1977, the Commission made a formal

14 commitment to the public to keep the transportation

15 standards and to keep the transportation of radioactive

16 material under a continuous review to make sure, as Mr.

17 Edlow said, that we are in step with the time.

18 So I think for all of the above reasons

19 mentioned, we have the ability to really focus in as the

20 subject becomes greater, to take advantage of that. As

21 the public raises concerns, we will take advantage of

22 that. And each of these studies is made to supplement

57

1 and build on the other studies. And this will not be

2 the end of this.

3 As the transportation evolves in the

4 future, and I think this will be continuous process, and

5 that stems from, I believe the initial commitment for

6 the mission of the Commission.

7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Earl, for that

MR. CAMERON:

8 clarification.

9 Susan, you may want to state,

10 particularly in light of Earl\'s comments as new

11 information comes in, that the ultimate goal is to see

12 if the regulations need to be changed to improve

13 protection of health and safety. Is that the ultimate

14 goal we are working for?

15 DR. SHANKMAN: Yes. DR.

SHANKMAN:

16 MR. CAMERON: Dennis?

MR. CAMERON:

17 MR. SPECKMAN (phonetic): Dennis Speckman,

MR. SPECKMAN (phonetic):

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

18 State of Nevada. Clarifying question. Will the

19 transport modal study also include the quality control

20 issue, including perhaps the evaluation of the testing

21 methods currently employed by (unintelligible)?

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

22 MR. LEWIS: One of the issues that we will

MR. LEWIS:

58

1 discuss also later today are the human factors involved

2 in the casks, the quality issue, and the cask design and

3 cask load, and those are open for comment and discussion

4 in the public sector.

5 MR. CAMERON: We will get to that. Let\'s take

MR. CAMERON:

6 two final clarifying questions.

7 Ron?

8 MR. POPE: Ron Pope, with the International

MR. POPE:

9 Atomic Energy Agency. I would just like to add from the

10 international perspective, in that the agency is

11 controlled by what is known as a Board of Governors and

12 a general conference.

13 At the last general conference a

14 resolution was passed that encourages the International

15 Atomic Agency to continue to review the adequacy of

16 regulations to insure that they are complete. So it is

17 not just an internal concern. It is an international

18 concern, and all the member states are very concerned,

19 and encouraged, and intend to continue this operation

20 for the protection of the due process.

21 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot. Now let\'s have

MR. CAMERON:

22 final comment on this stage from Klaus.

59

1 MR. SCHUMANN: Klaus Schumann, with the

MR. SCHUMANN:

2 Nuclear Waste Management Committee. I still have a

3 clarifying question. In your presentation you mentioned

4 that there would be different casks as well as also the

5 casks may contain or will contain (unintelligible)

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

6 assembly for shipment.

7 But isn\'t it true that also the

8 characteristics of the contents itself may change as

9 well in the future, considering that in the future, fuel

10 \-- you may have fuel involved which has stayed longer in

11 the reactor, it has therefore a possible mummification

12 (sic) for the thermal load and also for travel

\_\_\_

13 containers.

14 MR. CAMERON: Rob Lewis?

MR. CAMERON:

15 MR. LEWIS: You are absolutely correct. And I

MR. LEWIS:

16 have that on my list.

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Rob.

MR. CAMERON:

18 I think rather than jump into the first

19 substantive discussion, which is now Highway and Railway

20 Accidents, that rather than break that in the middle

21 maybe we should take a break right now and maybe give

22 you a few minutes to get some coffee and stretch your

60

1 legs. And we will start at 10:30.

2 (Off the record colloquy.)

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

3 (Brief recess.)

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

4 MR. CAMERON: Let me introduce Dr. Charles

MR. CAMERON:

5 Massey. He is the Manager of the Transportation,

6 Safety, and Security Analysis Department at Sandia

7 National Lab. And his group is responsible for the

8 design testing analysis of all types of radioactive

9 material, packages and performance transportation,

10 safety and security assessment.

11 Dr. Massey has been at Sandia for 10

12 years and prior to joining Sandia, Dr. Massey worked at

13 Oakridge National Lab. He was Ships Officer in the U.S.

14 Navy. He received a Bachelor of Science in Marine

15 Transportation from the Merchant Marine Academy. He has

16 a Masters of Science Degree from the School of

17 Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and

18 another Master\'s Degree from the School of Public Health

19 at the University of Pittsburgh. He has a Doctorate in

20 Radiation Health from the University of Pittsburgh. And

21 I\'ll turn it over to Dr. Massey to sort of key this

22 discussion issue up front.

61

1 DR. MASSEY: Thank you. I have three

DR. MASSEY:

2 functions during today\'s discussion. First is to give

3 some background on sort of how we have gotten to the

4 current state of knowledge that we have on response in

5 the actual packages in accident positions.

6 We will use that as sort of our weeding

7 point of discussion as to what it is that Sandia has

8 developed as suggestions for incorporation into a

9 Package Performance Study. And I present those, as Dr.

10 Shankman said, not that a decision has been made or that

11 the suggestion for we\'re proposing will be the final

12 consideration in the study, but to stimulate discussion

13 so you will know what sort things we\'re thinking about

14 looking at and the type of input we\'re interested in

15 receiving from you. So clearly you know that those are

16 suggestions.

17 My third role is as you make suggestions

18 and comments to make sure we understand Sandia\'s point

19 of view, especially in the technical area, so I can

20 understand what exactly it is that you are proposing so

21 we can take that into account properly when we look at

22 the actual point of discussion.

62

1 To raise the technical topic areas we

2 will be looking at this afternoon and this morning; we

3 will finish off this morning. I am looking at the

4 accident \-- it looks like it might be one of these

5 accidents that could take place involving spent fuel

6 transportation and, if possible, by rail, and also

7 mention the other mode that may be used for

8 transportation, such as barges.

9 Then we are combining the cask

10 performance during the collision, such as fires, and we

11 were discuss that in this one area and I will present

12 some background on some of those.

13 And then in the afternoon we will look at

14 specifically the performance of spent fuel rods inside

15 the package during an accident. Just to provide some

16 background so everybody has some common base of

17 understanding, this is the material we are talking about

18 transporting.

19 As you can see, the bottom has been

20 digitally re-enhanced for a little bit of perspective

21 for fuel assembly. These are the materials that we

22 package for storage and put in the spent fuel casks and

63

1 ultimately transport down to the disposal area \--

2 roughly 12 feet long, a foot and half or so in diameter.

3 Once out of the reactor, those spent fuel

4 rods are radioactive in the large inventory of all the

5 radioactive material and are properly packaged for

6 maximum safety during transportation, and ultimate

7 disposition.

8 To do so, we put them in substantial

9 specially designed packages that take into account

10 shielding requirements that these are radioactive.

11 There are neutrons, X-rays, and gamma rays. And in the

12 design we take into account we have to shield those

13 types of radiation initially and also to survive

14 potential accidents environmentally, the package as well

15 as the conditions going over the road in transportation

16 and transport the package.

17 I have brought \-- well, I will talk very

18 briefly about the importance of these significant

19 features. The main part of the \-- here\'s the main body

20 of the cask. And you can see yourself here there is the

21 outer wall which is for the cask processes, here, and

22 then the internals of the cabinet, which is essentially

64

1 in place.

2 And the package is closed up, and on the

3 end of the package for transport are package warning

4 materials, packing, placed on the end of the package to

5 help absorb forces that may develop in a collision if it

6 were hit on one of the ends, or on the corners of the

7 package.

8 I have brought with us a cutaway, a

9 cutaway of a cask design which is actually a truck Spent

10 Fuel Cask. What you can see on the outer edge here is a

11 quarter-inch stainless steel wall which is designed to

12 hold material in the package.

13 This is not really a strong structural

14 part of the cask, or anything to be taken into account

15 in consideration during the package performance. We are

16 going to remove it to get to essentially the substantial

17 part of the cask, which has been mostly discussed for

18 collision forces in the performance of the package.

19 You can see you have just about three-

20 fourths of an inch of stainless steel, which is an

21 intercapsuled (sic) wall, I believe it\'s five inches of

\_\_\_

22 lead, some type of gamma X-ray shielding material, and

65

1 then another inch and a quarter or so on the outer edge.

2 This is the primary piece of the cask that we\'ll be

3 relying on for protection in the journey in the

4 transportation of the cask.

5 We\'ll move it back \-- come look at this.

6 Pick it up. This is the actual size of one of the casks

7 that\'s currently in use. It is pretty heavy. If you

8 pick it up, be careful you don\'t drop it on your toe.

9 Once the material is packaged in its

10 Spent Fuel cask, it is transported over the road in a

11 flatbed. On the sides of the packages are what they

12 look like once they are completely closed.

13 Now the first topic that I want to talk

14 about, is what\'s the likelihood that one of these

15 accidents could take place involving a Spent Fuel

16 Package? As Mr. Lewis talked about, there has been a

17 series of studies done over the years on the original

18 NUREG 0170, which was completed in 1977, and, as

19 information has gotten better and we understand more and

20 the competition has improved and we have a better

21 understanding of public issues, we try to incorporate

22 these into the study we have completed.

66

1 Now, in the modal study that was issued

2 in 1987, they used, for sort of an initiating backup,

3 \"What\'s the likelihood that a truck or train

4 transporting of Spent Nuclear Fuel would be involved in

5 an accident? What\'s the likelihood of that happening?

6 Well, in 1985, the average truck and rail

7 data from across the United States, based on, now that

8 we have an accident, say a truck is involved in an

9 accident they tried to develop \-- we developed

10 scenarios. What happens now? Okay. The truck now goes

11 off the road. It crashes \-- into a bridge abutment, or

12 some sort of rock on the ground. Depends \-- is there a

13 fire or not?

14 So, as a result, we freeze the event. We

15 look towards finding what we are going to have to.

16 Based on that Modal Study we came up with 20 categories

17 of accidents in every category. Based on all these

18 possible combinations of things happening once there was

19 an accident, how would we sort of blend those in a group

20 to analyze what might happen to the package given

21 certain types of incidents.

22 Then Hawaii developed a number of speeds

67

1 and fires durations, and different distributions and

2 looking at \-- based on how fast the trucks or trains may

3 be going, and then vary the results after those given

4 scenarios.

5 In the 0170 re-evaluation that will be

6 issued early next year, we were able to only give

7 actually one-year-later data that was within modal

8 studies. That should be something to look into. We did

9 not do new accident sequence eventualities. We modified

10 what was in the original modal study.

11 As a result of those modifications and

12 the use of some of the later data, we ended up with 19

13 truck and 21 rail accident conversion categories in the

14 grouping of events that could occur on how they will

15 impact the package. We essentially used modal studies

16 using speed, crash, and fire distribution.

17 For the Package Performance Study, we\'d

18 like to do a much newer update of accident rates data,

19 and that should take us up to the present time, and also

20 take advantage of national improvements and other

21 geographical information as to how that data is

22 collected and represented along routes that packages are

68

1 nationally transported.

2 In addition, we would like to go into

3 those sequences given that there is a collision

4 involving a truck that goes off the road, what are the

5 things that could happen to a package in the

6 environment, given that accident event?

7 We wanted to spend a little more time

8 going into some of the historical data. And I note that

9 Mr. Halstead had a sheet that had a number of accident

10 events, historical accidents, and I look at some of

11 those historical accidents and see what are the fire \--

12 environment, for packages \-- much more relying, instead

13 of us hypothesizing the kinds of things that could

14 happen, but look at what is happening in the

15 environment.

16 And this is not only involving just

17 packages, but truck and train, so we can get a better

18 feel for more realistically look at what is happening to

19 packages there in the environment.

20 And then finally in development of this

21 category, we really depend on what we find as we develop

22 these accident scenarios and the likelihood of those

69

1 occurring.

2 Now, I will turn it back over to Chip.

3 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Charles.

MR. CAMERON:

4 Well, Charles addressed some Sandia suggestions for the

5 study. You may want to suggest specifics under those

6 categories. You may want to talk about new categories

7 that might be looked at.

8 There were some references to terrorism -

9 - sabotage during our clarifying session. This is

10 probably the time to put a finer point on that, clear up

11 any misimpressions that you think might be involved.

12 With that \-- so that\'s one part of this

13 discussion, I think. But let\'s go to Bob Halstead for

14 the state of Nevada for some comments, and then what I\'d

15 like to do is to hear if there are any other comments on

16 the issues \-- at least the issue, the first issue or a

17 set of issues that Bob brings up, and then we\'re going

18 to come back over to Ron Ross and Jim Reed. Bob?

19 MR. HALSTEAD: Chip, again, I very much

MR. HALSTEAD:

20 appreciate the format and location of this meeting. And

21 we have part of what we think are our most important

22 summary comments at this point, in writing, in the

70

1 interest of time. So we can have a discussion of all

2 points.

3 Let me just mention a few highlights of

4 our concerns. First of all, regarding historical

5 accidents, we identify a select few of a large number

6 we\'ve been evaluating for the past ten years in

7 preparation for the Yucca Mountain EIS. We will be

8 expecting more documentation on these, and I know Dr.

9 Massey will be looking forward to receiving those. I

10 think this is the nuts and bolts stuff we have to look

11 at.

12 In particular, let me call your attention

13 to the Catastrophic Highway Infrastructure Failures, and

14 the Truck and Rail accidents involving military

15 explosives. The military explosive issue is very

16 important to us here in Nevada, where we have to deal

17 with both the truck and rail shipments and our training

18 posts surrounding, Nellis and Fallon and other

19 facilities.

20 Without belaboring that list, we believe

21 there are a number of accidents where forces in excess

22 of the current NRC Cask Performance Standards may have

71

1 been created. Everyone knows accidents in creation is

2 more art than science, but this is where we should

3 start, with our listing of these severe accidents.

4 Secondly, regarding accident rates, we

5 think it is really important to use a bounding approach,

6 for many reasons, to accident rates. We need to look at

7 differences from state to state, differences from route

8 to route, differences from year to year.

9 It\'s also important to go back and

10 reconstruct the accident rate respecting fuel shipments,

11 last done to our knowledge in 1991 by Science

12 Applications International in a report for the DOE.

13 These numbers would not have changed much, because

14 frankly, there haven\'t been that many shipments,

15 shipment-wise, in the 90\'s, compared to the 60\'s, 70\'s,

16 and 80\'s.

17 But as you can see from these numbers,

18 0.7 accidents per million miles per truck, and I know my

19 rail friends are aghast at that horrendous 9.7 accidents

20 in a million miles by rail, and that reflects a lot of

21 issues like the smaller number of shipment miles because

22 of the larger capacity rate of packages.

72

1 But the bottom line is, there is some

2 historical data in there that needs to be updated. But

3 I don\'t think it will change that much.

4 Finally, on the maximum accident issues,

5 Nevada is in the process at looking at historical

6 accidents that have occurred in Nevada, and actually, it

7 sounds quite useful from the same contractor (sic)

\_\_\_

8 reports.

9 One incident that\'s well known to rail

10 historians is a 1939 sabotage incident in the city of

11 San Francisco. A passenger train was derailed at full

12 speed into a steep canyon. And there was some thinking

13 that it was a copy-cat effect with a news article on

14 that report here just before the derailment, that

15 occurred in Arizona, and actually, the same techniques

16 and planning were done for that. That is one example of

17 a very severe accident that we\'ll be providing you

18 documentation on.

19 There are also some hypothetical

20 accidents, and again, I acknowledge that DOE has

21 recognized these in their 1986 environmental assessment.

22 The issue of military aircraft carrying live munition,

73

1 either bombing or crashing into shipments because of the

2 way that the Yucca Mountain is situated near the flight

3 corridors for Nellis and Fallon. That is a real issue

4 in Nevada.

5 Finally, as far as the probability issue.

6 Let\'s put it bluntly. You have to look at 1,000,000 per

7 year, in order to meet \-- to exceed these two

8 guidelines. There are always going to be flights that

9 are cumulative on uncertainties of having got to that

10 number.

11 You have got to at least assume a factor

12 of 10 arguments, and indeed, there are some arguments

13 you have got to consider of those uncertainties go

14 beyond one in 10,000,000 per year incidents.

15 Just in closing, the undetected heat

16 vecs, improper loading has to be looked at both as

17 accident initiating factors and as a consequence,

18 evacuating factors, and that while Nevada advocates the

19 use of dedicated trains, we don\'t advocate assuming them

20 in this study, because DOE and the industry has opposed

21 mandatory use, and in fact, DOE has premised their own

22 general plan so there are important disputes among the

74

1 railroad as to what the maximum speed should be.

2 We will continue to push for dedicated

3 trains, but to give you a good conservative approach to

4 accident probability and consequence estimation, I think

5 it\'s important to assume general train confidence (sic).

\_\_\_

6 Thank you.

7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob, and I guess one

MR. CAMERON:

8 thing, and I\'ll go to the NRC staff for a clarification

9 here. The data that the state of Nevada submits or any

10 other data that comes in, will that be available somehow

11 to other people by posting on the web site? I don\'t

12 know if we have the answer.

13 MR. HALSTEAD: That was our hope, that we

MR. HALSTEAD:

14 would use that web site as a single point of contact to

15 access each other\'s information.

16 MR. CAMERON: Is that our intent? Rob? Yes?

MR. CAMERON:

17 (Addressing Mr. Lewis) You will post?

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

18 MR. LEWIS: We will be \-- and we would, of

MR. LEWIS:

19 course, acknowledge anything we get from anyone we will

20 put on the web site. That is not an issue. If not on

21 the website, it will be made available somehow.

22 MR. CAMERON: We will make it easy for you.

MR. CAMERON:

75

1 We have a lot of our documents on our own web site. So

2 we can give you ours and you can access many of our

3 documents. On the other hand, there is difficulty to

4 access documents. For example, we had a very good

5 practical discussions with Larry Fisher (phonetic) and

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

6 C. K. (unintelligible) back in March of 1989 at a

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

7 workshop sponsored by the Western Users Energy Group.

8 We were the only people who were

9 interested in transcribing tapes, so as far as we know,

10 we have the only transcript of the tape.

11 It would be very useful to you to see the

12 things that Larry and C.K. admitted when they were

13 pushed about where they had to cut corners, where they

14 had to rely on judgment as a substitute for data, and

15 hopefully that will provide \-- I understand the average

16 person going into that website is probably not

17 interested in what happened on Page 76 of the

18 transcript.

19 But we should talk about how to make this

20 much larger body of data available. I don\'t necessarily

21 \-- I don\'t care whether the public has it, but it\'s

22 really important for me to know that the people doing

76

1 the study considered this, and I think there is an issue

2 of the public right to it.

3 But you will have to deal with the nuts

4 and bolts of it, and you will have to work on the

5 details. Bob put a number of issues on the tail end. I

6 think the others of you had the forces in excess, the

7 type of accidents, the bombing approach to accident

8 rates where you spend consideration of seasonal, state-

9 by-state variations of \-- don\'t assume dedicated trains,

10 or any other particular form of transport.

11 Does anybody, and I know we have a lot of

12 cards up here on your own issues, but does anybody want

13 to comment on any of Bob\'s issues at this point?

14 Ron?

15 MR. POPE: Just to clarify, we support Bob on

MR. POPE:

16 the issue of mixed freight, that they make a bounding

17 kind of thought (sic) versus a dedicated train. But

\_\_\_

18 basically, we support that you could have an open

19 commerce factor inbound \-- what kind of thing might be

20 on those trains that would then have other shipments?

21 MR. CAMERON: Other points? Kevin?

MR. CAMERON:

22 MR. BLACKWELL: Actually, I have a question

MR. BLACKWELL:

77

1 first for clarification with Bob. The critical thing

2 is, it would make my job a lot easier, as a lot of the

3 data begins \-- it is useful to me \-- I want to thank Bob

4 for that. He is real candid about it.

5 Also, Bob, my question to you is in

6 regards to the \-- I believe you stated that the rail

7 accident rate is attached, so basically a ten-miles

8 figure is a tours (sic) shipment mile figure?

\_\_\_

9 MR. HALSTEAD: That is right. It is a

MR. HALSTEAD:

10 shipment-mile approach, and it involves a mix where most

11 of the \-- in fact, I believe all of the rail shipments

12 since 1975 have been in dedicated trains. And I believe

13 there were some transfer shipments.

14 But \-- there were some 60 shipments that

15 went in general trade commerce from I think it is

16 Humboldt Bay primarily to West Fallon, so to actually

17 look at these shipments because \-- it is mostly

18 Monticello and Cooper station type thing, where you have

19 two or three miles of casks, so that \-- as I said, you

20 have to also understand that one stupid accident on a

21 CMI (sic) shipment, with someone riding on a train to

\_\_\_

22 St. Louis \-- it is the statistics, and there is a reason

78

1 why anybody doing a CRA has to really understand what

2 went into this.

3 And there\'s an argument that that\'s not

4 an accident or need not be considered an accident, but

5 it gives you that big number that my railway friends are

6 certainly unhappy about. And that is why the shipment

7 miles have anticipated a lot of accidents.

8 But at any rate, this is an area for some

9 technical discussion as to how we develop a rail

10 accident rate, whether cask miles, ton miles, shipment

11 miles \-- a very important technical issue that we need

12 to study probably to represent the different points of

13 view.

14 MR. BLACKWELL: Bob, my question was, I want

MR. BLACKWELL:

15 to bring out to NRC to make clear that information you

16 get from different sources may not be necessarily the

17 same kind of information. That information that is

18 already provided may be based on ton miles versus actual

19 shipping miles.

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks a lot, Kevin.

MR. CAMERON:

21 Do we have other comments on what Bob has

22 said? Rick?

79

1 MR. BOYLE: Rick Boyle from the U.S.

MR. BOYLE:

2 Department of Transportation. I agree that we need to

3 study to put in a bounding perspective from the

4 probability standpoint. I\'d like to highlight it. And

5 if my numbers aren\'t exact, I would hope that they are

6 within the order of magnitude.

7 Five million shipments of radioactive

8 materials, probably 150,000,000 hazardous material

9 shipments a year, and that\'s a small percentage of the

10 overall goods and services that are transported in the

11 United States, and that is annually.

12 Certainly there are severe accidents,

13 just as Mr. Halstead stated, certainly over the last ten

14 years, referencing there are maybe 20 or 30 very severe

15 accidents in areas.

16 If you look at those 30 accidents, which

17 I have to admit I am not familiar with \-- I don\'t

18 really want to get into anything other than the numbers

19 that are presented relative to the billions of shipments

20 made over the last ten years, I think the study should

21 reflect that that probability is found in some place.

22 That is on, in general, that\'s an overview.

80

1 Now, we get into some areas that may be

2 of interest to some particular parties. In Nevada, the

3 one that was brought up was a military shipment of live

4 ammunition on an aircraft that either accidentally or

5 purposely bombed a spent fuel train.

6 I think that is an area that has even

7 less probability since it hasn\'t happened. And that\'s

8 why I would caution what I would hope that our NRC

9 contractor people, who are the lower bound on that

10 probability under fuel lines.

11 Our next comment, as you get into

12 accident rates, and setting of it, again I comment on

13 non=dangerous goods versus dangerous goods versus

14 radioactive material, and I think accident rates,

15 because you have to realize the regulations are there,

16 where you don\'t transport everything at the same rate.

17 You should look at the accident rates for

18 radioactive material, and particularly Hazmat (sic).

\_\_\_

19 You don\'t have enough of a background rather than all

20 the dangerous goods.

21 The historical aspect is also very

22 important. You should look at how shipments are being

81

1 made today. The easiest one is maybe the least

2 applicable here, but is a good example if we study the

3 international air transport, and you wanted to look at

4 the historical basis, we are going back to prop planes,

5 and historically, that doesn\'t make sense. That had

6 nothing to do with how things are shipped today.

7 Possibly our railroad experts could tell

8 us the same thing, that rail shipments today versus ten

9 years ago, would be equipment and the improvement. It

10 may not be practical at all. I would caution that use

11 of the historical data, you really have to think, \"Is

12 that really practical?\" Thank you.

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. It seems like we are

MR. CAMERON:

14 dealing with how to get a handle on these issues of

15 bounding, and John suggested one process \-- perhaps the

16 point of view

17 MR. HALSTEAD: The military accident is very

MR. HALSTEAD:

18 real, as documented by DOE. Anyone who is spending time

19 in rural Nevada, and probably you haven\'t done this, has

20 been buzzed by flyboys at Fallon and Nellis; many

21 strange things occur.

22 In fact, we have incidents of people

82

1 calling the office about planes loaded with live

2 ammunition incidents \-- say two years ago. And the

3 reason there are rail accidents \-- here is the issue,

4 statistically, rail accident rates have come done

5 extraordinarily over the last few decades. But the

6 number of very severe accidents per year is still about

7 the same.

8 So again, the point about using PRA \--

9 using historical numbers, PRA must be done very

10 carefully, and I think you need some kind of a technical

11 study group that represents a study review to hash out.

12 And I don\'t want to end it with the discussion we have

13 at this table, because it is very important to get

14 numbers you can live with.

15 MR. CAMERON: All right. Let\'s go to Fred

MR. CAMERON:

16 Dilger, and we will continue on this issue.

17 MR. DILGER: Thank you. Fred Dilger, Clark

MR. DILGER:

18 County. I want to agree with Bob with his remarks about

19 the county. One of the things that we\'ve found, because

20 of the Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement, is

21 that \-- and in support of what Bob said earlier, that

22 from 1974 to 1991, there were approximately 1.4 million

83

1 shipment miles of Spent Nuclear Fuel.

2 The proposed action for the Department of

3 Energy is 82 million shipment miles. For their quantum

4 one and two is 142 shipment miles. So we think they\'re

5 radically different programs that are being proposed.

6 And so the choice of accident rates is very, very

7 important.

8 And I also agree with Rick that the

9 choice of accident rates has got to be done very

10 carefully, and you can\'t go back forever. Thus we

11 appreciate the changes in policy that will make it

12 safer.

13 There is another accident rate that

14 applies uniquely to Nevada that Sandia and the NRC need

15 to study, and that is the Yucca Mountain granting of the

16 proposed transporting of approximately two rail casks on

17 220-foot-long heavy-haul tractors.

18 In real terms, it would probably be

19 traveling about 10 miles an hour in a lane, that is a

20 highway that is being used by 70,000 cars a day, with

21 cars and vehicles in adjacent lanes traveling about 70

22 miles an hour.

84

1 We think that there is no precedent for

2 that, and we think the company really needs to look at

3 that. Here again, we know that there are regulations on

4 that particular program, but this is ultimately

5 something that needs to be looked at.

6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Fred. You brought up

MR. CAMERON:

7 a specific example from the DOE DEIS.

8 Let\'s go to John Vincent for some

9 information on the actual plan in terms of transport.

10 John.

11 MR. VINCENT: I just wanted to update your

MR. VINCENT:

12 database, practical stories on shipments via rail

13 exclusively, and multiple cask shipments, and I don\'t

14 think it\'s appropriate, therefore, to \-- as you

15 indicated, to limit the accident rates associated with

16 general freight trains and not consider the

17 circumstances with dedicated trains. That may, in fact,

18 be leading the charts on this whole issue, and establish

19 the standards for the future. And it will probably be a

20 different set of numbers than obviously for general

21 freight.

22 By the way, Bob, those two accidents \--

85

1 on one, the driver ran around the gate, the gate guard,

2 and the train was going five miles an hour. It was

3 probably almost not an accident.

4 MR. CAMERON: All right, thank you for that

MR. CAMERON:

5 clarification, John.

6 I guess the question is that \-- what,

7 ultimately, does Sandia consider, for example, the

8 dedicated train general freight? How do they make

9 decisions on what they look at? Charles?

10 DR. MASSEY: That is one of the things that

DR. MASSEY:

11 will be, ultimately be \-- how do we deal with these

12 events where you have some crossing point and you have a

13 collision with a car, that don\'t seek thresholds \-- that

14 are not always important.

15 But how are we going to process that

16 information, and how do we do that? And in the case of

17 distance, it is ultimately clear they really wouldn\'t

18 prevent much of a collision, and how do we then, or do

19 we try to put out some other event? Is there damage

20 based on the then accidents, and how do we deal with

21 accident data, and how do we collect it?

22 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s go down this way and then

MR. CAMERON:

86

1 go to Bob Alcock, and then we\'ll come back over and pick

2 up on the rest of you.

3 MR. ALCOCK: I wonder if I could first ask a

MR. ALCOCK:

4 question of Bob Halstead, and then follow up with

5 Sandia.

6 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead.

MR. CAMERON:

7 MR. ALCOCK: Bob, in spite of the lists of the

MR. ALCOCK:

8 number of accidents, railway, highway, truck and so

9 forth, were these incidents \-- is there information

10 available as to the amount of forces involved, or

11 temperatures achieved, or duration of time? Are there

12 data like that for these incidents?

13 MR. HALSTEAD: Yes, we\'re working on this.

MR. HALSTEAD:

14 And as I said before, anybody that has been in this

15 business of accident reconstruction, it\'s a difficult

16 thing to do.

17 Basically, we have identified a list of

18 the severe accidents to a wide range of sources. And

19 NDOT and the NTS database has identified those accidents

20 that were studied in detail by the National

21 Transportation Safety Board, and in some cases, there

22 are extensive reports for certain states where the

87

1 states have done investigations.

2 And we have a report that I had hoped

3 would be done by today to give you, but as I was busy

4 writing Hearing Statements, and we had these Hearings up

5 north, that will have to wait a couple of weeks, where

6 we actually have been working on this for about ten

7 years, and Marvin Resnikoff (phonetic) has done part of

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

8 the job.

9 We are going to submit, at some point in

10 the next month or so, a compendium of supplements of

11 what data is available on fire duration, fire

12 temperatures, impact speeds, and some very interesting

13 velocity calculations with, for example, the I-95 bridge

14 accident, where, you know, people were on I-95 going 55

15 miles an hour, and they dropped almost 100 feet.

16 So we have looked at some \-- I will be

17 the first to admit it is very difficult to reconstruct

18 accident forces, and again, why we have to all

19 understand how much art that is, versus an exact

20 science.

21 MR. ALCOCK: Charles, it\'s my understanding

MR. ALCOCK:

22 that what we try to do generally is consideration of the

88

1 forces involved, is to try to construct the most severe

2 situation we can think of and to try to fully understand

3 the forces involved and the temperatures involved and

4 whatever that happens to be and use that as a bounding

5 scenario such that we are \-- we, generally, are able to

6 say to the public, \"These accidents have occurred, but

7 we have considered an accident \-- be it hypothetical \--

8 as worse than that, and found the forces and

9 temperatures; is there something that can be done with

10 that?\"

11 MR. CAMERON: Charles Massey?

MR. CAMERON:

12 DR. MASSEY: For our purpose, for the analysis

DR. MASSEY:

13 \-- that is one approach, to look at the bounding

14 scenario and see whether or not \-- and in part, we can

15 answer that question because of the results from the

16 testing required from the NRC regulations, is that

17 right?

18 (UNIDENTIFIED): A combination of test

(UNIDENTIFIED):

19 analysis, so when you get into written testing, here

20 where you have those bounding conditions, those severe

21 conditions, that we may look at, extremely long

22 duration, fires, extreme impact at high speed, may never

89

1 have occurred \-- may not occur, and the probability of

2 those is any of the above.

3 How we factor that into risk assessment

4 may get back little bit of arts and sciences involving

5 doing those risk assessments. How we look at severe

6 accident environments and take those into accounts, when

7 we look at probability and consequences, we note the

8 information on which to inventory (sic) these decisions.

\_\_\_

9 So that is just a little bit of uncertainty.

10 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s get Klaus.

MR. CAMERON:

11 MR. SCHUMANN: Well, ultimately, we find it

MR. SCHUMANN:

12 extremely frustrating to look at the issues about

13 knowing where, what is the route \-- without knowing by

14 what means, whether done by truck, done by railroad, or

15 done by bus, in our case.

16 And I \-- it seems to me that we talked

17 about accident likelihood, it is extraordinarily

18 important to know where it is going.

19 To give you one example, it should go by

20 truck \-- but we have a nuclear power plant in San Luis

21 Obispo County that would use highway 101 and then

22 highway 26, which highway 26 has the reputation of being

90

1 the deadliest highway in California. And now, because

2 that way was so notorious for accidents, and so how can

3 we wrestle with the problem without knowing where those

4 trucks are and how it is being done?

5 All we know is it has to be done by truck

6 for the first five miles from the nuclear power plant

7 because there is no railroad access. And of course, it

8 makes all the difference in the world which route is

9 used in terms of assessing the likelihood of accidents.

10 And as far as I know, even this last EIS from Yucca

11 Mountain wanted to stress an appropriate level.

12 MR. CAMERON: Let me suggest something in

MR. CAMERON:

13 terms of the process and the questions. And Bob has

14 already brought up the fact we need to consider

15 variations in space and time in terms of looking at

16 these accident rates.

17 As we go around to the rest of you, if

18 anybody has anything to offer Klaus on how you factor in

19 specific routes, either in the study or in the

20 application of the regulations, that might be helpful to

21 get on the record.

22 Let\'s go to Ron, and then we will go over

91

1 to the other Ron.

2 MR. POPE: I would just like to suggest that

MR. POPE:

3 the Sandia study at least acknowledge the fact that

4 there has been orders of magnitude in greater numbers of

5 shipments of Spent Fuel outside of the United States

6 than within the United States, and acknowledge whether

7 or not you use the shipping data and accident data from

8 those shipments in the study, recognizing that a lot of

9 those shipments are done by sea.

10 But they all originate and end in land

11 transport by truck or rail, and I think the study should

12 at least acknowledge the fact that this has occurred and

13 that there is some data out there that might be issued.

14 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much. Ron Ross?

MR. CAMERON:

15 MR. ROSS: Ron Ross. I have a couple of three

MR. ROSS:

16 points I would like to suggest to bring up. The first

17 one is that your (inaudible) out to geographically work

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

18 with the different \-- both the rail and truck.

19 I might offer that you might want to

20 break this into a western or eastern or some other form,

21 because on highways, we have interstate speed zones, a

22 bigger truck mix, and we also have the system that is

92

1 more inclined to both geography changes, either by drop-

2 offs as well as weather changes, which is particularly

3 important in the winter season.

4 Second, on rail, it\'s the same way. You

5 have only triple-line \-- main line running in the West.

6 The speeds there can reach 78 miles an hour. There is

7 the UP line through Nebraska, and most of those are coal

8 trains running along those lines, and that is the reason

9 why I suggested you look at general freight, also.

10 The second point I would like to make

11 also on this is that I saw nothing here on either water

12 board or oceans. And this is a contentious issue

13 amongst our seaboard states as well as our Pacific

14 territories, and particularly when we get into the

15 Concorde shipments that are involved, that is an issue.

16 And the forces that are involved, there

17 the accident rates and all that are significantly

18 different, and I know the International Association does

19 have some standards there, and I\'d like to suggest you

20 do have some consideration to that.

21 Lastly, as you address the first point,

22 Chip, you have on the board up there, and that is the

93

1 issue of sabotage. I\'m not talking about the actual act

2 of sabotage, but the results of that. And I notice on

3 page 30 of your pamphlet here you are siting an old

4 Sandia report, which I think is very outdated, and my

5 issue in bringing this whole thing up was that you need

6 to go hand-in-hand and crossover here, because the

7 results of the real issue is the effect of how that

8 impacts the cask emperically and (inaudible and

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

9 unintelligible). \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

10 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Ron. And I am sure

MR. CAMERON:

11 some other people are going to pick up on that

12 particular issue. Let\'s go to Jim Reed, and then we\'ll

13 go to Richard Swedberg.

14 JIM REED: A couple points. I think updating

JIM REED:

15 the accident data is really critical. The reason for

16 that is we have had, many of you that live here in the

17 big cities across the country know of the congestion

18 problems we are having. And the numbers show that the

19 number of highways that have been built is increasing

20 only three percent in 10 years, and the number of diesel

21 miles traveled have increased 66 percent. We have a

22 situation of this tremendous increase in the traffic

94

1 volume on the roads.

2 In addition, I read the other day there

3 are some 225,000 new trucks that are going to mix every

4 year, and that because of your wonderful expanding

5 economy and so forth, that we have got a pretty volatile

6 mix on the roads these days that I think clearly makes

7 for study now. That in fact is a big change. There is

8 a lot more congestion.

9 Likewise, on the rail lines, with mergers

10 that have occurred in the last number of years, you have

11 a lot more traffic on the main line. So you have pretty

12 heavy congestion going on there as well. So I would, I

13 guess, reiterate what you need is a focus on the

14 updating of accident data, and maybe you can show an

15 increase in just general accidents that are out there.

16 As a consequence to this, there is a lot

17 more of this chain reaction \-- crashes, where you have

18 up to 100 vehicles crashing into each other. The icy

19 conditions \-- we had one in Colorado just a few weeks

20 ago. You hear about them all the time in California,

21 Tennessee, and various places.

22 I wanted to recommend another accident,

95

1 but I don\'t remember the exact date of it. But it was

2 that time there was a tunnel fire on a road between

3 France and Italy, a fairly horrible accident with people

4 trapped in this tunnel, and so that might be an accident

5 narrative you might want to look at and study.

6 Finally, I guess \-- Bob mentioned the

7 NTSB. I think they\'re a good source of accident

8 analysis, and we could look at that a few moments and

9 study it.

10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Jim, for all

MR. CAMERON:

11 of those suggestions. I would just ask Ron \-- all the

12 information, can you tell us a little bit or just name

13 the specific accident that Jim was talking about? Ron

14 Pope? Anybody? Earl \-- do you want to just tell us

15 with names?

16 MR. EASTON: It was the tunnel that went under

MR. EASTON:

17 Mont \-- I think heating oil caught fire \-- Mont Blanc.

18 MR. CAMERON: Mont Blanc?

MR. CAMERON:

19 MR. EASTON: Mont Blanc.

MR. EASTON:

20 MR. CAMERON: Rich? MR.

CAMERON:

21 MR. SWEDBERG: Rich Swedberg with DOT. I want

MR. SWEDBERG:

22 to first clarify for Klaus \-- he asked to bring up

96

1 position routing designations. I think it is important

2 for everybody understand the routing designations are

3 done by the state. So in your own state of California,

4 it is your own state that designates which route you

5 will use.

6 And obviously, they do that. The federal

7 government doesn\'t do that because your state is more

8 attuned to where the highest accident rates are

9 recorded.

10 And the other thing, I just wanted \-- you

11 know, you have to remember that we have a lot of things

12 which are regulations which prevent a lot of accidents,

13 and I think it\'s important to talk a little bit about

14 that.

15 First of all, we don\'t put a lot of

16 hazardous materials through towns, and that most towns,

17 you know, are restricted from hazardous material, and

18 most towns, you know, they don\'t take hazardous

19 materials.

20 One of the things I think, too \-- is Bob

21 has done a good job here, and I know he has got data on

22 Spent Fuel accidents. I\'m glad he didn\'t mention

97

1 (inaudible). \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

2 The one thing that I wanted to make sure

3 that we all know here is, looking at Bob\'s compilation

4 here of data here, we also have regulations preventing

5 the actual transportation of explosives with Spent Fuel.

6 And the other things; and I know that is not referring

7 to that, but I just wanted to make sure everyone here is

8 aware of it, that Spent Fuel will, in fact, always

9 include diffusion, but not both. And it is some kind of

10 an accident where a spent fuel truck ran into an

11 explosives truck or something like that, and they did go

12 together, and they should not be included together.

13 And then for the great state of Nevada, I

14 just want to make sure that we all, we and DOT, have

15 been very much in tune with trying to work on accident

16 prevention. And since 1990, we have actually been

17 working with a Commercial Safety Alliance and coming up

18 with standards on trucks which have been utilized.

19 And we have actually presented three

20 classes with the Nevada Highway Patrol in Las Vegas,

21 Reno, and Elko at their different Regional Office

22 Headquarters, which actually looked at how to inspect

98

1 these trucks which carry this Spent Fuel or other

2 radioactive waste products.

3 And we have been doing that as one-day

4 inspection classes, and one day of (inaudible) and a

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

5 half day with survey techniques, and we actually go in

6 and show them how to do the survey technique on these

7 trucks. And it has been exercised here in Nevada with

8 the shipments already, where the Nevada Highway Patrol

9 has done inspections and escorted these trucks as they

10 go across Nevada.

11 And I think that is a very important

12 part, because inspection procedures have \-- are designed

13 to, in fact, preclude and prevent accidents and with a

14 lot of emphasis on laws and regulations and this and

15 that. And I think it\'s important that we understand

16 that we have a responsibility to the public on these

17 concerns.

18 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. It is an important

MR. CAMERON:

19 issue, and at some point before we end this session, I

20 might ask Charles to perhaps tell us what his thoughts

21 are in terms of the issue of when you\'re looking at

22 accident rates, how much do you assume that the

99

1 regulatory framework is going to control, what happens,

2 how much do you factor in training \-- all of those types

3 of issues to bound the accident rates.

4 And we\'ll come back to Charles on that.

5 But let\'s go to Pat and then Kevin and then Mike

6 Baughman.

7 MR. BRADY: Thanks, Chip. The point that

MR. BRADY

8 you\'ve made is really what I would try to make here, the

9 fact that what UTDOE does with its mutual \-- maximum

10 (inaudible) what the NRC should look at, and part of

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

11 that testing is part of the accident rate, as Bob

12 mentioned, 9.4 accidents per million miles. Lawrence

13 Livermore has used 11.9, and in the last 10 years it\'s

14 been 4.0, and in the last three years it\'s been \-- so

15 it\'s real significant that, as the years go on, rail

16 carriers are getting better at transporting all kinds of

17 shipments safely.

18 And I want to point out that these are in

19 fact average. And when you look at just crossing-grade

20 accidents, I think they vary widely.

21 And in one state, you will have not a

22 very significant problem, and as far as how this affects

100

1 the DOE \-- DOT regulations, how they affect what the NRC

2 is doing, and again, if you look at routing, now the

3 gentleman earlier said that the state hauls that Spent

4 Fuel, that is across the highway \-- not across the rail.

5 So there has been talk about routing

6 mixing Spent Fuel away from populated areas. When you

7 get fuel away from populated areas, what happens is you

8 go secondary tertiary track, not on main lines.

9 When you get onto lower-class tracks,

10 your accident rates are different than the main line

11 tracks. So by changing the routing in rural areas, you

12 are actually changing the rate of accidents and

13 incidents.

14 So again, looking at that may

15 dramatically affect how the NRC will look at something

16 or how somebody is looking at this.

17 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Pat. Just before

MR. CAMERON:

18 we go to Kevin and Mike, I want to quickly go to Earl

19 Easton from the NRC staff.

20 MR. EASTON: I think it\'s important when we

MR. EASTON:

21 focus on the accident rate that we come right up front

22 and define what an accident is. Because we don\'t want

101

1 to be counting apples and oranges and bananas. Some

2 accidents are reported based on property damage, some

3 are reported whether there are fatalities, and some are

4 real accidents.

5 So before we come up with what numbers

6 are appropriate, I think we have to figure out what

7 really are we defining as an accident to start with?

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Earl. And that is

MR. CAMERON:

9 a good for thought for all of you around the table as we

10 go through the rest of these cards.

11 Let\'s start with Kevin. Is that what you

12 were going to say?

13 MR. BLACKWELL: Just a couple of short

MR. BLACKWELL:

14 comments, some of which my points have already been

15 addressed by others. Number one, I just want to point

16 out that it was pointed out earlier in earlier comments

17 that the reason for the visible (sic) study was because

\_\_\_

18 of technological improvements in casks and construction

19 and computer models and that kind of thing.

20 I think it is also important to note

21 another reason is the improvements that have been made

22 since the original study in transportation technology,

102

1 not just computers in Packaging, but also in the

2 elements of transportation by rail and car improvements,

3 racing technologies, couplers and that kind of thing.

4 So lumping it into technology, in

5 transportation conveyances as well as the improvements

6 that are still going on in the rail environment, and

7 there are constant improvements in that scenario.

8 The other thing I want to say is that the

9 use of the ten, 15 or 20 year historical data, and this

10 has already been covered already to some degree, and

11 that may not accurately respect present and future

12 conditions.

13 The original study \-- one thing I did

14 want to say, I did like, is that the original study did

15 account for accidents, had the possibility of cask

16 improvement, and I think it\'s important that it is said

17 here, for the record, because an accident \-- when you

18 start looking at all kinds of accidents, you have to be

19 able to define what an accident is.

20 The real high rail crossing accidents are

21 something that are very hard to control because there

22 are a lot of external factors, and while there are

103

1 improvements that are trying to be made by the railroad

2 industry or by FRA in trying to reduce that number, it

3 is a very difficult process.

4 And to look at those numbers, as Pat

5 said, it is hard to try to reduce them because of the

6 external factors, but to include that kind of thinking

7 to your overall accident criteria, and then make it

8 clear that some accidents are not going to have a very

9 detrimental effect, if any \-- it is almost

10 insignificant, in the aspect of actual damage to the

11 Package.

12 Last, I want to say, just for the record,

13 is that this is for the benefit of the public here,

14 there is a very active inspection and safety compliance

15 oversight done, not only by the railroads and their

16 personnel, but also by the railroad administration. I

17 want to make it known here that the FRA does have a

18 policy, and I say that that is only a policy and not a

19 regulation. And that there are additional safety

20 compliance oversight requirements. That will be

21 performed on known shipments of high-level waste and

22 spent nuclear fuel and working with the same process

104

1 with the shipper and the carriers.

2 It is meant to be a third tier of the

3 level, and we have supplied that to the NRC, and we have

4 also \-- we are happy to supply that to anybody who wants

5 a copy. It is public information.

6 We are trying to get on the web site. We

7 are not there yet.

8 And the last thing is the State of

9 Nevada, is in talking \-- what Rick was saying about

10 inspections. The FRA also has an active state inspector

11 program where state personnel can become certified and

12 qualified to conduct rail inspections.

13 And Nevada is active in that program. In

14 fact, we have a Hazmat, and a qualified road inspector,

15 as well as one other involved in that program who are

16 certified to conduct rail inspections. And that is a

17 50-state program that any state can become involved in

18 by following the regulatory requirements.

19 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Kevin. Let\'s go to Mike

MR. CAMERON:

20 Baughman now, and then we are going to just across here,

21 then we will come back to Bill Lake before we finish.

22 Mike?

105

1 MR. BAUGHMAN: Perhaps a couple of

MR. BAUGHMAN:

2 suggestions. One is with regard to accident rate

3 reduction, and looking at the accident rate. It seems

4 to me that the Department of Energy has a fairly

5 efficient motor carrier evaluation program, and it might

6 be interesting to take a look at the correlation between

7 carriers that consistently score high in the evaluation

8 of their accident rates. Intuition tells me that their

9 accident rates are significantly less.

10 And as a point of regulation in terms of

11 regulatory reform, it strikes me as though that if we

12 find carriers that have a high rating consistently have

13 low accident rates, then perhaps the regulation requires

14 that we delete the carriers that consistently score

15 high.

16 It would be one of the DOE\'s motor

17 carrier\'s evaluation programs, and I assume Jack\'s

18 company and the others I am aware of that have been in

19 this for a long time do score high, and we would like to

20 see the best and most effective use.

21 Secondly, I\'m a little bit worried here

22 that we would spend an inordinate amount of time

106

1 defining accident rates and doing studies to come up

2 with a conclusion that yes, the rates may be higher, and

3 perhaps significantly higher, but the consequences of

4 that in terms of radioactive risks are either

5 inconsequential or perhaps just minutiae, because the

6 risks themselves are very, very small.

7 My concern is that we are not focusing

8 enough on \-- let me say we are focusing on the damage to

9 the package rather than damage to the person, and the

10 greatest source of threat is not radioactive risk. It

11 is just a plain old-fashioned accident where you get

12 killed or you get crushed, and you know I mean \-- what

13 would be a nonradioactive program.

14 I would suggest if the NRC thinks this is

15 a problem, that we ought to be thinking about this whole

16 system, whether it is worth the effort or how much

17 effort we put in to trying to reduce radioactive risk

18 and how much effort we put into reducing risks

19 associated with just ongoing accidents and horrible

20 accidents, and that circles all the way back to Fred\'s

21 comments and others about conflicts between slow-moving

22 vehicles and fast-moving vehicles and things of that

107

1 nature.

2 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Mike. Susan, do you

MR. CAMERON:

3 want to make a point on that?

4 DR. SHANKMAN: That is an excellent point. We

DR. SHANKMAN:

5 will be concentrating on package containment in the NRC

6 radiological study, but in terms of carriage safety,

7 that is under the Department of Transportation. And to

8 the extent that we can factor that in to what you are

9 doing, we will \-- but our study is founded on that which

10 the DOE (inaudible). \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

11 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Go ahead, Mike. And

MR. CAMERON:

12 I would just ask everybody to please speak directly into

13 the Mike.

14 MR. BAUGHMAN: I guess I would caution or

MR. BAUGHMAN:

15 encourage NRC to consider that the regulations that you

16 promulgate can impose conditions upon carriers and

17 conditions upon the nature of the shipment that can

18 exacerbate the accident rate that the DOT works by.

19 DR. SHANKMAN: Right.

DR. SHANKMAN:

20 MR. BAUGHMAN: If you take an accident at 20

MR. BAUGHMAN:

21 miles an hour, and you reduce it to 10 miles an hour,

22 there is a relationship between that accident and the

108

1 accident risk.

2 DR. SHANKMAN: I agree, and we are looking at

DR. SHANKMAN:

3 the risk.

4 MR. CAMERON: I think we will \-- Richard, do

MR. CAMERON:

5 you want to just make a quick point?

6 MR. SWEDBERG: Just a real quick point,

MR. SWEDBERG:

7 because you wrote on the board. I want to acknowledge

8 Mike, and he is right on. We work directly with DOE to

9 make sure that our motor carrier\'s safety evaluations

10 are done in concert with them, and that only

11 satisfactory-rated carriers ever get an evaluation, you

12 know, to be able to haul these shipments.

13 We are working hand-in-hand with them,

14 and there is a very, very extensive instruction program

15 that goes on to make sure, and these accident rates

16 highly affect the state\'s ratings. They are not going

17 to get a good rating if they have a high accident rate.

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Richard.

MR. CAMERON:

19 Judy?

20 MS. TREICHEL: I think it\'s probably time to

MS. TREICHEL:

21 throw in a little reality check when you\'re talking

22 about something that\'s as large as the shipping campaign

109

1 would be, and interspersed, among citizens who are out

2 there. And Kelly (sic) said something about this study

\_\_\_

3 was being done to either improve your confidence or

4 maintain your confidence that everything is safe.

5 There is also the question of public

6 confidence. And anybody who says that you wouldn\'t

7 consider an accident because it hasn\'t happened yet is

8 not going to get past the public on that. We have

9 accidents all the time that haven\'t happened yet. It\'s

10 one of the things that is the nature of the beast.

11 You are possibly going to be engaging in

12 something that is going to be met with a lot of protest

13 here. When protest actions take place, as you\'ve seen

14 in other places in shipping campaigns in Europe \-- very

15 unexpected choices of situations get involved here.

16 And when the statement was made that the

17 state does the routing, some states may not be routing

18 for very good reasons. They may not choose who is going

19 to be victimized by having a route in there going past

20 their property and who is not.

21 I would avoid also the use of \-- I don\'t

22 know what the right term would be, as much as when you

110

1 were defining how shipments are happening, for

2 protection, because some of those things may happen.

3 And Value Jet have regulations as well, and after people

4 get complacent after it goes on for awhile, you can see

5 things that don\'t go just as they always did.

6 And another thing that the public thinks

7 about is the casks, just by themselves, loaded with

8 terrible waste or Spent Fuel, give off some radiation.

9 So to say that there may not be a breach of the cask or

10 it\'s going to be inspected thoroughly and often and so

11 forth, that puts somebody at risk as far as the public

12 is concerned.

13 You may have a whole batch of people here

14 at the table who say, \"Well, but it\'s only a fraction.\"

15 That isn\'t how that plays in the public. So you are

16 going to have to magnify some of your assumptions if you

17 are going to have public confidence, and if you are

18 going to be able to handle things that you have not seen

19 before, because I would guarantee, should this start,

20 you would see a whole lot of things that you have never

21 seen before.

22 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Judy. You have

MR. CAMERON:

111

1 made some very important points that have to be looked

2 at for public confidence.

3 MR. SCHUMANN: One point, the summary, that

MR. SCHUMANN:

4 summary of the final report \-- before we start, I want

5 to read it on the record right now that we\'d that along

6 with several requests, which I don\'t want to outline

7 this morning, but I want it said on the record that we

8 did that. I agree certainly with what Judy just said,

9 and although I don\'t think it helps the confidence of

10 the public to show the ability to trash fuel, on

11 previous outdated material, which I understand \-- I

12 don\'t think how we trash fuel or Spent Fuel is

13 transported. I don\'t think that is very helpful. I

14 think some of it is damaging to what somebody might have

15 in the future of Spent Fuel transportation.

16 In response to what Richard was saying,

17 that we are aware in the state of California also that

18 the state has to designate the route, although it has

19 given ultimately a mandate to come up with some such

20 plan by, I think it was January, 1997.

21 \` And of course, it\'s impossible to come up

22 with some kind of plan 100 percent without any knowledge

112

1 by anybody who designates those routes, and that is what

2 the point is that I was making. That any kind of

3 likelihood regarding speculation, the fact remains

4 extremely generic and hypothetical unless we know

5 exactly where it\'s going.

6 And the last commentsI had to Sandia in

7 this case have to do with what results NASA might have

8 on our nation\'s highways from the point of truck safety.

9 And the regulations that allow trucks to operate on our

10 highways, which might have to appear to a different set

11 of technical standards than ours. I\'m looking for

12 answers.

13 MR. CAMERON: Charles, do you have an answer

MR. CAMERON:

14 to that?

15 DR. MASSEY: No, right now, I mean, our

DR. MASSEY:

16 business isn\'t interested in considering that, but that

17 is an excellent suggestion to take that into

18 consideration. And they also get to the point of

19 looking at more recent data, and what a more recent

20 transportation system looks like and how to do that and

21 for example how we are going to get to that.

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We\'re all running out and

MR. CAMERON:

113

1 we want to get to the rest of the cards here, and then

2 we have to go on to another topic. Fred?

3 MR. DILGER: Very briefly, Fred Dilger, Clark

MR. DILGER:

4 County. First of all, we are very fortunate that NDOT

5 institutionalized the various carriers to operate

6 regulations that should be considered in the Sandia

7 study.

8 Judy also raised the very good point

9 about the need for, the need not to be limited by the

10 litany of regulations. Clark County has the unique

11 distinction because the Department of Energy has

12 actually transported five, at least five, we know of

13 contaminated radioactive containers.

14 It is low-level waste, a radiological

15 hazard to the public, and so low it can\'t be measured,

16 but the fact remains that it was only identified because

17 the truck driver did what he\'s supposed to be doing.

18 And it came about not because the Department of Energy

19 disclosed that they were shipping radioactive waste that

20 was leaking. It came about through forces of accident.

21 And this is something that really needs to be

22 considered.

114

1 We don\'t \-- the mere existence of

2 regulations does not mean they are implemented properly.

3 MR. CAMERON: Is there one question on that,

MR. CAMERON:

4 or are there some regulations or some aspects of the

5 regulatory framework that could be considered as

6 bounding on this, but other aspects aren\'t?

7 MR. DILGER: Sure. I would think that is

MR. DILGER:

8 reasonable.

9 MR. CAMERON: Bill? MR.

CAMERON:

10 MR. LAKE: I would just like to make a few

MR. LAKE:

11 observations and suggestions. Clearly, you are talking

12 about the many variables and many different data

13 sources, and that suggests to me that the different

14 variables and the different uncertainties affect the end

15 result. What you put into the analysis, you have to get

16 out of it.

17 I think the study, both about the

18 uncertainties and the sensitivities we have is very

19 useful in understanding the mission. And you also have

20 a lot of information to go to to jump on this study, and

21 I know the original study, the 1987 study did not look

22 at this, did not look at the uncertainties \-- did not

115

1 look at sensitivity. It went right into the analysis.

2 The uncertainties were treated, but

3 unfortunately, they did not go for the end result, so

4 you can\'t pull it out.

5 What I would suggest, if you look at

6 sensitivities you look at nominal values, habit patterns

7 that you define, you work them and you apply these

8 standards appropriately.

9 The sensitivity class we focus at all

10 times \-- we show it, we study that, we study that,

11 looking for what\'s important. And I want to stress that

12 to Sandia. If Sandia would like to comment on that now

13 \-- on the study.

14 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bill. I would just

MR. CAMERON:

15 like to make sure \-- Charles and Susan, do you

16 understand what Bill was suggesting?

17 DR. MASSEY: Yes, we do.

DR. MASSEY:

18 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s see. We have to finish up

MR. CAMERON:

19 now, and we\'ll just quickly go to the audience. But

20 let\'s have some quick final points here. Jack? Jack,

21 do you want to offer another point of view here?

22 MR. EDLOW: Well, yes.

MR. EDLOW:

116

1 MR. CAMERON: We will finish these off, and

MR. CAMERON:

2 then we will go out to the audience.

3 MR. EDLOW: I will be brief. I usually don\'t

MR. EDLOW:

4 really disagree with other panel members, because this

5 is supposed to be open dialogue, and everyone present

6 their point of view.

7 However, I have to take exception with

8 your comments a few moments ago, because you said,

9 \"Let\'s talk about reality.\" And I certainly agree you

10 are talking about reality, and in fact, I am very much

11 involved with reality. And in fact, I am very much

12 involved with reality every day in making shipments.

13 However, I think you made some points

14 that weren\'t reality, and I would like to put those on

15 the record with disagreeing with your perspective.

16 First of all, you are characterizing this

17 as a very, very large shipping campaign. In fact, this

18 will be a very, very small shipping campaign. It may be

19 large in context with nuclear fuel or Spent Fuel, but

20 it\'s very small when compared with such things as

21 shipments of coal or munitions or other types of

22 shipping campaigns within the United States.

117

1 So the public, I think, is smart. And I

2 think the public realizes, for instance, when DOE began

3 a program with foreign research reactor return, they

4 held some 24 public hearings around the country. I

5 attended all but two of them, and I think all but one of

6 those, there were fewer than 10 members of the public

7 who appeared, because the public was smart enough to

8 understand that this really wasn\'t a major issue for

9 them.

10 Sure, it is a major issue for you. And

11 sure, it is a major issue for some of the people. But

12 the public \-- it is not a major issue.

13 In fact, when that campaign started,

14 there were no protests. There was no physical

15 destruction at Savannah River or the Port of Charleston

16 or \-- in North Carolina when it was shipped through

17 there. So I do not accept the fact that there will be

18 massive protests such as the case in Germany which was

19 done strictly for political purposes to overturn, at

20 that time, the current government. And it was

21 successful.

22 So let\'s really talk about reality.

118

1 Let\'s not talk about shipping cesspools (sic), to truck

\_\_\_

2 companies, which we don\'t do. Why study something that

3 we don\'t do? Let\'s take this down to practical reality

4 and not deal with what\'s going to happen if, or this

5 kind of threat, or this or that deal. Let\'s stay with

6 what we\'re doing.

7 I\'m sorry to speak against somebody, but

8 thank you for giving me the time.

9 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s go to Pat \-- well, let\'s

MR. CAMERON:

10 get Richard out of the way here.

11 MR. SWEDBERG: I have a short one, because

MR. SWEDBERG:

12 Klaus brought up the point about NASA, and I just wanted

13 to cover that real quickly, because we worked closely in

14 the extensively with NASA. When NASA came into effect,

15 we hired a lot more inspectors at the borders and also

16 the border states. And NASA, when they signed in, they

17 agreed to keep these same basic standards and the same

18 chief inspection standards as U.S. motor carriers have

19 to go through.

20 Now we actually provided training for

21 their inspectors as part of their NASA Agreement, they

22 agreed that they would keep these same safety and have

119

1 the same standards we had. Now, that\'s not to say we

2 haven\'t put a lot of them out of service.

3 And so NASA carriers in fact have had a

4 high out-of-service rate, and actually in the training

5 or if they find safety defects or mechanical defects we

6 put them out of service. Again, I think in the context

7 of this room, we\'re not really talking about NASA

8 carriers and international carriers carrying spent

9 nuclear fuel. We are not in the same arena.

10 I don\'t think it should be an area up for

11 discussion.

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Richard, you may want to

MR. CAMERON:

13 provide more detail to Klaus offline.

14 Let\'s go to Pat and then finish up with

15 Bob and then see if anybody in the audience has any

16 comments.

17 MR. BRADY: Thanks, Chip. We spent a lot of

MR. BRADY:

18 time this morning and had a lot of talk about accident

19 risk and change in regulatory requirements, and one

20 thing I would ask the NRC to look at in the next study

21 is the changes in those regulations and how effective in

22 the worst-case scenarios.

120

1 And my point is that, back in the 70\'s

2 and 80\'s when the first tests were done, and I am

3 talking specifically about the physical diameter with

4 drop tests, back then, the highest occurrences of tank

5 car ruptures were caused by a coupler puncture, where a

6 coupler from one tank car would puncture another tank

7 car.

8 Since then, since that time, the advent

9 of the gunshot (sic) coupler has pretty much taken away

10 the puncture by coupler, and the second-most cause is

11 the puncture by a fractured rail, rail fractures from

12 the base of the head on a roughly 45 degree angle. And

13 instead of looking at six-foot diameter, about 27 square

14 inches of a surface area, you\'re looking at more of a

15 ten-inch surface area with a drop-cut.

16 The worst-case scenario for the puncture

17 of a coupler is just a fractured rail, and anecdotally

18 what has happened in the Western states this year, a 42-

19 foot section of rail punctured the head of ammonia, and

20 that is when a tank car traveled 42 feet inside the car

21 and almost exited the other side.

22 So there is a lot more involved in that.

121

1 My point in bringing up that incident is, we need to

2 bring up tank car damage done in derailment and look at

3 the studies that the other people bring up.

4 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Pat. Bob?

MR. CAMERON:

5 MR. ALCOCK: All I want to say on that is that

MR. ALCOCK:

6 I agree with Pat, and I think that goes back to my

7 comment before about considering the technology

8 improvements.

9 MR. CAMERON: Good point. The question still

MR. CAMERON:

10 is, is to write the regulatory framework is what\'s

11 reasonable to consider in terms of existing technology -

12 - new technology. What is reasonable to consider in

13 terms of the regulatory framework, and as Judy pointed

14 out, notwithstanding the comments that Jack made about

15 that, is that what does it take in terms of public

16 confidence?

17 Also, how do you factor that into the

18 mix?

19 Let\'s go to Bob for final comments.

20 MR. HALSTEAD: Rail accidents \-- things that

MR. HALSTEAD:

21 John, Pat, and Kevin said haven\'t modified my position.

22 I still think that the base case of range (sic) would be

\_\_\_

122

1 Jim\'s (unintelligible), either as a boundary scenario or

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

2 separate treatment, in terms of train operations.

3 Mike\'s comment about traffic fatilities

4 I have a real concern when people take

5 outputs from models like red trains (sic) and cancer

\_\_\_

6 fatalities and traffic fatalities. That\'s not a

7 predicted model. You can\'t really use those numbers as

8 real numbers.

9 I only know of one person that died from

10 Spent Fuel shipments, and that was a truck driver on a

11 rainy night in Tennessee in 1971. There is not any

12 real-world correlation necessarily at that level.

13 It\'s totally wrong to say that the risk

14 of, radioactive risk of accidents is not a pretty good

15 reason for the NRC to carry on this investigation. I

16 think it is totally appropriate. It is not a

17 misplacement of money, and you cannot take the output

18 from the risk models as the absolute answer.

19 Remember what we said before about the

20 correlation between accident rates and accidents. Even

21 though rail accident rates are going down dramatically,

22 the number of very severe rail accidents per year is

123

1 pretty much constant, and I would be happy to present

2 provides on that.

3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Bob.

MR. CAMERON:

4 Anybody in the audience want to make a

5 point at this time? We\'ll go to Assemblyman Bob Price.

6 ASSEMBLYMAN PRICE: Thank you very much. And

ASSEMBLYMAN PRICE:

7 normally, I wouldn\'t get up and make a comment, but I

8 have to say that the gentleman, Mr. Edlow \-- we were

9 just talking about reality and the public presence here.

10 I have been a state legislator for 28 years \-- not

11 really as long as my colleague, who was around 32 or 33

12 years.

13 And I think we have to have, if you will,

14 using your words, some reality in our concept of what

15 goes on, what the public is interested in, and safety.

16 Now in my 42 years here in Nevada, I

17 spent a lot of those years working at the Nevada Test

18 Site. I am an electrician by trade, although I have not

19 worked at it for a long time. But I have seen, even

20 back in those days, some pretty unexpected things

21 happen.

22 The reason you don\'t see many members of

124

1 the public at these types of meetings, and I have sat

2 through hundreds of meetings, not only out in the

3 populace like this, but in the legislature and

4 everywhere else, is that your public is busy.

5 Your public in some cases expects that

6 they are electing, or even having people appointed

7 through the process, to be representing their interests.

8 And I think, when we are representing their interests,

9 we have to realize that longshot types of things can

10 happen.

11 Now, about three years ago, and I don\'t

12 remember the locations, but I do remember thinking, \"My

13 God, suppose a nuclear shipment had been on the train!\"

14 In the incident that happened, a train was crossing a

15 bridge, and I want to think it was down south somewhere,

16 over a large river, when a barge was coming down the

17 river, ran into the support, and the whole train

18 collapsed into the river.

19 Now, I don\'t know what kind of a longshot

20 that is \-- a million to one shot, but it\'s the type of

21 things we should be looking at, the longshot things that

22 can happen when we are conducting business of this

125

1 importance.

2 I remember an incident I speak of every

3 once in awhile while we were doing what was then

4 considered a down pole shot at the Nevada Test Site, and

5 they were on the final countdown. I don\'t remember if

6 it was an hour away or what have you.

7 And in those days, you had a giant sort

8 of like oil derrick that you would lower the device in,

9 and I was up at the headquarters watching on the

10 television screens, and they were doing the countdown,

11 and out of the mountains, a man and a woman in an off

12 road vehicle came up, driving up to the device, got out

13 looking, and, you know, wondering what is this out in

14 the middle of the desert? Because they didn\'t know

15 where they were at, and they didn\'t even realize they

16 were at the Nevada test site.

17 And those kinds of longshots do happen,

18 so I believe we should be examining every potential

19 possibility.

20 MR. CAMERON: Thank you for that perspective,

MR. CAMERON:

21 Assemblyman Price, of the elected people.

22 Also, anybody else out here have a

126

1 comment on the accident rate? Yes, sir? And could you

2 just state your name and affiliation for the transcript?

3 MR. STEAD: My name is Mike Stead, S-T-E-

MR. STEAD:

4 A-D. I am with the Rail Safety Section of the Illinois

5 Commerce Commission. Just to give a little background

6 on where we are on this issue; Illinois has 27 railroads

7 operating in the state, seven class-one railroads, 8,000

8 track miles, 9,000 grade crossings, and 2500 bridge

9 crossings, the second highest number in the country,

10 only the second most highest in the United States \--

11 again, only Texas has more.

12 We have two of the largest rail houses in

13 the country, Chicago and East St. Louis, in the St.

14 Louis area. And it\'s probable that almost every Spent

15 Nuclear Fuel shipment will travel through Illinois at

16 one point in time if this program goes forward. So that

17 gives you a perspective of where we are.

18 We have been involved in this for years.

19 We have shipments coming into Illinois from Minnesota

20 and other states under the G.E. Morris (sic) plant.

\_\_\_

21 We have shipments going through the

22 state. We\'re keenly aware of the problems and concerns

127

1 that you are all right just now discussing. And we

2 don\'t necessarily disagree with everything that\'s going

3 on. But there is one point I would like to make, and I

4 grant you it\'s very, very much. But we have discussed

5 this for almost two hours now. The idea and definition

6 of the term \"accident.\" What we\'re talking about here is

7 not really an accident, but it\'s certainly a term that

8 has been overused and misused for many years.

9 Rail officials, transportation officials,

10 law enforcement officials are trying to get away from

11 that term and use more \-- to define that incident as an

12 incident or a crash. I think we need to examine that,

13 the use of this term, and try to get away from the term

14 \"accident\" and get into something other than that,

15 again, as I said, crash, collision, incident. Because as

16 I say, it really isn\'t an accident.

17 MR. CAMERON: Thanks for being here. And also

MR. CAMERON:

18 you may want to talk to the NRC staff about suggestions

19 about where else in the country these meetings that

20 might be held in the springtime should be held in

21 Chicago, or whatever. Thank you.

22 I think we\'re obviously, as you noted, we

128

1 have been going a long time on this subject, and I think

2 this subject deserves it, because it does bring in also

3 the public confidence idea of where do you set this.

4 What I\'d like to do so that we don\'t get

5 too possibly behind is to at least have Charles kick off

6 the fire, and \-- why don\'t you provide the background,

7 and we\'ll have some discussions before we go to lunch.

8 We are going to do thermal for discussion

9 of thermal, and then we will come back from lunch and

10 finish off the rest of this particular topic.

11 MR. MASSEY: The next topic we are going to

MR. MASSEY:

12 introduce is \-- I chose fire, but I think there may be a

13 little border discussion and somewhat technical input

14 that you may have. A little background on what\'s been

15 done and how we treat the cask performance during fire

16 events.

17 And in the modal study, they did a very

18 simple, by today\'s standards, at the time it was

19 performed, the state-of-the-art technology. And it was

20 a one-dimensional analysis of generic casks that they

21 had used for study to 800 degrees C and a thousand

22 degrees in fire, 1,475 degrees in Fahrenheit.

129

1 The neutron shield on the compartment on

2 that cask was assumed to be there. They left it on \--

3 it\'s all that was in the fire that would actually act as

4 an insulator so you wouldn\'t have as much response

5 inside the cask, and the fact that that shield was still

6 there, but the material inside, if you looked at it

7 because of the gamma inside the shield, there would be

8 less material inside during the fire, and some of that

9 would melt through the bay (sic), exposing the people

\_\_\_

10 that may be near the cask to higher levels of radiation,

11 and it really looked at cask response, not too much in

12 depth, but as to what actually happened to the fuel

13 inside \-- how was the environment around the cask \--

14 just inferred how the fuel may respond to the cask

15 response (sic). \_\_\_

16 In the NUREG 0170 reevaluation, we looked

17 at a fully-engulfing fire, and I believe there\'s a

18 picture on the back wall of a fully-engulfing fire. You

19 may get a sense of that. Essentially, we looked at a

20 fully-engulfing petroleum fire. We looked at the

21 effects on four casks, and we assumed that the neutron

22 shield was on the packages with the material inside, and

130

1 again we had the insulator.

2 We again looked at the loss of shielding,

3 and in this case, we looked at what sort of temperatures

4 the fuel inside the package would be, based on the

5 surrounding environment, how that would affect the

6 material in the package.

7 For the Package Performance Study, what

8 we\'d like to do is use a fairly recently-developed

9 three-dimensional model, including the international

10 state-of-the-art, thermal model for examining the

11 response of the package to a fire scenario.

12 We put on there in optically dense one

13 hour fire. An optically dense fire basically means that

14 all of the heat from the fire was put into a package

15 where it is not lost. We would look at an empty cask,

16 an empty, undamaged cask, not to have any kind of shield

17 on the package that is up for consideration.

18 Essentially, the cask lying on the ground, to show the

19 engulfing fire, held up in the air somehow so there is

20 fire all the way around.

21 We believe that, in most real situations

22 involving the fire, the cask is probably lying on the

131

1 ground. What we\'d like to look at, is there a loss of

2 heat there along with that fact that it is on the

3 ground, the fact of the performance response of the

4 package to the fire.

5 To do these analysis and examine our

6 capabilities to exist through these extreme

7 environmental conditions, we like to perform a test of

8 this cask lying on the ground full of fire, and then use

9 protection for the test, do the test and then put out

10 those results of the tests. So we\'re very much

11 interested in getting suggestions on scenarios on the

12 things we should consider from thermal environment and

13 how we can test.

14 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Charles.

MR. CAMERON:

15 And I want to introduce the NRC staff expert, Ron

16 Parkhill, who is part of the project team in the Spent

17 Fuel Project office, who is our expert on thermal

18 effects.

19 This is Ron right here. We have seen the

20 Sandia suggestions on thermal. Don\'t assume \-- that at

21 least one of the assumptions on the caskwould be on the

22 ground.

132

1 What other types of fire thermal

2 situations should they be looking at. Ron?

3 MR. PARKHILL: This is Ron Parkhill with the

MR. PARKHILL:

4 IEA. In the supporting advisory and inflammatory

5 materials that goes with the agency\'s regulations, the

6 philosophy behind the thermal effects, which was

7 described in some detail, get into the issue that

8 Charles has talked about here. The fact that the test

9 requires that there are basically ideal conditions, and

10 you won\'t have ideal conditions in most accidents.

11 I fully agree with the concept that

12 having them laying on the ground surrounded by the fuel

13 environment. In addition, one of the tests that we

14 performed back in the late 1970\'s during the test

15 program was included in the 75-ton cask in the rail car,

16 and after the impact, we supported that orientationally

17 in the pool (unintelligible).

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

18 And the purpose of that test is the

19 safety cask \-- the failure. And then following that, we

20 did detailed analyses of how the cask responded in that

21 fire environment.

22 The other thing we found, was by being

133

1 surrounded by a rail car, the intervening structure

2 tends to shield and align, so we could look at the other

3 accident debris actually lying around.

4 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Ron. Let\'s

MR. CAMERON:

5 go to Bob Alcock.

6 MR. ALCOCK: Charles, I would just try to

MR. ALCOCK:

7 understand here. You said, if I got you right, that in

8 the previous studies, the cask is somehow suspended in

9 the air, with the thermal studies.

10 DR. MASSEY: Correct.

DR. MASSEY:

11 MR. ALCOCK: And now, you are going to change

MR. ALCOCK:

12 that, and the cask is lying on the ground. How does

13 that change the public confidence, to know that you now

14 have this cask lying on the ground? It would seem to me

15 you would have, if you want to be real conservative, you

16 would assume that the cask is somehow suspended.

17 DR. MASSEY: Well, we believe it\'s in the

DR. MASSEY:

18 suspension. It\'s really a more uniform thermal road.

19 We have a high degree of confidence that you can model

20 the uniform package where we\'d like to do more

21 exploration is when that thermal environment, where we

22 have more \-- some kind of intervening structure \-- a

134

1 flat car, a truck trailer \-- how do those other types of

2 non-uniformities in fact perform in the package?

3 MR. ALCOCK: So the situation when the cask is

MR. ALCOCK:

4 lying on the ground might present a worse danger to the

5 cask integrity. Is that right?

6 DR. MASSEY: No, I don\'t believe so. But we

DR. MASSEY:

7 don\'t know to our satisfaction what is the impact of it

8 being on the ground. That is one of the things we want

9 to determine. How does that affect (unintelligible) Is

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

10 there a loss of (unintelligible) or does the ground

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

11 provide some kind of insulation as well?

12 MR. CAMERON: Bob Alcock?

MR. CAMERON:

13 MR. ALCOCK: On the issue of testing and

MR. ALCOCK:

14 failure, do we have any thermal data on what it takes to

15 \-- the generic test data?

16 DR. MASSEY: Yes, we have that on what

DR. MASSEY:

17 recently \-- in the field. You don\'t need additional

18 data on that. Generally, we don\'t have it included in

19 this.

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, we have heard from Ron

MR. CAMERON:

21 Pope agreeing that it is good to do the additional

22 situation of the cask on the ground, and also to look at

135

1 the degrees, as I understood it, that may be around the

2 cask.

3 Charles gave us the rationale for why we

4 might do the on-the-ground test, which is the

5 nonuniformity of the heat source.

6 Let\'s go to Jim, and if anybody wants to

7 give any further comments about this off-the-ground test

8 aspect, that will be appreciated. Jim?

9 MR. REED: I want to talk about the

MR. REED:

10 temperature \-- Jim Reed. I want to talk about the

11 temperature. You have the one thousand degrees, which

12 was suggested for study standards. I am wondering what

13 the rationale that is \-- the NRC standards and the

14 performance standards done in the previous modal study

15 where there were various severe accidents, 1,900 degrees

16 Fahrenheit with the model study. That is the first

17 part.

18 The second part is the one hour. Where do

19 we come up with the one hour as opposed to two hours or

20 some other number?

21 DR. MASSEY: Really, we threw out the one hour

DR. MASSEY:

22 as something for fire duration \-- the one hour seemed

136

1 like an hour or an hour and thirty minutes, so we went

2 to look for the test regulatory to put out the Package

3 Performance, and then we put out an hour.

4 It was one thing we had to offer as far

5 as fire duration, how do we have a fire that lasts that

6 long? It\'s sort of a fuel inventory of other chemical

7 insulators available that are there, so we were very

8 much interested in getting people \-- scenarios in which

9 they think there could be a fuel inventory of some type

10 of fire duration of this temperature for the hydrocarbon

11 coal fires, the standard fuels on the fire. And I guess

12 the temperature thing, we agreed that\'s probably a

13 better reason for balancing these two fires.

14 MR. CAMERON: Ron Parkhill, on the temperature

MR. CAMERON:

15 issue?

16 MR. PARKHILL: Yes. The regulatory basis of

MR. PARKHILL:

17 the fires, 1,475 as far as the regulations goes, when

18 you do testing of the packages, those packages are

19 designed for the actual fire test of burned temperature

20 of around 1,000 degrees. I think it is realistic of a

21 typical fire.

22 And the packages that met the regulations

137

1 also demonstrated the previous fire test that met that

2 requirement. So I don\'t see anything unusual.

3 MR. CAMERON: Judy? There is confusion

MR. CAMERON:

4 between the two.

5 MS. TREICHEL: You mean 1,475 Fahrenheit is

MS. TREICHEL:

6 cooler than 1,000 C?

7 MR. CAMERON: Earl Easton is back there \--

MR. CAMERON:

8 Earl, can you get this clarified quickly? And Jim, I

9 need to come back to you to see whether you think the

10 one thousand degrees, whether you think in degrees or

11 whatever it turns out to be in an hour is where we

12 should be.

13 MR. EASTON: My point was really only the

MR. EASTON:

14 temperature that we choose. Just remember that when you

15 consider temperature, it\'s one of only many variables.

16 In the regulations, there\'s a thermal desensitivity and

17 inexcivity (sic). It\'s really the amount of heat you

\_\_\_

18 get into the cask. I could have a million degree

19 temperature with no thermal desensivity and get no

20 temperature loss in the cask. So it is a combination of

21 all those things that one must consider, not the

22 temperature not the duration.

138

1 MR. CAMERON: Thanks for that, Earl.

MR. CAMERON:

2 And Ron, can you address Judy and some

3 other people on some points of confusion we are talking

4 about here in that thousand degrees?

5 MR. PARKHILL: Like, the 1,475 is referring to

MR. PARKHILL:

6 the regulatory fire, and that\'s in Fahrenheit. And this

7 is the degrees in 1,000 C\'s, so this is really 1,832

8 degrees Fahrenheit. It\'s a more severe temperature.

9 But the point I was trying to make is that when you

10 design a cask and it\'s in a fully-engulfing fire, and

11 you assume that the temperature is around it at 1,475,

12 that\'s a very conservative way to treat temperature.

13 And when you actually do a fire test and

14 those casks are exposed to the fire test is that the

15 measured temperature of the fire exposed to packages \--

16 it\'s actually measured around 1,800, 1,850 degrees

17 Fahrenheit. So I am just trying to get some perspective

18 on what the regulatory requirement is, what in actuality

19 the fire tests will actually burn at.

20 Packages historically have survived that,

21 so let\'s say 1,000 degrees C to 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit

22 seems to be a reasonable temperature.

139

1 MS. TREICHEL: I was not arguing the theory at

MS. TREICHEL:

2 all. I was just saying, choose one.

3 MR. CAMERON: Because in fact, the 1,475 used

MR. CAMERON:

4 at, I guess used Fahrenheit, and now we\'re talking here

5 in Centigrade, and that\'s what makes it confusing.

6 Thank you, Judy.

7 MR. SWEDBERG: Because that one hour \-- I

MR. SWEDBERG:

8 actually was confused with C and F. I guess I am still

9 a little unclear, but I do understand it.

10 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s start with Pat and go to

MR. CAMERON:

11 Kevin and Bill Lee and Bill Lake.

12 MR. BRADY: I would like to check the

MR. BRADY:

13 inventory, and the reason for that is it really tells

14 you the duration of the fire and also the temperature,

15 and I think that what we all agree is that if anything,

16 that most fire departments in the United States, I

17 think, would say are going to pull back from the fire

18 until they get some good information on whether they

19 need to fight the fire or not, and the duration. As

20 long as the inventory fuel is there, the fire department

21 is most likely not going to fight that fire. It depends

22 on the inventory.

140

1 Another issue would be the torch fire,

2 not a fuel fire. I guess the scenario would be

3 surrounding, or even a highway incident involving a

4 propane truck or tank car where you don\'t have immediate

5 release or you have slow release \-- very close proximity

6 and a very hot fire for a long period of time.

7 And the other incident that would be like

8 that would be the Weyauwega (sic) (phonetic), Wisconsin,

\_\_\_ \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

9 where a propane car was burned, so we applaud the issue

10 looking at the inventory, but we would also ask that the

11 inventory looks at the duration of the temperature,

12 looking at a torch fire.

13 MR. CAMERON: What was the last part?

MR. CAMERON:

14 MR. BRADY: Looking at torch fires, very

MR. BRADY:

15 similar.

16 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Pat. Let\'s go to

MR. CAMERON:

17 Kevin.

18 MR. BLACKWELL: Mine is real short, since Pat

MR. BLACKWELL:

19 just covered it, the torch fire consideration.

20 Therefore, if you are going to look at the inventories

21 and what\'s involved in training, you have to consider

22 (unintelligible) as well, depending on what craft you

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

141

1 are looking at.

2 And again, it falls back to the response,

3 if we are going to talk about response and looking at

4 technologies, improvements and especially the tank car

5 industry, a lot of things have changed in response to

6 the requirements of the industry in packaging and

7 materials and because of the improvements in

8 technologies, where it used to be, the example Pat used

9 in Weyauwega where you go in and try to put the fire out

10 and shut it down.

11 Now it\'s better to do control fires and

12 burn. So the methodology in responding to certain types

13 of fires has changed over the twenty years because of

14 improvements in technology as well.

15 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Bill Lee?

MR. CAMERON:

16 MR. LEE: I just want to point out that you\'re

MR. LEE:

17 going, in this demonstration or this fire test is far

18 beyond the regulatory requirements. You\'re emptying

19 undamaged fuel tanks is not going to change the way we

20 have it. So we\'re intermixing what we just talked

21 about, before \-- the reality, that we are outside of the

22 reality of what would be the package reconfiguration in

142

1 an accident.

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Bill. It seems

MR. CAMERON:

3 the issue that runs throughout is, what\'s reasonable in

4 terms of your assumption about the regulatory framework

5 when you do those? I guess Ron was pointing out in

6 terms of the hour, it\'s a half hour longer than what it

7 usually requires under the regulations, and it takes us

8 into the public confidence point that we have been

9 discussing.

10 Charles?

11 DR. MASSEY: Yes. One of the things you do in

DR. MASSEY:

12 a Package Performance Study would be included \-- how do

13 you open the package, how these are going to fit this

14 package and beyond the regulatory requirements to

15 address public concerns. You don\'t always like that.

16 If it\'s a half hour fire and you want to

17 be able to demonstrate that to the standard conditions

18 that we have the capability to prevent the Package

19 Performance conditions, and not that we are asking to

20 change the fire requirements in Package Performance, but

21 we\'re demonstrating our ability in the Package

22 Performance.

143

1 MR. CAMERON: And I think of course the

MR. CAMERON:

2 distinction you just made doesn\'t necessarily mean that

3 that\'s the regulatory requirement.

4 Let\'s go to Bill Lake, and then over to

5 Klaus. And we\'ll come back to Bob Halstead, and we\'ll

6 finish up with Ron and move out to the audience.

7 MR. LAKE: Thank you, Chip. I\'m going to go

MR. LAKE:

8 back to my previous comments. I think it\'s premature to

9 particularly include temperature for the duration of the

10 fire. I\'ll go back to the process.

11 I believe to go through the sensitivities

12 that should drive you, what temperature is in relation

13 to the fire; I am told that the uncertainty analysis is,

14 if you do the uncertainly analysis, that may draw you to

15 look at more than one selection of temperature

16 relations. You may want to look at how to get the most

17 information to you from this study.

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. For those of you who \-- I

MR. CAMERON:

19 don\'t know if Ron or Bob will comment on this, besides

20 their comments, but comment on Bill Lake\'s point that we

21 need to do the uncertain analysis before we take this

22 time and temperature. I think we can address that also.

144

1 Klaus?

2 MR. SCHUMANN: I would like to mention Sandia

MR. SCHUMANN:

3 Corporation\'s introductory remarks at 1,000 degrees C

4 fire, about the fire testing trial requirements, which

5 in my belief actually shows the weakness of those

6 requirements.

7 Either fuel, I think, from observation

8 and investigation, are equally correct. And, of course,

9 with the truck and the fuel, are close candidates for

10 such a fire. And so for that matter, I believe 1,000

11 degrees Centigrade is much more appropriate, and once

12 again it shows only the wearkness in the NRC regulation.

13 In addition to the duration, I believe

14 the Cajon Pass railroad accident a few years ago burned

15 for three days. And I have read (inaudible) of 3,000

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

16 degrees with some additional oil as well.

17 One thing our committee was very much

18 concerned about, it may be or may not be the right,

19 appropriate time to bring it up, is the issue of testing

20 real casks under real live conditions rather than

21 relying on modal studies or computer calculations.

22 And I would like to remind everybody that

145

1 the Sandia Corporation I think made clear, I don\'t know

2 who it was, when they looked at terrorism and sabotage

3 attacks.

4 This may control of field testing of the

5 casks, and the results as I recall turned out to be

6 quite different from what was seen before on computers

7 for less than full-scale conditions.

8 And I am wondering as to why full-scale

9 are not considered now, or at least I hope they will be

10 considered. I think they should be considered.

11 I\'ll request my committee when they come

12 in today and clearly say that we would like to see full-

13 scale testing of transportation casks under the real

14 life conditions.

15 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Klaus. We will

MR. CAMERON:

16 revisit that particular issue this afternoon.

17 Let\'s go to Bob, and then we will finish

18 up with Ron and see if anybody in the audience has

19 anything.

20 MR. HALSTEAD: I have a couple of things, key

MR. HALSTEAD:

21 points outlined in the handouts. I want to begin by

22 acknowledging the presence in the audience of Professor

146

1 Miles Greiner (phonetic) from the University of Nevada

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

2 from the College of Engineering. He is actually the

3 person who has done a lot of this fire modeling and,

4 Charles, I don\'t know whether you guys have got his

5 papers and his notes, but if not, you can certainly have

6 them.

7 And Miles may not necessarily agree with

8 my interpretation of its findings, but the study had a

9 powerful impact on my understanding about the

10 relationship between fire temperature and fire duration,

11 particularly if you\'re looking at indicators not of

12 collapse of the shell, which are what the modal study

13 one focused on, but more, I think a more important

14 factor is like fuel oxidation or seal failure.

15 Secondly, when we were looking at fire

16 impact, it\'s important to remember that we\'re not just

17 looking at loss of containment. We\'re looking at loss

18 of shielding also. Okay? And there are different

19 factors involved in the two types of consequences. And

20 they involve both the sequencing of impact puncture,

21 fire and so forth, and fire, that\'s a critical thing.

22 And in order to address fire as an issue

147

1 in loss of shielding, it\'s actually, it\'s important that

2 we select the right range of cask designs here.

3 Immediately, people who know truck casks

4 understand that Mack (sic) is the workhorse cask, and

\_\_\_

5 (unintelligible) and the lead shielding cask. With a

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

6 lot of their concern is prior to find it included a

7 uranium gamma shield cask, which is much less likely to

8 have sag or a noted fire environment, and similarly,

9 when you look at the rail casks, and that\'s an even

10 harder issue.

11 There is no easy way to pick a

12 representative rail cask, and I would argue that the IF

13 100, which as I recall has a combined cask is probably

14 going to be continued in use for a long time. The new

15 large MTZ, the dual-purpose cask, all have different

16 combinations of lead, red stainless steel, and red

17 uranium in a spaces, which is very important for fire

18 performance.

19 And we may see something like a

20 cannister, a modular cast-iron cask, eventually may be

21 licensed in this country. And that\'s a whole other set.

22 So issue number two, we have to look at

148

1 both loss of shielding and loss of containment, and that

2 makes the selection of the right cask important.

3 And thirdly, Bill\'s point, Bill Lake\'s

4 point is so important that we\'re putting the cart before

5 the horse, and we are looking at possibly all of these

6 accidents in specified temperatures.

7 Now, I did take an audacious step of

8 specifying temperature steps in time because in the set

9 of questions you supplied, you asked for that. We

10 didn\'t just pick these numbers out of the air. These

11 are the numbers that we looked at first and foremost to

12 a large extent by Miles Greiner\'s research, which gave

13 us some benchmarks for looking at what it would actually

14 take for firemen to fail to seal the fuel.

15 And then we looked at our new world

16 accidents, and my preliminaries, and I am glad you set

17 me straight on this because we may back off of this

18 after you have done appropriate studies, of the

19 appropriate accidents.

20 But for now, we think we need to at least

21 look at modeling and the regulatory fire up to eight

22 hours for a truck cask and a higher \-- 2,000 degrees,

149

1 and I put everything in Fahrenheit, so you have to put

2 it in C\'s or metric system. You know, I just remembered

3 that everybody talks metric in these cases.

4 I just saw the movie Pulp Fiction the

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

5 other night, and there was a big discussion of what to

6 call the K-9 from France in the metric system (sic), Big

\_\_\_

7 Al Pacino. And anyway \-- the point is, you have to

8 specify these inputs in a way that everybody understands

9 them, and then relate them to the real world for fires.

10 But what we think, based on the accidents

11 we looked at, that new model performance of the

12 regulatory fire for eight hours to acknowledge an

13 engulfing fire is very rare. I think a truck would take

14 20 hours of burn to get the equivalent of an eight-hour

15 engulfing fire.

16 And similarly with rail, you have got the

17 incidents three-to-five days fires, but you know, within

18 that, probably it would probably be pretty tough to get

19 a regulatory fire engulfing the equivalent for 24 hours.

20 So that\'s why we set these numbers.

21 The rail casks we want to see 1,475

22 degrees for 24 hours. We take a 2,000 degree Fahrenheit

150

1 fire at 12 hours, captures a lot of the worst \-- and we

2 get trends in shipments of different types of chemicals

3 like shipping by rail. But we put these numbers at

4 metrically acknowledging, as Bill said, and after we

5 looked at accidents and proposed changes.

6 MR. CAMERON: So you thought that Bill\'s

MR. CAMERON:

7 suggestion was a good one?

8 MR. HALSTEAD: I do, although I will say we

MR. HALSTEAD:

9 have been attempting to do just what Bill said. But

10 it\'s very difficult to get the NTSB report and admit

11 that someone else\'s recreation and estimation of

12 temperatures based on melted burn-down and nobody had

13 made any efforts to capture that data.

14 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob. Charles?

MR. CAMERON:

15 DR. MASSEY: Bob, on your comments, are these

DR. MASSEY:

16 fires fully engulfing or are some on-site?

17 MR. HALSTEAD: No, we put these as engulfing

MR. HALSTEAD:

18 equivalents, to recognize that you might have a three or

19 four or five day burn. But certainly it is subjective

20 for further refinement.

21 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s go to Ron Pope, and then

MR. CAMERON:

22 we will see if anybody in the audience has a question

151

1 and then break for lunch.

2 Ron?

3 MR. POPE: Our rail colleagues over here

MR. POPE:

4 raised the issue of torch fire. I would just make you

5 aware that Sandia, working with the federal agencies,

6 performed a series of torch tests, one early cask test

7 back in the 1980\'s, analyzing that in a torch

8 environment. And this data is available.

9 MR. CAMERON: Anybody out here in the audience

MR. CAMERON:

10 have comments or questions on the thermal aspect of

11 this?

12 Can we get your name and affiliation.

13 MR. WELLS: My name is Allan Wells and I do

MR. WELLS:

14 work on cask design on occasion. And my affiliation is

15 I am just here representing myself today.

16 My first comment, I don\'t know how to

17 deal with something like this, but the \-- beyond

18 regulatory accidents for a very long time certainly can

19 pose great challenges to the existing packages today. I

20 don\'t think that anybody should be thinking that the

21 existing packages which were designed to meet these

22 requirements and regulations that are in place today

152

1 will just casually manage to survive undamaged accident

2 scenarios that many times are longer and much higher

3 temperatures.

4 So that is just a comment, and the

5 comment directed to Sandia is, that you should try to be

6 sensitive in how you treat this information. And if you

7 do scenarios where you take this cask destruction you

8 should put those into perspective as to whether you

9 really expect that to happen.

10 As far as the duration goes, I was going

11 to comment, but that was something Bob Halstead

12 clarified, that a lot of times the fire goes on for a

13 long period of time, but the fire really kind of

14 smolders towards the end and is burning out.

15 So when you do write up this modal study

16 it would be nice if you try to explain to the public

17 that the fire you are talking about is a roaring fire

18 that is quite an impressive fire. And that although we

19 have fires in our houses, in the chimneys and fireplace

20 that last all night, so it can be started the next day

21 when it is cold outside, you\'re not talking about that

22 sort of scenario. You are talking about something that

153

1 is quite different. It is a real raging fire.

2 One last comment is that some time ago

3 the Department of Energy in one of its programs looked

4 at others types of ways of dealing with packages, and

5 the concept of neutron shields that were intended to

6 protect the cask from intensive heat during the accident

7 scenarios that were developed.

8 And so, as the NRC looks at this sort of

9 thing I would just like to encourage you to think about

10 accepting future cask designs that change with the new

11 regulations which you \-- devices that are \-- neutron

12 shields that are intended to protect against fires

13 during the fire scenario. Thank you.

14 MR. CAMERON: John? MR.

CAMERON:

15 MR. HADDER: John Hadder, Citizen\'s Alert.

MR. HADDER:

16 There was a comment came up earlier about the uniform

17 heat distribution in testing casks as well as in the

18 computer modeling version. My group had concerns about

19 that, that that doesn\'t represent realistically what

20 would happen in a fire. And I would also assume if

21 there is a breach in the seal it is probably more likely

22 to create a strain that would result in nonconforming

154

1 diffusion (sic). And I hope that that can be addressed

\_\_\_

2 in this process.

3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, John. I think

MR. CAMERON:

4 that that point is clear, right Charles?

5 DR. MASSEY: Yes. DR.

MASSEY:

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let\'s be back at a

MR. CAMERON:

7 quarter to two. That gives you about 55 minutes.

8 (Noon recess.)

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9 \* \* \* \* \*

10

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13

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15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

155

1 (The hearing herein having recessed at the

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2 hour of 12:40 o\'clock p.m., on Wednesday, December 8,

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3 1999, thereupon resumed at the hour of 2:05 o\'clock

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4 p.m., on Wednesday, December 8, 1999.)

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5 MR. CAMERON: We are going to finish off the

MR. CAMERON:

6 container performance by looking at container

7 performance during collision issues. And then we are

8 trying to get into the spent nuclear fuel behavior.

9 I would just note that the NRC is making

10 a video on spent fuel transportation and the video crew,

11 who is doing this for the NRC, are in the building. And

12 I think they are going to be asking people if they would

13 like to be interviewed with them, what their concerns or

14 perspectives are on spent nuclear fuel. And you may be

15 asked. And I would just like to tell you that it is

16 being done with the approval of the NRC. It\'s not just

17 some random group.

18 Before we go to talk about container

19 performance during collision, I wanted to go to Ray for

20 some thoughts on a previous discussion.

21 Ray Lambert?

22 MR. LAMBERT: This is just an observation.

MR. LAMBERT:

156

1 It\'s probably a response to Charles a little bit. He

2 made the statement, which was accurate, that you

3 sometimes have to be careful about that which is an

4 analytical evaluation versus that which is the actual

5 testing. And I think that kind of left a little bit of

6 thought that even tested results are apt to be, you

7 know, nowhere near as analytical.

8 The data that he referred to in this

9 particular case, 1978, had interesting histories, in

10 that the first analytical assumptions about this would

11 be a loss of material from the cask \-- something like a

12 sabotage event. The estimates of that analysis that was

13 done analytically had results of something like less

14 than one percent. Two years later they redid my

15 analysis that worked and the numbers went down, in fact,

16 to a 10. In other words, better analytical methods

17 reduced the expected amount.

18 Subsequent to that, several years later,

19 they did the actual testing. And what turned out was

20 that the actual amount was two orders of magnitude less

21 than the curve (sic). It was a factor of a thousandth

\_\_\_

22 on the curve from the first analytical.

157

1 So I think the point to be made is not

2 that we really understand fully in all cases the

3 analytical is exactly right. But it should be noted

4 that in essentially \-- never say \-- nearly. But all the

5 cases the methods of using analytical approaches tend to

6 be conservative. When you don\'t know something you

7 don\'t have to put in a conservative approach.

8 In almost every case where there has been

9 an actual test compared with the analysis, the test

10 appeared to be less severe. So I think you are right on

11 the one hand. But I think when you take the accident

12 scenario it is a lot worse on the analytical \-- in all

13 cases the other way.

14 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Ray. That is a

MR. CAMERON:

15 useful preface for discussion we are going to have this

16 afternoon. And from a facilitator\'s point of view I am

17 not sure whether everybody would agree with you or not,

18 but the point is good enough to consider that you can\'t

19 just assume that the analytical is going to give you

20 worse results.

21 I don\'t want to get into a discussion of

22 this now, Bob, if you would just hold this.

158

1 If you could just hold that until we get

2 back to this point, when we get to that. Let\'s go to

3 Charles.

4 MR. HALSTEAD: Point of information?

MR. HALSTEAD:

5 MR. CAMERON: Yes. MR.

CAMERON:

6 MR. HALSTEAD: Didn\'t we discuss the collision

MR. HALSTEAD:

7 impacts, as part of fire \-- was it scheduled for this

8 afternoon?

9 MR. CAMERON: I hate to let the state run

MR. CAMERON:

10 this thing. Let\'s adopt Bob\'s suggestion \-- let\'s go to

11 Earl. Let me introduce Earl from the project office,

12 and Earl, as you know, probably can tell has had a lot

13 of experience with this particular issue generally, and

14 specifically on this container performance during

15 collision. And he is going to be here to serve as a

16 resource for us during this discussion.

17 DR. MASSEY: Thank you, Chip. Now, to finish

DR. MASSEY:

18 this last piece of cask performance from the structural

19 end, we are going to talk about the collision

20 environment. Going back to where we are in our present

21 state of knowledge on cask performance under a collision

22 scenario, in the modal studies we did in 1987, the

159

1 generic steel lead cask which was analyzed, due to the

2 fact they did not assume that the impact limits were on

3 the cask, the cask by itself. The cask closure

4 mechanisms were as we have here.

5 And the leakage and red failure inside

6 the cask was estimated by the use of powerful lasers,

7 estimated by looking at the strain on the inner wall.

8 These are calculations that put the strain on the inner

9 cask wall. Based on that, they determined how much

10 leakage \-- they estimated how much leakage was inside

11 the cask, and how the rods were.

12 In the NUREG 0170 update that is coming

13 out early next year we looked at the effects of

14 mechanical loads on more generic type casks, and the

15 design, the purpose of design \-- the purpose of

16 analysis.

17 We did look at cask closures from the

18 point detailed from the lid and the seal of the lid and

19 the steel and the bolt. We did look at the bolt, not to

20 waste time, but the representative of the square bolt, I

21 guess, but we did look at it. And we did look at it and

22 it really take into account the screw design of the

160

1 bolt.

2 To do that we had to make certain

3 assumptions about how the bolt was formed. But it was

4 not really \-- if you look at design you wouldn\'t get a

5 picture of that.

6 We then looked at the collision forces

7 that attacked the seal looking at an unyielding surface.

8 And unyielding surface is essentially something so hard

9 that if a package gets on it the surface doesn\'t absorb

10 any of the impact. All the forces that would be crushed

11 goes onto the package. Actually it is the most severe

12 environment that a package could receive.

13 We looked at forces at, different speeds

14 \-- 30, 60, 90, 120 miles per hour. We assumed for

15 purposes of weight that the impact limiters were still

16 on the package, that they had already been fully

17 crushed. So we estimated the absorption of that crushed

18 force, but weight is an important element of that

19 perspective.

20 And finally, we did not assume that the

21 neutron shield was on the cask.

22 For the Package Performance Study we

161

1 would like to look at details, as detailed as the bolts.

2 One of the things that is of some interest is that, if

3 you look at the series of bolts that\'s on the lid and if

4 one of them starts to fail and one of them starts to

5 bow, the other one could bow. And we want to look at a

6 little more, at the bolts in a little more detail.

7 So with a little more detail on the

8 closure mechanism and definition of that. Look at model

9 predictions \-- also give it a test. And what we would

10 like to see if \-- the picture gives you an idea, the

11 test of the cask of the center of gravity of the points.

12 That would just essentially give you an

13 idea. Where the center of gravity of this package is,

14 rather over on this corner. This actually presents an

15 arch indicating the corner, yet the weight fully is over

16 that corner.

17 We are suggesting that whenever a

18 collision-type impact occurs you look at it. You look

19 at speeds greater than 50 miles an hour. You get an

20 idea of the Package Performance, particularly if there

21 is a difference between rail and truck speeds, analyzed

22 of course. And then finally we will get this testing.

162

1 And that is a topic we talked about, the testing.

2 And lastly, put out the analysis of how

3 we would expect the cask to perform under severe

4 environment and do the tests and then demonstrate how

5 those comparison held up. And so it would depend on how

6 accurate they held up.

7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you once again, Charles.

MR. CAMERON:

8 And again, Charles has put up some suggestions on how

9 Sandia is going to proceed or may proceed with the study

10 in terms of looking at container performance.

11 And what I am going to do now is I am

12 going to turn to Bob Halstead to give us some points on

13 container performance during collision. And then let\'s

14 have a discussion of those points and what other people

15 might want to add. Bob Halstead.

16 MR. HALSTEAD: Thank you, Chip. It\'s hard to

MR. HALSTEAD:

17 separate some of those issues from the textbook issues

18 and also from the spent fuel behavior issue. The most

19 important points that we want to make, and maybe the

20 single most important point on the collision impact

21 issue has to do with the study coming up with a way to

22 translate variations of the regulatory drop on an

163

1 unyielding surface.

2 To represent equivalent real-world

3 impacts, and based again on looking at the list of

4 accidents that I included earlier, we have taken some

5 positions on speed and types of targets.

6 For rail, certainly there\'s some evidence

7 of rare downgrade runaways that exceed 100 miles per

8 hour. But the accidents I\'ve looked at, it looks like

9 somewhere in the 85 to 95 range, and therefore we picked

10 90 as a top speed for the rail casks impacts. And in

11 this case we would suggest looking separately at 90

12 miles per hour impact force with the rock face bridge

13 support column.

14 And then there is a possibility of an on-

15 coming locomotive, in which case calculating the actual

16 impact speed is somewhat complicated. The angle of

17 impact has to be estimated a little bit. There is also

18 the issue in a high-speed derailment of casks colliding.

19 Now, if we\'re operating dedicated trains,

20 I would argue that these are pretty difficult conditions

21 to come by. But, since there\'s no commitment to operate

22 dedicated trains, and there is opposition to every

164

1 effort to impose mandatory use of dedicated trains, we

2 think those are realistic impact scenarios for rails.

3 With trucks, I don\'t remember seeing a

4 clear policy statement from DOE about imposing the

5 maximum speed limit, although I have often heard the 55

6 miles an hour figure discussed as a target. I think we

7 have to assume that a truck cask can have a 75 mile per

8 hour impact if that\'s allowed on a lot of western

9 states. And I\'ll tell you the truth, I have seen a lot

10 of trucks traveling that speed on I-95.

11 So, the speed then has to look at rock

12 face bridge support impacts, impacts of another tractor

13 on the cask traveling at that speed, because of it the

14 generally soft body of the tractor it probably is not

15 going to generate much impact, but it is worth

16 mentioning as one of the things in there.

17 But, the real issue that I would like to

18 pose to the people doing this study is to try and take

19 these kinds of impacts and scale them relative to the

20 regulatory drop on the unyielding surface.

21 Again, I use the example I talked about

22 in Bethesda when the British did their test. And they

165

1 did both a locomotive impact on the cask and they did a

2 regulatory drop test. And they found the regulatory

3 drop test was considerably more impact and caused a

4 slight closure opening where there was no noticeable

5 impact from the staged locomotive. So, that is the most

6 important issue.

7 And then, the second issue has to do with

8 modeling and scale model testing.

9 Without getting to far into \-- are you

10 going to come back to physical testing?

11 I would just want to say at this point,

12 we think the focus on critical cask components for this

13 effort is very important and we agree pretty much with

14 the way you have outlined it here focusing on the bolts.

15 And I would say additionally that each particular cask

16 has some particular potential vulnerability peculiar to

17 design.

18 For example, the fitted and welded pieces

19 of \-- that include the uranium shield in various truck

20 and rail casks is something we think needs to be looked

21 at in some detail. Although generally we believe the

22 focus should be on bolt and seal failure, as those

166

1 things are likely to occur.

2 MR. CAMERON: Bob raised a number of points

MR. CAMERON:

3 and assumptions about speed, looking at different

4 surfaces, cask collisions of rail and train, and it will

5 be good to get some perspectives from other people on

6 those particular issues. And, as is up here, look at

7 bolts and seals and the peculiarities I guess of

8 different casks in terms of bolts and seals.

9 MR. HALSTEAD: And shields, because there is

MR. HALSTEAD:

10 the gamma shield construction and the relationship

11 between the gamma shield and the inner cask wall.

12 MR. CAMERON: And in your second point, Bob, I

MR. CAMERON:

13 am sort of lost, which isn\'t important in terms of me.

14 But I want to make sure that everyone understands.

15 MR. HALSTEAD: Well, Charles had gotten into

MR. HALSTEAD:

16 the issue of how to assess bolt performance, for

17 example, and that\'s while we will try to discourage you

18 from taking on the larger issue of full-scale cask

19 testing as part of this. Although we strongly support

20 full-scale testing. Full-scale testing of critical

21 components ought to be part of this test and certainly

22 bolts and probably seals, and the best way to do that is

167

1 physical testing of components.

2 MR. CAMERON: I guess we\'ll bring that back up

MR. CAMERON:

3 when we get into testing. Let\'s go to Jim Williams.

4 MR. WILLIAMS: Just let me be arbitrary. Jim

MR. WILLIAMS:

5 Williams. I really just have a question. You were

6 mentioning the four generic casks when you were doing

7 the evaluation. And I think I\'m a little confused as to

8 whether the \-- how the generic casks will translate to

9 the probable VA49 or a truck shipment.

10 MR. CAMERON: Bob? MR.

CAMERON:

11 MR. HALSTEAD: Let me separate the two issues

MR. HALSTEAD:

12 here. The Package Performance Studies, as a suggestion,

13 for package selection is going to be \-- is going to have

14 to pass the existing \-- actually going out and looking

15 at the specific casks itself, actually cask designs that

16 are out there. For a number of reasons I would like to

17 come up and just do the designs which are slightly less

18 than those actually out there.

19 Now, in fact, the Performance Studies

20 that we thought looked at from an analysis standpoint,

21 the generic cask with generalized features, or we look

22 at the cask that is actually out there that\'s one of the

168

1 thing we would like to get to do.

2 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead, Jim.

MR. CAMERON:

3 MR. WILLIAMS: If we take the several

MR. WILLIAMS:

4 certified rail casks out there and use generic tests

5 that are done and that will extrapolate to any and all

6 of them?

7 DR. MASSEY: That would be one of the things

DR. MASSEY:

8 we would have to look at, the issue of tests for a full

9 size package. How would we get the package that would

10 most represent the package that would be rxpected to be

11 in service? So again, that is something we will have to

12 address.

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And, Bob, you were

MR. CAMERON:

14 talking about specific casks. Jim had a question about

15 \-- that raised Charles\'s point about, can you do these

16 generic tests? I don\'t know if anybody else has an

17 opinion.

18 MR. HALSTEAD: I will tell you quickly that

MR. HALSTEAD:

19 there are pros and cons. The pros are, you will have to

20 remember what the NRC is doing here is something that is

21 different than what DOE is doing at the EIS. NRC has

22 got to come up with newer regulations that will apply to

169

1 all types of Type D packages involving types of

2 irriradiated fuel, whether it\'s a university research

3 react or whatever. So, that\'s a real burden, guys.

4 It\'s hard enough dealing with DOE, where

5 they have common sense to take input in the 1990\'s and

6 designate one truck cask design and one or two rail cask

7 designs, and yet not hold a proper competition to let

8 the private sector decide who will build those designs,

9 because we think uniformity is a major issue for a whole

10 range of safety.

11 But, for the safety thing the NRC

12 situation is different than the government was doing

13 with the draft EIS.

14 And secondly, even if you see DOE

15 shipments to ship the transportation environment, as I

16 do, there will still be relatively large numbers of

17 shipments that Bob Alcock will be sheparding 20 years

18 from now. Bob is in the elite and if Bob is using that

19 and will be shipping in ISO containers on rail cars and

20 some will be shipped on trucks, and there are some other

21 means. So I think this is an issue you are not going to

22 resolve.

170

1 Our preface, Nevada\'s preference, because

2 we are primarily concerned about Yucca Mountain, is that

3 at least one of the truck cask designs you evaluate is

4 GA4 (sic). And we I would like at least one of the rail

\_\_\_

5 casks in terms of what\'s been certified \-- it\'s a very

6 nice piece of hardware.

7 And we have tried to straddle this by

8 identifying Westinghouse NTC (sic) large transporter

\_\_\_

9 design. The MAC (sic) dual purpose cask. And now we

\_\_\_

10 are looking at the high-star (sic) as ones that we think

\_\_\_

11 are covered in the waterfront with the different types

12 of shielding. That is the primary difficulty.

13 Anyway, I haven\'t got any resolutions for

14 you except to say, our preference is, we are going to be

15 unhappy if at least one of the truck cask designs is the

16 GA4. We know how to model that. The issue for you is,

17 if you model that and nobody orders them and some other

18 very different design goes forward, we\'ll be back here

19 in five years and you will have to do modal study three.

20 MR. CAMERON: Before we go on \-- I know people

MR. CAMERON:

21 have other points they want to raise, but is there

22 anything else on this specific point that we\'re

171

1 discussing now about how you select the cask that you\'re

2 going to use? Does anybody want to say anything about

3 that? Bill Lake.

4 MR. LAKE: Bill Lake at DOE. I think if you

MR. LAKE:

5 are looking at studying something that may happen in

6 2010, again you are trying to design a specific cask

7 with different cask values. It\'s a very difficult task

8 to identify which cask features will bound, those cask

9 features which are present today in the representative

10 cask, and try to extend it 10 to 20 years from now.

11 But I think it can be done reasonably

12 well as long as you keep records and evaluate the

13 designs which may have changed significantly 10 to 20

14 years from now.

15 But I think that\'s a bad approach in

16 trying to get the cask today to be.

17 MR. CAMERON: And your better approach, just

MR. CAMERON:

18 so everybody understands it, would be to do what?

19 MR. LAKE: Try to identify the, as suggested,

MR. LAKE:

20 and try to put those into a representative cask. And

21 then crystal ball the problem to see and decide what may

22 be around 10 or 20 years from now, so you don\'t have to

172

1 repeat the study in a few years.

2 MR. CAMERON: There\'s a question from Earl

MR. CAMERON:

3 Easton on that before you go.

4 Earl, go ahead.

5 MR. EASTON: I just wanted to follow-up on

MR. EASTON:

6 what Bob said. Keep in mind that the purpose of this

7 study is to try to figure out what level of protection

8 the regulations can give, not any one particular cask \--

9 not any one series of shipments.

10 So the approach we took in Modal Study 1

11 is, if we had a rail cask or if we had a truck cask that

12 minimally meets the standards what is the level of

13 protection?

14 So when we go out and pick generic casks

15 and try to pick something that looks reasonably close to

16 what those designs might turn out to be, what we are

17 looking at the bottom line is what level of protection

18 would the regulations require.

19 Because we don\'t want to pick a cask

20 design that is maybe over and above the regulation. We

21 want to pick something that represents right at the

22 regulatory line of cask design in the regulatory

173

1 environment.

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let\'s go now to Bob

MR. CAMERON:

3 Alcock.

4 MR. ALCOCK: I want to talk a little bit

MR. ALCOCK:

5 about the position of design uncertainties, and Charles

6 and I many times have had discussions about this.

7 We haven\'t done a very good job. But I

8 agree with Bob Halstead we ought to try to do that. But

9 I am troubled by these examples, and I\'m going to ask

10 Bob Halstead about some data that gives reason to

11 believe that the forces of the cask at least would be

12 greater than that we need to look at.

13 MR. HALSTEAD: Bob, it\'s hard for me to answer

MR. HALSTEAD:

14 that precisely, because I have never seen anybody at

15 Sandia that would have a good little matrix that

16 explains how they do a regulatory drop.

17 I personally have advocated accepting the

18 performance standards as they\'re stated, and sequential

19 testing for full-scale testing. So, I obviously have a

20 certain level of respect for a package that has to meet

21 those standards.

22 Nonetheless I think it\'s an unknown about

174

1 how those impacts I describe translate.

2 For example, does the 90 miles per hour

3 side impact, which would be pretty hard to do in a rail

4 cask on a bridge support column, represent a 60 foot

5 drop? I am looking for some guidance from Sandia.

6 I can help you specify what I think the

7 maximum impacts are based on a now almost 20 year study

8 of railroad accidents. But I have never, in all the

9 discussions we have had with the people at Sandia, I

10 have never heard anybody lay out the kind of dimensions

11 of how variations on regulatory drop can replicate

12 different types in the real world.

13 If you did nothing else in this study but

14 generate a defensible Rosetta Stone, if you will, or

15 relating the real world to regulatory standards that

16 would be a very important function.

17 MR. CAMERON: Charles?

MR. CAMERON:

18 DR. MASSEY: And that is an excellent point.

DR. MASSEY:

19 And in the upcoming updates coming out for next year I

20 think the real world conditions translate into the

21 regulatory standards.

22 MR. CAMERON: Bob, was there \-- Bob Alcock,

MR. CAMERON:

175

1 was there a suggestion that you wanted to make to Bob

2 Halstead\'s suggestion so you get to the point you were

3 trying to make?

4 MR. ALCOCK: No, I was just supporting his

MR. ALCOCK:

5 notion that we haven\'t explained this very well. I was

6 trying to get some clarification. And I think I got it

7 from the examples he was using.

8 MR. HALSTEAD: I was using maximum values and

MR. HALSTEAD:

9 I\'m trying to find something that both has a reflection

10 in real accidents and something that maybe ought to be

11 120 miles per hour for that. I just don\'t know.

12 MR. CAMERON: Great. And, Charles, you get

MR. CAMERON:

13 the Rosetta Stone. Do you have it up there?

14 (Simultaneous colloquy among the panel

15 unreportable.)

16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Earl.

17 MR. EASTON: I would just like to report what

18 Charles said. One of the things that was done to some

19 extent, the update of the 0170 that would come out

20 eventually is to look at a 60 foot drop on an unknown

21 surface and translate that into an impact on a concrete

22 surface at the different speeds. It\'s sort of the

176

1 analysis that focuses on the velocity of the hardness of

2 surfaces and impact surfaces, sort of a matrix, and look

3 at that. And that is something we probably won\'t pay

4 attention to.

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you.

6 MR. ALCOCK: And I would just state for the

7 record, it took 3,000 years for us to translate that.

8 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bob. I think that

9 puts everything in perspective here.

10 Ron Pope.

11 MR. POPE: I think a lot of what I wanted to

12 say has been said, and let\'s just see if I can summarize

13 it, my thoughts. And that is whatever the scenario, in

14 terms of modeling real accident environments in the

15 behavior of whatever cask design you choose, it needs to

16 be related back so you can satisfy, as Earl said, the

17 purpose to assess the level of protection provided by

18 the regulations; relate it back to how that same cask

19 would perform relative to the puncture, range of drop

20 test, and thermal tests mandated by the regulations,

21 followed by the temperature requirements that are in the

22 regulations.

177

1 Now, just an example \-- you pick the drop

2 of the center of gravity over the corner, depending on

3 the design. That may not be the most damaging

4 orientation.

5 The regulations require that you do each

6 of your mechanical tests in the most damaging

7 orientation and you pick the sequence of the puncture

8 test and the drop test so it\'s most damaging preceding

9 the thermal test.

10 Finally, it\'s the acceptance requirement

11 afterwards that the same containment, such as would

12 relieve no more than a (inaudible) quantity in a week.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

13 But generally the cask requirements of (inaudible) is

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

14 whatever you do, always related back to how that package

15 would behave had it been exposed to the full set of

16 regulatory tests.

17 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Ron.

MR. CAMERON:

18 Let\'s go to Mike Baughman.

19 MR. BAUGHMAN: I guess this is a question for

MR. BAUGHMAN:

20 staff. And that is, I am wondering whether or not the

21 regulations and those study matters reflect the scenario

22 where we have a legal weight cask, legal weight truck

178

1 casks, on a rail car traveling at 78 miles per hour. I

2 know that EIS is not addressing that. DOE is not

3 considering that as a possibility. But I don\'t know if

4 we will propose that as a possibility.

5 DR. MASSEY: One of the things we have to

DR. MASSEY:

6 consider in an accident environment is packages, such as

7 truck casks on rails, and in particularly in the thermal

8 environment. So we need to look at the package in the

9 transportation levels and look at the transportation

10 mode, so that is something you need to consider.

11 MR. CAMERON: And, Susan, do you want to

MR. CAMERON:

12 answer that?

13 DR. SHANKMAN: I think it is a matter of

DR. SHANKMAN:

14 judgement. I think that is a comment \-- the more

15 comments you get about things that may not be considered

16 the better the study can be. The whole interest, as I

17 said at the beginning, we will consider all of those

18 comments and in time Sandia will be making a finding and

19 we will review it.

20 I appreciate the comments.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.

MR. CAMERON:

22 Earl?

179

1 MR. EASTON: Real quickly, in general when you

MR. EASTON:

2 have an impact it can be translated into velocity and

3 angles and hardness of the surface. So all these

4 specific scenarios, if you take this scenario and we say

5 the velocity is bounded and the hardness of the surface

6 is bounded and the angle is considered, and then in

7 theory all these scenarios can be handled in the same

8 way. Just make sure the parameters and values for these

9 three particular items are not exceeded by their

10 (unintelligible). \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

11 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Earl.

MR. CAMERON:

12 Let\'s go to Pat Brady.

13 MR. BRADY: Just two quick issues. This kind

MR. BRADY:

14 of goes back to the issue Bob Halstead brought up. One

15 of the issues is speed relative to rail. And again, we

16 definitely were not cut out for it because the speed has

17 increased substantially from 1989 to 1999 and relatively

18 you would assume that the speed probably would increase

19 between now and the year 2010. And that is just looking

20 at freight train speeds.

21 You have many circumstances in individual

22 rail environments in that you\'ll have a 60 mile an hour

180

1 freight train and you\'ll have a 100 mile an hour Amtrak

2 train on a freight train track. It\'s not necessarily

3 only the freight train speed you need to consider. So,

4 that is again you have your work cut out for you. And

5 it is hard to say with the changing of technology what

6 the next 10 years will bring.

7 The other issue is one that Bob Halstead

8 brought up relative to two casks or more in a train and

9 one cask striking another cask, and the dynamic crush

10 testing. And the way I read the announced modal study

11 is, that the crush test is only applicable to small

12 packages.

13 But the feeling was that in small

14 packages, or numerous packages inside a container or

15 trailer in the event of an incident you would have one

16 package maybe striking another. Whereas in the rail

17 environment in all likelihood you would have more than

18 one package.

19 So, in the new work that is being done

20 consider crush testing of large trailer casks.

21 MR. CAMERON: And is that point on crush

MR. CAMERON:

22 testing, does that follow from Bob Halstead\'s

181

1 assumptions that we\'re not sure that dedicated trains

2 are going to be used? In other words, would this issue

3 go away if there were dedicated trains?

4 MR. BRADY: Not necessarily; you also \-- in

MR. BRADY:

5 the rail environment you are dealing with locomotives of

6 300,000 pounds. So you could have a locomotive in some

7 circumstances crushing a cask another cask hitting a

8 cask \-- you could have more than \-- more than one

9 vehicle.

10 MR. CAMERON: I see. And then Bob\'s example,

MR. CAMERON:

11 the point was on collision between casks rather than an

12 overloaded cask

13 MR. BRADY: If you have got a locomotive

MR. BRADY:

14 MR. CAMERON: Oh, okay, Pat. Thank you, Pat.

MR. CAMERON:

15 Kevin, do you want to tell us what\'s on

16 your mind?

17 MR. BLACKWELL: I just wanted to comment \-- I

MR. BLACKWELL:

18 will say it anyway, because it goes back to what Earl

19 was saying. The regulation, when it comes to packaging

20 across the board for Hazmat are minimal standards.

21 They\'re meant to be minimal standards to define the

22 respective levels of safety of packaging or transport of

182

1 Hazmat.

2 And I think that\'s just common sense, in

3 that no one would like a regulation that contains

4 maximum standards, because it limits the ceiling of

5 wherever you want to go, except for regulation for

6 change.

7 So the idea behind setting minimal safety

8 standards that effectively contain the material in the

9 packaging is to allow designs and technology to be

10 implemented and to be used without having to wait for

11 regulatory change.

12 And I think that\'s \-- we\'re all aware

13 that regulatory change is not quick. And it doesn\'t

14 move with the speed of light.

15 And I just want to make that statement.

16 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Kevin.

17 Let\'s go to Bill.

18 MR. LEE: I am Bill Lee. And a couple of

19 points that I want to make is that there was no

20 discussion of what the difference in the four different

21 cask modes. And with the bolts reg, that you have the

22 bolting company not being aware of the parts or that is

183

1 where you feel it.

2 But the other item, I think we\'re heading

3 into an era of where we have designed and licensed a

4 dual-purpose system. And we are putting them inside

5 wherever the cask is. And you have an extra boundary

6 that you do not even take into consideration. And as

7 Ron Pope pointed out, it is the release of the ray

8 acidity (sic), so you have another boundary.

9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bill. Let\'s go to

10 Jim. We will get back to Mr. Lake.

11 MR. WILLIAMS: Two quick points. Number one,

12 ditto on the crush. I think that\'s important. That is

13 one of the things I had listed coming into the

14 committee. I think it\'s an important point to look at.

15 The second thing is procedural. I think

16 it\'s been an excellent discussion. It has been very in-

17 depth.

18 I\'m a little concerned how we\'re going to

19 run out of time on some of the other three issues, we

20 still have to go forward with. And I would suggest we

21 wrap this one up and maybe set a time limit for that on

22 each of the following three issues. I wouldn\'t want to

184

1 shortchange those.

2 Some of us have plans to leave at 4:30.

3 So I just want to raise that.

4 I mean, sometimes people can be aware and

5 not repeat things that have already been said.

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I think that is a useful

7 admonition for us, and a good way to speed things up.

8 Let me just hear from the rest of you who

9 had your cards up. And let\'s all try to be concise, and

10 we will have some time. I think we are going to gain

11 some time on the next two issues. But let\'s not go

12 further than 3:00 o\'clock on this one.

13 And let me go to Klaus.

14 MR. SCHUMANN: Thank you. I just wanted to

15 record that we would like to request full-scale testing

16 of transportation casks under real-live conditions. And

17 you should not underestimate what perception has created

18 the topic. I think the topic will be much more

19 competent on results on real live tests on the casks

20 rather than relying on some field modeling or computer

21 testing.

22 And I would like to particularly respond

185

1 to what Ray Lambert said a little bit earlier. My point

2 was, that the analytical (sic) was up compared to full-

3 scale testing with computer modeling, one way or the

4 other.

5 But I do want to also add in this

6 particular test, I think the result was reported to be

7 one percent of the (inaudible) that leads up to a

8 terrorist attack towards the environment and the one

9 percent of the large railroad cars can lead to 8.000

10 (sic) C\'s.

11 That\'s right what we call in this study

12 (sic). I think we can assume a state of 1,380 to list

13 them all (sic). And that\'s a lot to assume in the case

14 of the environment in a different form. Which means

15 that computer-modeling was a real live test, a real-time

16 test for the degree of contaminable material. And upon

17 that, the assumptions were more, because it was thought

18 it was less able than another computerized model. That

19 was what I remember was the result of this.

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Klaus has takenus back to

21 the future, I guess, in terms of the analytical that is

22 characterized versus the real test, and we will get to

186

1 that in a minute.

2 Let\'s go to Bill Lake, and Ron \-- did

3 you want to way something? And then we will go to the

4 audience, and then we will go into spent nuclear fuel

5 behavior.

6 Go ahead, Bill.

7 MR. LAKE: Bill Lake, DOE. I just would like

8 to preface my statement by agreeing \-- that I do agree

9 with the importance of regulatory requirements. But

10 let\'s go back to look at, I think we need to recognize

11 the difference between the real analysis that is going

12 to be done which is a very hard assignment, versus the

13 dream analysis in certification. And, as long as you

14 have the certification process, by sanitizing what the

15 NRC (inaudible) and before that the main design is a

16 design organization (sic).

17 This, I would suspect, is going to be a

18 very expensive analysis, but to do the same value

19 analysis as is done in the regulatory process, it will

20 be very, very complete.

21 So I think if you accept the fact this is

22 going to look at many things, but not everything. And

187

1 you need to expect a good detailed regulation analysis

2 and certification process.

3 This is also looking at how good this

4 process is and how much competence you have. I think we

5 need to recognize that difference.

6 Thank you.

7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you.

8 This is a generic issue here with lots of

9 suggestions for the NRC and Charles and the good Sandia

10 team. It may be possible or unnecessary to do

11 everything. So whether \-- what they decide to do or not

12 to do in their terms of scoping, in the study of the

13 major issue that is facing them, I guess by implication

14 a lot of things that the people say is also helping to

15 limit that in some way, but that is a good point.

16 Ron?

17 MR. ROSS: Ron Ross. I think getting back to

18 maybe \-- I think one of the goals you are trying to

19 achieve here \-- I think the Western Governors called for

20 full-scale testing. And the reason is that, we need to

21 develop a little more confidence in the safety factor

22 that is being provided. You were modeling off of a

188

1 computer simulation or scale modeling of these things as

2 you needed, at some level that gives both the public and

3 elected official that confidence.

4 So, as we start to go back to the scope

5 of this you need to take that into consideration, what

6 is in your objectives. And one of these objectives has

7 got to be the confidence level.

8 And that brings me back to then to the

9 unique scale of the thing, either a matrix or some other

10 form that takes these tests, to something that is

11 relatable in everyday experience. The test \-- the drop

12 test, so many miles an hour, a bridge abutment. And I

13 know I get clobbered by the same people every time I

14 bring this up.

15 But you try to explain this to the public

16 or to the governors, as I try to do what I have, what

17 this really means and all they\'ve got is a box or a can

18 or something dropping 50 feet onto a concrete surface.

19 I mean, it\'s just a setting.

20 And so, that is the point I wanted to

21 make.

22 Second, are these standards going to be

189

1 used in waterways? And if so that needs to be included

2 also in your rail, truck, et cetera, because the barge

3 is the real thing here.

4 You have also got the ocean-going thing,

5 particularly in areas like central Hawaii and along the

6 coastal cities.

7 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Ron. I think that

8 we got the water board print before and you are taking a

9 stance on the public confidence point. Again, that

10 happens to be understandable.

11 Let\'s finish off with a brief comment

12 from Bob.

13 MR. HALSTEAD: If we can talk about testing,

14 if I can put a new slip up there because Mike\'s question

15 about piggy-backs and Ron\'s comment about ocean

16 shipment, and I\'m surprised that Jack didn\'t raise the

17 point, because one of the best scoping parts of our

18 meeting was in Bethesda when we talked about the

19 different combinations of casks and modes.

20 So you can have legal weight truck casks

21 that are on legal weight trucks. We can have, we can

22 easily consider legal weight trucks either on trailers

190

1 or on skids or on rail cars. I personally don\'t think

2 you\'ll ever see that, but I think you ought to at least

3 scope it.

4 Certainly, I know you can have legal

5 weight truck casks in shipping containers on rail cars

6 and you can have legal weight truck casks on inland

7 waterway barges, or on ocean vessels. And similarly,

8 with rail casks, you can have rail casks on rail cars

9 singly. You can have rail casks on rail cars in

10 multiple deployment.

11 You can have rail casks we haven\'t

12 mentioned today, on these extremely large heavy-haul

13 trucks, and we were considering BIS, and of course you

14 can have them on inland waterway barges, and ocean

15 vessels.

16 And somewhere you need to scope out what

17 the problems and the combinations are. And then make

18 sure the examples you are looking at are appropriately

19 bound in the different combinations.

20 MR. CAMERON: And does that primarily or

21 solely go to the container performance issue?

22 MR. HALSTEAD: No, I think this has to inform

191

1 everything you do in the study. You begin by scoping

2 transportation logistics.

3 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. I wanted to get a

4 clarification on that from you.

5 How about the audience? Do we have any

6 comments on their line or container performance during

7 collisions? Let\'s go to Allan for a quick comment.

8 \* \* \* \* \*

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

192

1 ALAN WELLS: I just want to comment regarding

2 the Trostob (phonetic) concept and in fact did some work

3 quite a few number of years ago and published a report

4 on that and conservatives to approximately, Earl\'s

5 nodding his head, to approximately a 90 foot fall onto I

6 believe it was an aircraft field, like a bomber, where

7 you have heavy aircraft hitting the run way repeatedly.

8 And if memory serves me correctly, it was

9 equivalent to about 120 feet onto some fairly strong

10 rock. So there have been some efforts to do that

11 before, but what there hasn\'t been is what you\'re gonna

12 do now where you\'re trying to come up with a ruler

13 measurement that\'s a little bit perhaps a wider range.

14 And when you do write all this up, I agree

15 wholeheartedly with everybody here that there has to be

16 some way of relating this to things that we can

17 understand because although I deal with unyielding

18 surfaces routinely, I have a hard time thinking about

19 them.

20 Now when you come to the rich support

21 coalition, that\'s a fairly serious accident and I\'ve

22 actually seen one. And the consequences of the cask

193

1 hitting at any angle because of course we have to do the

2 worst case angle, is pretty severe.

3 But I would encourage you to consider

4 doing the things other than unyielding surfaces since

5 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recently published

6 a target hardness, new reg, that allows you to take a

7 concrete re-enforced structure and figure out the

8 hardness of it. That\'s particularly for a pad, but I\'m

9 sure that you\'re using other instructions.

10 But the reason that I mention this is that

11 if you take anything made out of steel made by humans

12 and you run it along at 75 miles an hour to a rich

13 support structure so that it hits in the middle of these

14 long cylinder truck heads, it\'s going to bend.

15 And the regulatory requirement today is

16 that you don\'t have any release of radioactive material

17 although you know, certainly that\'s \-- you can look at

18 it different ways, but the point is that that\'s not

19 gonna happen in the nature of concrete is strong but not

20 that strong.

21 So don\'t set up a scenario that nothing

22 can pass, set up the scenario based on a new reg that

194

1 can be analyzed and then quantified and it becomes an

2 engineering analysis instead of something impossible.

3 So thank you.

4 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Alan. We\'re

5 going to go to one of our Nevada local government

6 representatives for a comment or a question here at this

7 point. Yes?

8 MS. SHANKLE: I\'m Judy Shankle from Mineral

9 County. And basically my question was since the design

10 of the cask was changed, this is from DOE\'s input, the

11 representatives from Mineral County, I do have senior

12 citizens asking me questions, I have a lot of younger

13 generations that are definitely concerned about this

14 issue, and Mineral County would like to have, to have

15 the new casks built and tested and we want to know what

16 the integrity of the bough (phonetic) and ceilings of

17 those would be and in what condition.

18 For example in the real world you\'re

19 talking about areas that would go through maybe

20 tornadoes or earthquakes.

21 I did see durations here for buyer testing

22 and immersion of water but how many times would you be

195

1 dropping this container.

2 If you do a test and if it were in an

3 earthquake, how many times would this container fall or

4 something with more real life situation that I would be

5 looking at.

6 So therefore Mineral County would like to

7 see full-scale testing on the new casks rather than

8 computer simulations.

9 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Judy. And we\'ll

10 capture that point when we go to the, to the test versus

11 the actual testing discussion.

12 MR. HATTERFIELD: John Hatterfield. I just

13 want to follow up on that because one comment which got

14 lost from the public was there was a possibility of

15 transporting spent fuel from overseas, it would come

16 through the Fedderiver (phonetic) Canyon in California

17 and there was a lot of concern from the public about

18 kind of an accident scenario where you have this cask

19 going down into a steep canyon.

20 So that\'s a point of how do, again

21 connecting your regulations with those kinds of things.

22 Can that be done? That would really be very helpful for

196

1 people to understand better what\'s going on.

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, John. Let\'s go to

3 the next discussion. And I guess you guys already

4 realize you won\'t get any break this afternoon since

5 we\'ve only been here since 2:00. So if you need a

6 break, just drift off. And I\'m sure that some of you

7 might have already done that, drift off into your seats.

8 MR. MASSEY: Okay. The next topic in our

9 discussion and then we\'re really getting into some

10 technical detail and may make up a little time here, but

11 is the actual performance of spent fuel assembly inside

12 the package and how we analyze and test that behavior.

13 And in the 1997 modal study, as I

14 discussed briefly earlier, the performance of the rod

15 site package was estimated based on that strain rate

16 that interpasses charge; how much once a rod they assume

17 have been damaged, how much material outside of the rod

18 got into the cask was based on some previously published

19 results. There was no testing performed.

20 And then once they made the assumption

21 that some material, fine material had been released

22 inside the package, they assumed that that would all be

197

1 released in the environment.

2 In the 0170 update, we actually based on

3 forces that we believe the rods would be subject to in

4 collision environments to calculate the fraction of rods

5 that would be impacted or fractured or damaged or fry

6 the cask, and we calculated how much material inside the

7 rod we would released in the cask, and we calculated how

8 much that material released from the rods could be

9 positive for internal surfaces of the cask. And then

10 essentially you subtract from that how much would be

11 available to be released into the environment.

12 For the package performance study, what we

13 would like to do is actually go in and get some

14 criticism and ask about use of simulated spent fuel

15 rods, rods that have not been radiated, rods that have

16 not had the long storage times with the potential

17 dishment (phonetic) I guess of the cladding or the

18 exterior of the fuel rod. We haven\'t really accurately

19 determined what the affects of those types of factors

20 are on fuel rod performances outside the package.

21 So what we would like to do is perform

22 some laboratory skill experiments, and we\'re gonna go

198

1 into more detail with those rods later.

2 We\'d like to look at the crud that I have

3 out here, impact crash and crud. Crud stands for chalk

4 rivery uniform deposits. It\'s essentially material

5 that\'s on the outside of rod, how that may be released

6 in a collision terminal environment.

7 If we do have some fracturing of the fuel

8 rods and materials inside it, we end up with sort of a

9 bed of material. How does that bed of material or the

10 binds that they have in cask, how does that really work

11 within the context of how much could get out.

12 And finally, once we do have some better

13 definition of the particles released, really get into

14 more detail and accuracy on how much can be actually

15 released from the cask through the openings that we

16 could model as a result of the fire or collision fire.

17 So I\'ll leave these up and we\'ll get into

18 spent fuel. That\'s essential rod performance.

19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Spent fuel rod

20 performance. Let me introduce Sarah Kolpo from the NRC

21 staff who\'s on the team for this project and our expert

22 on this particular subject. She\'s here to serve as a

199

1 resource. Jim, is this one of the things that you were,

2 did you want to comment, take a first comment on \--

3 JIM : This is one I didn\'t want to

4 comment on. Thanks for asking.

5 MR. CAMERON: All right. Let\'s go to Bob

6 Halstead.

7 MR. HALSTEAD: Well, that was a good overview

8 by Dr. Massey, but it avoided what we think is the

9 single most important issue that we don\'t understand yet

10 about your study approach, and that is what, what

11 typical spent fuels you\'re proposing to evaluate.

12 You know, we were late in addressing this

13 issue in the 10CFR51 rule bating (phonetic) regarding

14 the new higher burn out, higher fuels that the NRC is

15 now basically by blanket assessment approved for

16 shipment in truck casks.

17 Now let\'s define the issue this way.

18 There are all kind of different spent fuels that are

19 gonna be shipped out there, all other things being equal

20 which of course they never are, cooling time tends to be

21 the most important factor from a radiological risk

22 standpoint.

200

1 We would suggest a bounding approach in

2 which the greatest radiological risk that we think we

3 would be likely to see would involve the shipment of

4 five-year cooled, high burn-up fuel from PWR,

5 pressurized water reactor. And that is typically what,

6 that is the typical fuel, the maximum fuel that\'s

7 specified in 10CFR51.

8 And I\'m sorry to be so technic. This is,

9 you know, written down in notes. You\'re talking about a

10 very high initial enrichment, five percent, and a very

11 high burn up, 62,000 megawatt base.

12 So if somebody can think of something

13 hotter that\'s likely to be shipped, I\'ll yield, but

14 that\'s the hottest cart load that I can imagine being

15 shipped right now.

16 On the other hand, a large amount of this

17 of the civilian inventory and a very large amount of the

18 other types of research reactor fuels are much less

19 radiologically dangerous.

20 I thought about a really mind-breaking

21 problemistic approach to this. We tried to identify the

22 entire inventory that would be shipped over the next 40

201

1 years and then we break it down and that way leads into

2 insanity.

3 So I think the easiest way to deal with

4 this is pick two points. One type of fuel we just

5 described as the worst case, and then I would argue that

6 we take the least designated typical fuel for shipment

7 to Yucca Mountain which is pretty old, 26 year cooled,

8 again PWR, pressured water reactor, 17 by 17

9 Westinghouse power of rate, if anybody cares, with

10 moderate enrichment, 3.7 percent moderate, over what the

11 history of fuel management practice has been, and a, a

12 actually a higher than average but what will be moderate

13 over the next 20, 30 years of about a 40,000 megawatt

14 thermal burn up.

15 And I would argue that while some people

16 will say that a lot of the fuel in the inventory is

17 older and less dangerous, I would also argue that from

18 talking to the utility folks, they intend to interpret

19 their contracts in a way that lets them ship hot fuel

20 out of a pool if that\'s what\'s best for that particular

21 utility.

22 So I would say for starters we use a

202

1 down-end approach with a highly dangerous fuel and an

2 average radiological risk, and then you have to do all

3 of your radiological analysis looking at these two

4 points.

5 Now beyond that \--

6 MR. CAMERON: Bob, can I stop you right there

7 and just ask \-- I\'d like to get some comment input from

8 the rest of the people around the table on your

9 suggestion.

10 Is there general agreement on, on this

11 type of approach? Are there down sides to this type of

12 approach? Any, any comments on Bob Halstead\'s

13 suggestion? Let\'s go to Bob, Bob Alcock.

14 MR. ALCOCK: I\'m not understanding why the

15 different fuels, say the very hot versus the moderately

16 hot, would form differently?

17 MR. HALSTEAD: Oh, okay. Well to me, just

18 thermal output for one five-year-old type burn-up fuels

19 thermal is very hot and a 26-year old is moderate. So

20 in terms of doing your fire calculation, figure out fuel

21 observation, all kinds of physiological testing. That\'s

22 one issue.

203

1 I think the more important issue, and

2 remember we\'re talking about loss of shielding as well

3 as loss of containment, you\'ve got an enormous surface

4 dosement on the younger, higher burn up fuel. I mean,

5 we\'re talking about, you know, frightening 50 to 100,000

6 rems per hour surface dosage which of course falls off

7 very considerably after about 20 years.

8 There are extraordinarily significant

9 changes in the particular radiolicetopes (phonetic) that

10 dominate inventory depending on major burn-up character.

11 I don\'t want to make this overly involved,

12 but the bottom line is you need to deal with the

13 radiological characteristics of the fuel as well as the

14 physical and chemical characteristics of the fuel to not

15 only figure out the physical performance, but in the end

16 what we\'re concerned about is radiological hazard.

17 MR. ALCOCK: If I were doing a NEPA analysis, I

18 would want to consider the different fuel types that I

19 might be moving exactly for the same reasons that you

20 stated, okay, but in an accident scenario, I\'m asking

21 you again, does\--

22 MR. HALSTEAD: Let me put it to you this way.

204

1 MR. ALCOCK: The performance of the rods in

2 that circumstance.

3 MR. HALSTEAD: And an acceptable level of

4 damage to a container hauling 45-year-old big rock fuel

5 compared to an acceptable level of damage to a cask

6 carrying five-year cooled hot fuel is big spread.

7 So in the end, we\'re still talking about

8 radiological risk even though we\'re focusing on damage

9 to the container. So without making this \-- well, maybe

10 we need to \--

11 MR. CAMERON: Well, let\'s see where we go.

12 Let\'s see where we go in this discussion, okay. We\'ll

13 go to Earl and Fred next.

14 EARL EASTON: I think this may very well be an

15 area that lends itself to Bill Lake\'s sensitivity

16 argument what affect does it have over all in the

17 overall picture. But there are other issues that the

18 NRC is looking at too with different fuel.

19 As fuel ages, the brittleness of the

20 cladding increases and therefore you may lose cladding,

21 and we\'re looking at that now, especially in terms of

22 licensing certifying arena. So yes we are looking at

205

1 that. And I think this is an area that probably lends

2 to Bill Lakes\' sensitivity analysis, doesn\'t make any

3 difference to the end result given that the cask is your

4 mainline of defense.

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Something for people to

6 think about on that last statement.

7 MR. ALCOCK: Well, I\'d like to follow up on

8 that. This is a very important point to get into.

9 Earl, I think if you have an issue of gamma shielding,

10 if it involves a leak or a well fracture, it makes a big

11 damn difference whether what\'s inside that cask has a

12 very high surface dose rate or a low surface dose rate.

13 So that \-- and remember, we\'re not just talking about

14 loss of containment, we\'re talking about loss of

15 shielding also.

16 EARL EASTON: And I could agree with you.

17 What we\'re doing in this study is looking at risk, what

18 is the probability of an accident that leads to that

19 type loss of shielding and then what is the sensitivity

20 to the type of fuel you have in there. And that\'s

21 something I anticipate that we will at least consider

22 putting in the study.

206

1 MR. ALCOCK: Okay, I\'m sorry. I thought you

2 were saying that you didn\'t think it was worth

3 addressing.

4 EARL EASTON: No. All I\'m saying is this is a

5 sensitivity thing.

6 MR. CAMERON: We\'re gonna go to Fred and then

7 we\'re gonna go to Rick Boyle for his comments on this

8 and perhaps something else. Go ahead, Fred.

9 MR. DILGER: Fred Dilger, Clark County. He

10 stole my thunder precisely because that\'s exactly what I

11 was gonna say.

12 I think Bill Lakes\' point about

13 sensitivity now is very correct and I think that one of

14 the ways that you can get there from here in this area

15 is precisely what Bob is suggesting. It\'s the five-year

16 old fuel and the, and then older less dangerous fuel.

17 MR. CAMERON: Fred, let me ask you a

18 clarification there. Are you saying that the so-called

19 Bill Lakes\' sensitivity analysis really equates with

20 what Bob was suggesting?

21 MR. DILGER: Yes. I would argue that the

22 famous Bill Lakes\' sensitivity is precisely what Bob\'s

207

1 recommending.

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, great.

3 UNIDENTIFIED: You need to make sure that the

4 DOE and Nevada don\'t agree too much on this though.

5 MR. CAMERON: Rick Boyle. Let\'s go to Rick

6 Boyle now.

7 MR. BOYLE: Thank you. Rick Boyle now with the

8 Department of Transportation. I think Bob\'s point is

9 valid, but I\'m not sure if it\'s valid for this study. I

10 think it\'s a package review issue that I don\'t see any

11 of these packages or anything that the NRC approves that

12 they write that this cask is approved for all spent

13 fuel. They look at the contents and list them

14 individually and look at the characteristics of that

15 content and then approve it for a given cask. There\'s

16 no cask for spent fuel, it\'s approved for every spent

17 fuel type, as Bob would point out, no matter what its

18 characteristics.

19 So I don\'t know if this is an issue for

20 this study. It would be an issue I would pay a lot of

21 attention to as the NRC did cask review for spent fuel

22 and which contents are approved for which cask because

208

1 Bob is right, the fuel will have different

2 characteristics and the cask will have different

3 characteristics. I see it as a package review issue,

4 not a modal study issue.

5 I don\'t know if you want me to continue

6 with a little bit different issue, same topic but

7 different issue or do you want to close this up?

8 MR. CAMERON: I guess, I think some people

9 would perhaps agree or some others might disagree with

10 that point.

11 Does anybody want to say anything in terms

12 of Rick\'s point was that this, this may not be needed

13 for \--

14 MR. ALCOCK: I gave you a shorthand version of

15 all the things that I think are related to spent fuel

16 radiological characteristics. It also affects every

17 little first rupture oxidation, particle size

18 distribution and all the things that are important from

19 a packaging containment.

20 We so much focused on containment that we

21 haven\'t paid enough attention to shielding. From my

22 understanding, that\'s one of the big deficiencies of the

209

1 first modal study.

2 And I personally believe that that was \--

3 I understand from talking to Larry Fisher at EEOG why

4 they did it, but I think that was one of the things that

5 really undercut credibility of the modal study was that

6 it solely focused on failure of the cask shell on the

7 packaging and escaping the material.

8 And while that\'s very important, another

9 role of the package, does it provides radiological

10 protection.

11 So I think it\'s a double issue, but I

12 don\'t disagree with you that the packaging issue is very

13 important and its physical chemical aspects of the fuel

14 are. Certainly I don\'t disagree with anything Dr.

15 Massey\'s put out there.

16 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead, Rick, with your

17 additional point.

18 MR. BOYLE: And again, a second point. And

19 Charles, feel free to tell me that I\'m all wet

20 especially in the interest of time because I\'m not as

21 familiar with the background work that you\'ve done in

22 analyzing the internal pressure of casks.

210

1 My point is that I\'m not as convinced it

2 matters what condition the contents are in unless the

3 cask fails. And the testing that I\'ve seen has not

4 shown that the cask fails either from a dose rate

5 standpoint or a seal or a, you need a pathway to escape

6 before the inner contents, before we\'re concerned with

7 that.

8 I\'m not aware of testing that is shown

9 that a cask has failed in this testing, therefore, I\'m

10 not as concerned with what happens to the contents

11 because they\'re still contained within the cask.

12 The next point is that if you\'re going

13 through your new work and you\'re looking at I believe

14 low probability situations which would be higher impact

15 and those still don\'t damage the cask so there\'s no

16 conducive pathway, I\'m not sure why this work is being

17 done to identify exactly what form the contents are in

18 where there\'s no exposure pathway based on all those

19 different accident scenarios.

20 And again, I have to say that\'s my opinion

21 and I\'m not, not up-to-date with what analysis you\'ve

22 done and you\'ve looked at what it would take to fail a

211

1 cask.

2 MR. CAMERON: So your, your point, Rick, on

3 this, this cost benefit issue which should be looked at

4 where the resources should be spent is that unless it is

5 demonstrated that, that the cask failure study makes the

6 behavior or the fuel an issue is that let\'s not worry

7 about the behavior of the fuel?

8 MR. BOYLE: Right. Unless you\'re asking

9 probabilities to show cask failures, you don\'t care what

10 the form the contents are in.

11 And my personal opinion is if you\'re

12 showing cask failure, you correct the cask failure, not

13 say well, I guess we had an acceptable release. So I\'m

14 not sure this internal condition \--

15 MR. MASSEY: These are not, these are not

16 regulatory performance standards. You don\'t see cask

17 failures. So I\'ll agree in is not an issue. But what

18 we\'re looking at are extra regulatory regions where we

19 have fires or collision forces that are sufficient to

20 open a path for some escape of material from the

21 package.

22 MR. BOYLE: Oh, I agree. They\'re realistic if

212

1 they\'re extra regulatory but realistic. I still think

2 the path, correct path to take is to correct and fix the

3 cask, not figure out if well, that was an acceptable

4 release. I don\'t think you\'re \--

5 MR. MASSEY: Well, I\'m not saying we\'re not

6 trying to get what\'s an acceptable release, we\'re trying

7 to get to the point where we can estimate what that,

8 accurately say what that use would be.

9 So one of the things we need to know is

10 that if we do have an opening in a package and some seal

11 failure, how much material is inside the package that

12 could be dealt with and released. So that\'s what we\'re

13 really trying to look at in this rod behavior is the

14 environment sufficient to have a release from a package,

15 how does the rod perform in these see modules.

16 MR. CAMERON: Even with that explanation, Rick,

17 do you still maintain your original \--

18 MR. BOYLE: I will throw out my comment then.

19 And if you don\'t have a release pathway or a realistic

20 way to get to the release pathway, the contents in my

21 opinion aren\'t, or the condition of the contents is

22 irrelevant if you don\'t have a release pathway.

213

1 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. And I think

2 we\'ll be coming back to that, that issue. Let\'s go to

3 Ray Lambert and then we\'ll finish off with Bob. I think

4 he has a comment on that. And we\'ll see if anybody in

5 the audience has a comment. Ray?

6 MR. LAMBERT: On the assumption that Bob\'s

7 proposal will be abounding of an average fuel case like

8 acceptance, there\'s an easier way to proceed.

9 I think it should be noted that the

10 condition of the abounding case would not be a

11 universally accepted bounding case, not \-- except you

12 said unless somebody brings me something hotter, again,

13 you said maybe they\'ll leak out.

14 But currently there are not casks that are

15 even licensed or proposed to my knowledge to ship 60,000

16 fuel finally cool.

17 MR. ALCOCK: It\'s what the NRC approved.

18 MR. LAMBERT: The general fuel obviously and if

19 the parameters are, I think it was an area fuel for per

20 the NRC, they\'re a low burn up. And a five year 62 is a

21 very, very outside type thing, to my knowledge is I\'m

22 not sure dealt with. Bill may know.

214

1 BILL LAKES: We\'re just doing rod shipments and

2 we are fully going 70,000 megawatt case 25 rods at 300

3 day cool.

4 MR. LAMBERT: The point being that is on a

5 generic fuel shipment is shipment under special NRC

6 licensing.

7 MR. CAMERON: Earl, do you have a quick

8 clarification here before we go to Bob?

9 EARL EASTON: The 62,000 figure that Bob was

10 referencing is one that we used in a risk study to

11 support that the accurate renewal license control \--

12 UNIDENTIFIED: And the future assumption about

13 future \--

14 UNIDENTIFIED: We have never certified a

15 transportation cask for that and we are still looking at

16 issue such as brittleness of fuel cladding, et cetera,

17 et cetera, before we voided. So it has not really been

18 approved for transportation except in the risk.

19 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Bob, do you want to finish

20 up with this?

21 MR. ALCOCK: We ran out of voiders and that\'s

22 the only reason we didn\'t get an injunction over that

215

1 final rule over exactly this issue, okay.

2 Because the way it reads in the analysis,

3 you\'re talking about GA forecast loaded with that hot

4 fuel going through downtown Las Vegas, that was approved

5 in your risk assessment. And that is unacceptable, but

6 I\'m not going to fight it.

7 MR. CAMERON: Your point right now would be a

8 worst case?

9 MR. ALCOCK: All right. I also \-- okay. First

10 I want to critique my own position here from Bob

11 Alcock\'s perspective. There is a lot of fuel out there

12 that is much less radioactive. That\'s something you

13 have to figure in how much you want to pay attention to

14 the low end.

15 Let me give you an example. Why is it

16 that the state of Nevada did not fight to the death to

17 stop those return research reactor fuel shipments coming

18 into the country. We did a good radiological risk

19 analysis. It appeared to us that a full NAC WQ loaded

20 with that stream of fuel represented somewhere between

21 1/20th and 1/40th the radiological risk of an LWT filled

22 with 10 year cool to moderate burn-up PWR which has been

216

1 our markers for radiological risk analysis.

2 So in addition to the national security

3 issues, what I\'m telling you is governors and the public

4 and the people who advise them do pay attention to these

5 issues when they relate the radiological hazard to the

6 package.

7 And the trade off there was, you know, are

8 we gonna overlook our position that we should have

9 full-scale package testing if anything goes through

10 another state and make that a standard.

11 In this case the fact that it was

12 extremely low hazard was \-- a similar thing happened

13 with the shore on ship wants to live with. People are

14 always oh, they allow this to go through Chahakowitz

15 (phonetic) in the city of Philadelphia. People were

16 very aware that this was very light burn-up fuel. And

17 their reaction to the risk of package performance was

18 very much related to the radiological characteristics.

19 That said, you probably have to take my

20 suggestion and add on a third category of the low end,

21 so that those shipments that don\'t have the same level

22 of risk aren\'t exaggerated.

217

1 But in terms of the worst case, the NRC

2 defined it for us. And in terms of the average, you

3 know, we\'re willing to live with that average the fact

4 that the marker won\'t be leaking tenurable (phonetic)

5 although we think ten year PPWR will be shipped.

6 UNIDENTIFIED: When is conditional five store,

7 10 ship, 20 ship?

8 MR. ALCOCK: Yeah, we\'re not that far off.

9 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Bob. Did you have one

10 final comment on Rick Boyle\'s\--

11 MR. ALCOCK: Yes. And I want to say one other

12 thing about fuel testing. And I don\'t want to be

13 extremely negative about this, but I spent a lot of time

14 evaluating spent fuel performance on the sabotage issue.

15 And laboratory scam experiments are really

16 useful, but I think it\'s important to use typical

17 radiated rods and pellets. It\'s expensive and dangerous

18 due to that research and there aren\'t that many places

19 that will build on that contract.

20 I don\'t think I\'d shock you to say it here

21 that it\'s very nasty work, but it would be very useful

22 because the only way you really gain information about

218

1 first rupture fracture characteristics and particularly

2 the particle size distribution and release, that we

3 would be very supportive of.

4 But I, you know, I\'ll be astounded within

5 the budget that you\'re proposing carry it out.

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, Bob.

7 Is there anybody in the audience who has a point on the

8 characteristics of the spent nuclear fuel issue that

9 we\'ve been discussing. Yes, sir?

10 MR. STANDISH: Paul Standish with Esmeralda

11 County. I was wondering if you had evaluated the gap

12 between the lid and the top of the fuel assembly.

13 Certainly there is some because of differences in

14 manufacturing, because of differences in growth during

15 operations, how much that would be, and what affect that

16 would have on say even the most brittle rods if you had

17 an impact and then the fuel assembly came slamming up

18 against the lid just due to this gap between the top of

19 the assembly and the lid.

20 MR. CAMERON: Could we have a response up to,

21 to call on that?

22 MR. MASSEY: That\'s an excellent point, one

219

1 which we had actually put in our suggestion for

2 consideration.

3 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Paul. And that

4 is in there. Final comment out here from, from Alan and

5 then were gonna go to Bob. Alan?

6 ALAN WELLS: I was gonna keep quiet, but since

7 you asked, the NACL to be cased, some people won\'t say

8 this, is designed so that it has spacers that are, you

9 know, different lense depending on the fuel assembly

10 type. And the specifications and the cask SAR\'s that we

11 shall have not more than one inch gap between the top of

12 the hand fitting of the fuel assembly and the spacers.

13 So that although you allow some room for

14 rattling because, you know, these things are big and

15 heavy, you need leave a little space in there just so it

16 will work. But you don\'t leave a big gap so that you

17 can have fuel assembly picking up speed.

18 You\'re thinking about nershaw and the

19 assembly punching through the lid, but we thought about

20 that, too. So anyway for Sandia, just remember to look

21 for that.

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Alan. This

220

1 next topic is the one that we deferred and has been

2 coming up a lot which is the physical testing versus

3 computer simulations according to the agenda.

4 I think that Ray Lambert talked about this

5 as he referred to the computer simulation as the

6 analytical approach. So let\'s delve into this right

7 now. Charles?

8 MR. MASSEY: By the end of the day, Chip will

9 automatically hand me the microphone. This testing, we

10 probably talked about a lot of these but we\'ll make sure

11 that we have. Going back to where we are today for the

12 modal study as Rob Lewis stated this morning, all of the

13 analysis that was performed for the next study, all the

14 results was based on simulation and our understanding of

15 fuel cask performance. At the time there was no testing

16 done specifically to support modal study.

17 In the new reg 0170 re-evaluation, it will

18 be issued early next year, again, there is no testing

19 done specifically to support the analysis that were

20 performed to that study. The models, computer codes

21 that we use to do those analysis, though, were based on

22 our experience with test and other casks and materials

221

1 that are understanding of physical material properties.

2 And we did a much more detailed look at cask and real

3 performance.

4 For the package performance studies, what

5 we\'d like to do, and this has been some, subject to

6 criticisms in the past of how we\'ve done these, is

7 whatever analysis and if we have some accommodation of

8 test, particularly full-size or partial scale, what we\'d

9 like to do the analysis of what those tests and

10 parameters would be, essentially distribute those, then

11 do the test and write to people to come watch the test

12 and then compare so we can\'t be accused of how we did

13 the test and then later on we did the analysis and they

14 don\'t match up. It does not provide the confidence of

15 the public that we can accurately predict the analysis

16 of the package.

17 So what we\'re proposing is a little twist

18 on and put the predictions out, then we did the test and

19 then we compared.

20 And with that, I\'ll leave it open for any

21 others, or comments, considerations on package testing.

22 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Charles. Maybe the

222

1 best. We\'ve heard a number of comments on this already,

2 including Ray\'s point, that physical testing may not be

3 the most conservative, may not yield the most

4 conservative result.

5 Perhaps the way to start is what do you

6 think of the proposed Sandia approach. What more do you

7 need to know about the Sandia approach before you would

8 say that this is a good idea?

9 I\'m gonna start with Jim, Jim Reed.

10 MR. REED: Thanks. My question is pretty

11 simple. It appears that you\'re just talking about one

12 physical test; is that true? What\'s the reason for

13 that?

14 MR. MASSEY: I mean, it would be a mix, you

15 know, some mix of fire collision test.

16 MR. REED: Okay. Of a representative cask?

17 MR. MASSEY: Of a, the cask, whatever it

18 happens to be. I don\'t know its generic or specific

19 design.

20 MR. MASSEY: Okay.

21 MR. REED: It\'d have to be some cask design.

22 MR. CAMERON: Susan?

223

1 MS. SHANKMAN: Yeah, but if that were part of

2 the study, that doesn\'t suppose that there wouldn\'t be

3 also the component testing or other testing. It\'s not

4 one or another, it\'s a combination of things that we

5 feel would, would validate in a sense the analytical

6 tools we\'re using.

7 And so the point is that what they\'re

8 proposing, and that\'s what we would like some feedback

9 on, is to predict tests and then see whether the

10 analytical tools predict accurately and have the tests

11 witnessed and have the analytical work reviewed prior to

12 the test.

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. And I guess we

14 need to continue to explore whether this methodology

15 that is being suggested is really, is really clear to

16 people in the details of how it would be, would be done.

17 Let\'s go to Mike Baughman.

18 MR. BAUGHMAN: I have to assume the intent of

19 this is to, perhaps one to provide some confidence on

20 the part of the regulatory agency that to predict the

21 capabilities and in such their ability to license the

22 casks in the future, you know.

224

1 They\'re doing some assurance that they

2 will perform in some way that they predict. And I

3 assume the physical test is also about engendering some

4 public confidence that, you know, that we are licensing

5 casks that are safe.

6 And I guess my question is, is for example

7 in the British which I don\'t know the answers, but in

8 the British testing that was a long time ago, was there

9 any modeling done in advance after, was there a

10 correlation between expected and predicted results in

11 most cases.

12 And I guess I would just then also make a

13 comment that, that I would caution anyone who thinks

14 that this methodology will dispel criticism about the

15 integrity of the casks, don\'t be misled to think that

16 the happen. You will still be criticized. And so that

17 should not be an objective, I don\'t think, is to

18 eliminate any criticism because that\'s just not going to

19 happen.

20 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Mike. Susan?

21 MS. SHANKMAN: I\'ve been in that business too

22 long to have that as an objective. But I think the

225

1 question at hand is given that physical testing can be

2 done, what will we benefit from it.

3 If we require physical testing of every

4 cask designed, will we increase public confidence. If

5 we do it this way, will we increase our confidence in

6 our analytical models.

7 MR. CAMERON: So those are the two reasons that

8 Mike stated are the two reasons. And I think it\'s a

9 good starting point for deciding whether you want to do

10 this.

11 What is the \-- people raise issues of

12 costs. In other words, the cost benefit trade off.

13 What, can you give people an idea of what, what sort of

14 costs we\'re talking about?

15 MR. MASSEY: Well, just the test, well, two

16 costs. One, depending on how you test the cask, you

17 probably will damage the cask.

18 So essentially you have to purchase the

19 cask. For a truck cask, large truck cask; you know, a

20 million dollars or more. For the real cask, you\'re

21 talking several million dollars.

22 Then you have to test it. And test place

226

1 an instrument has to do with, one of the tests, \$500,000

2 or so to do that. So it\'s a very expensive undertaking

3 to test these packages.

4 And the data, it\'s a very complicated

5 process and inspecting the package and the contents,

6 doing the test parameter.

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. And let\'s go to

8 John. John Vincent.

9 MR. VINCENT: I just wanted to make a comment

10 that I think it\'s important to consider what you

11 actually get out of this if in fact a quarter or half

12 scale will do, there\'s no sense in destroying the full

13 scale. And that\'s going to some extent about what we

14 said in terms of risk informing the process here, if

15 it\'s not necessary to do that, and we\'ve argued all

16 along that it isn\'t, that is the utilities and the

17 nuclear industry generally speaking, then I don\'t think

18 it\'s necessary and not called for.

19 If on the other hand there are certain

20 things which you\'ve already addressed two related to

21 specific complement testing that needs to be done, that

22 is entirely a horse of a different color so to speak and

227

1 there are probably clear reasons for doing that. But

2 unless it\'s perfectly clear that you\'re getting

3 something that you won\'t get out of the quarter scale or

4 half scale, then I see no reason to do that.

5 I understand also and I think Mike\'s

6 comment is right on point, I\'m not sure if we can test

7 every one of them and never get to use them because we

8 test all the manufacture and we will still have comments

9 about the safety of the machinery.

10 MR. CAMERON: So a lot of cautions there of a

11 scale testing. Earl, do you have a comment?

12 EARL EASTON: Yes. Thanks. I think we should

13 keep in mind the primary objective of the testing for

14 this study is to prove how well we can predict risks.

15 We are talking here about potentially

16 testing a cask way above the regulations. Way out

17 there. Not the 30 foot drop, but maybe the 90 foot

18 drop.

19 I think the NRC feels a great deal of

20 comfort in analyzing casks from 30 foot drops. We\'ve

21 been doing that for 30 years. And where we felt

22 uncomfortable with actual analysis, we\'ve required

228

1 full-scale testing; for example, true pack (phonetic).

2 I think what we\'re talking about here is

3 we\'re going out and predicting the risk of a 90 foot

4 drop. This is an area that we\'re not that into and we

5 want to make sure that we can accurately predict it at

6 that level.

7 So I think it should not be confused with

8 the idea of certification test requiring full-scale

9 testing for every package, et cetera, et cetera. I

10 think it has a slightly different purpose.

11 MR. CAMERON: Let\'s \-- Earl put a finer point I

12 think on the objective of the testing or at least what

13 the NRC is thinking about in terms of objective. Yeah,

14 let me get Judy on here on the record first and then

15 let\'s go over to you for that point and any others you

16 want to make, Bob. Judy?

17 MS. TREICHEL: Well, as the person who deals or

18 represents the people who are likely to be the harshest

19 critics of the entire program and particularly

20 transportation, I would agree with Mike that you\'re not

21 going to get people turning around solely on basis that

22 you have done this, but on the other hand, if something

229

1 goes wrong, if there is a real problem which you know,

2 people have no reason to believe that there\'s not,

3 unusual things happen all the time, and you didn\'t do

4 this and you didn\'t do everything that you could in

5 order to be assured as you can possibly be, then I think

6 that you people will be liable for very severe

7 criticism.

8 MR. CAMERON: And Susan wants to comment on

9 that. And I guess the point that would need to be

10 defined is what would you have to do, to do enough to do

11 that?

12 MS. TREICHEL: To make Nevada smile and be cost

13 confident and say this is a great idea?

14 MR. CAMERON: I\'m not gonna go there, all

15 right.

16 MR. VINCENT: I think it\'s called bring me

17 another stone.

18 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead, Susan.

19 MS. SHANKMAN: I think we\'re all aware that

20 there are regulatory requirements and budget

21 requirements within which we work. And the bearing of

22 the cost of this is right now the NRC is sponsoring the

230

1 funding of the study and physical testing to validate

2 the models that we let licenses use as part of that.

3 Having tests of each design would be

4 something that would be part of the regulatory process

5 if that\'s what you\'re suggesting. And the cost that

6 would be born with that could be the shipper. And in

7 this, the Yucca Mountain, it would be DOE.

8 So the requirement could be extra

9 regulatory. What we want to know is if in this study we

10 are going to do physical testing which I believe we feel

11 we must do, if we do component testing, full-scale

12 testing, part scale testing, what will, what is the

13 concept that you have in your head that will help us

14 decide which one, which parts to do.

15 Bob has given us some very constructive

16 ideas. The concept with testing every test design is

17 beyond the scope of this study.

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And we, let\'s go \-- I\'m

19 sorry. I keep deferring you, Bob. So let\'s go to Bob

20 and then we\'ll pick up with Bill Lake and Klaus and

21 perhaps explore that question that Susan put on the

22 floor. Bob?

231

1 MR. ALCOCK: The context that I want to

2 approach is the recent experience that I had, and

3 Charles Massey was certainly nice to this issue, is in

4 the concrete shipments a couple of summers ago.

5 The Department of Earth received extreme

6 criticism because individuals such as myself were

7 telling the public that these types of casks had been

8 tested and were shown videos of British tests.

9 And we were criticized because we never,

10 it was alleged that we never told the public that these

11 specifics casks, the LWT\'s that we were using in that

12 shipment, were never tested physically. Or the

13 criticism was that they were showing the videos of

14 crashes but never said this specific cask coming across

15 the Pacific were tested like this.

16 Now in this case, you\'re not going to be

17 testing a cask that\'s going to be used in 2010 and 2020

18 and 2030. You won\'t get to that. There\'s no way to go

19 ahead in time.

20 And, and so the confidence level in my

21 opinion that we will get from these physical tests in

22 and of themselves is going to be very small.

232

1 Now, in, in my mind, again, based upon my

2 experience that I had with the concrete shipments, the

3 critical part of this is telling the story, and its an

4 engineering story more than it is anything else, how is

5 it that we can do some calculations on a piece of paper,

6 we can do some analysis for the computer, we can use an

7 engineering regime to predict how a cask is going to

8 behave, we can license it, we can, we can predict how

9 the fuel is going to behave inside, we can do all of

10 these things and telling that story is critical, not

11 critical, unless I\'m uninformed, I don\'t think we have

12 adapted knowledge about whether or not we can predict

13 how a cask is going to perform all right.

14 I think we haven\'t yet told the

15 engineering story. And maybe the problem is that we\'ve

16 only been asking engineers to tell the story and they

17 can\'t do it.

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. That\'s an interesting

19 suggestion on risk communication again, I guess.

20 Let\'s go to Klaus and then Bill Lake and

21 Bob Halstead and then we\'re going to go to Ron Pope and

22 Kevin Blackwell. Klaus?

233

1 MR. SCHUMANN: Yeah. My experience was exactly

2 what Bob was outlining. When we went to the office of

3 emergency services, response usually was, the office of

4 emergency services as well as also to city managers or

5 other local agencies, well we have seen the movies, the

6 radios that you\'re just referring to and there\'s nothing

7 to worry about.

8 And I don\'t want to get into it, whether

9 it was rightfully accessed that way or not, but I think

10 when we explain to people that those casks are not the

11 casks that are going to be used, nor is it the same kind

12 of contents in that, at least as the movies shown by

13 PG&E who have actually cask which had fresh fuel and

14 spent fuel. That was one of the concerns we actually

15 had.

16 But in any case, those radiation

17 (phonetic) impact and shortman (phonetic) radiation

18 (phonetic) impact, I think we need full-scale testing to

19 explain to the public, you know, all the casks which are

20 actually going to be used are tested as well.

21 MR. CAMERON: And that\'s if I in the analytical

22 approach, is it more likely to satisfy Klaus\'s point

234

1 that he could refer to this as an analytical approach

2 that was used with a specific cask or is the analytical

3 approach just completely neutral in terms of this

4 specific cask?

5 In other words, Klaus\'s point seemed to be

6 that be when you tell the public that this isn\'t the

7 cask, I\'m not sure that actual testing as opposed to

8 analytical makes that any, any better. Earl?

9 EARL EASTON: Well, it is true that a lot of

10 casks have been approved without actual full-scale

11 testing of the complete cask. A lot of casks have been

12 approved with a component testing.

13 For example, spent fuel casks we all know

14 almost always require either full scale or partial scale

15 testing of impact limiters, shipping a containment

16 boundaries, et cetera, et cetera. So while we don\'t

17 have full-scale testing, sometimes we have component

18 testing.

19 But I, I \-- let me just say one thing

20 about a computer analysis. These are not codes that we

21 pull out of the air. They\'re bench marked against other

22 real data, other real problems admittedly in other

235

1 areas.

2 So that\'s what gives us some level of

3 confidence in these computer codes because we have

4 predicted other situations fairly accurate.

5 And where we run up against a situation

6 where we don\'t see that that code has a predicted

7 accurate layer or not convinced the capability of that

8 code, we will require a full-scale test as was done in

9 true pack (phonetic), the picture that was put up by

10 Charles here where he had the 30 foot drop. So I hope

11 that in part answers some of the question.

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And that may go back to

13 Bob\'s point about how effectively you tell the story.

14 Let\'s go to Bill Lake and then to Bob Halstead. Bill?

15 MR. LAKE: Thank you, Chip. Bill Lake, DOE. I

16 would just like to, I think this issue of public

17 acceptance is an important one, but I suggest for this

18 particular discussion today we pull back a little bit

19 and see how we can help the NRC get the study done in

20 full light.

21 And for that, I would personally like to

22 commend the NRC and some statements that Susan and Earl

236

1 made concerning validation of the codes. This is gonna

2 be an extensive analysis program. We\'re gonna want to

3 look at a lot of different scenarios, a lot of different

4 casks and different environments. For that, you\'re

5 gonna have to rely on analysis.

6 Beyond the regulatory region that we\'re

7 all comfortable with is either DOE, NRC, we\'re in a new

8 area so we need to look at where we have some

9 uncertainties, where we\'re uncomfortable in and validate

10 the codes as well as reach them. And I think that\'s

11 what the NRC and is casting them.

12 And I would support that completely, that

13 we need to look at those areas, we need to get our

14 confidence up where necessary, go back to the broader

15 issue at another time.

16 This I think will give us a lot of new

17 information to follow that broader and larger

18 discussion. Thank you.

19 MR. CAMERON: So I just would ask the NRC and

20 Sandy if Bill is precisely right on, in terms of the,

21 what you stated as predictability is really the code of

22 validation aspect. Okay, great.

237

1 Bob Halstead.

2 MR. HALSTEAD: You know, if you drive out to

3 Goldfield and Tonopah, you see these amazing historical

4 markers, that kind of heavyweight championship fights

5 that we used to have in the old days. These dudes that

6 get out in the hot sun and fight bare knuckles, not like

7 we do today. They do 90 rounds. There was a guy out

8 that there that went 102 rounds as I recall.

9 Now, you really need to think about what

10 kind of bare knuckle fight that you guys want to step

11 into because you are latecomers in this full-scale

12 testing which has been going on by my personal

13 involvement for 21 years and it had been going pretty

14 good before I came along.

15 I\'ve summarized the way that the state of

16 Nevada has tried to digest everything we\'ve learned over

17 those years on this one page handout I gave earlier.

18 And importantly on the front, we identify a number of

19 safety things of which full-scale test, testing is only

20 one use of dedicated training which I would say is

21 equally important overall for system safety. But on the

22 back side, I\'ve summarized our proposal for full-scale

238

1 testing, what we think are the advantages and the costs.

2 I\'m not going to bore you because I said

3 that this should be done in a separate venue and I must

4 stick by this except to tell you that in the process of

5 doing all this thinking about this for the last 10 years

6 for Nevada, I\'ve learned a lot about the costs of doing

7 these tests.

8 Now maybe the congress would allow you to

9 do that testing at Shadow (phonetic) Gorge or someplace

10 where they\'re already prepared, but I\'ve talked to OSHA

11 Burrell (phonetic) and the important tests that say,

12 it\'s not a truck cask. The important cask is a big rail

13 cask and in order to get the right mass ratio of the

14 object to the target, you get an unyielding surface to a

15 point where it can take 130 ton cask, you\'re talking at

16 least ten million dollars just to beef up the target.

17 And at least that\'s the figure that Richard has said in

18 public.

19 Now maybe internally you got something

20 else. I\'d love to know it was less because then that

21 helps my case, but the bottom line is this is a real

22 expensive lichening (phonetic) complex undertake.

239

1 And now let\'s look at what you\'re

2 proposing and then I\'ll give you what I think is a much

3 more generous thing to do for yourself over the next 10

4 years.

5 First, I heard you guys say that you\'re

6 planning to test well beyond regulatory requirements,

7 and yet earlier two times I brought up running the

8 models beyond the regs particularly to determine failure

9 thresholds. I thought people had died in the room.

10 So I find it very strange that a much less

11 controversial way of getting to what I think you\'re

12 talking about here seems, and much cheaper by the way

13 and much more defensible in terms of its ability to be

14 repeated for the interest of the viewers. So that\'s

15 issue number one.

16 Issue number two, testing the truck casks.

17 Even if it were a NAP LWT or a GA force which I think

18 would be very useful does not deal with the fact that

19 the whole world of spent fuel transportation for better

20 or worse is moving towards big rail casks. And I am not

21 believing that you can defend the scale of it from the

22 performance of a 30 ton cask or a 28 ton cask or a 27

240

1 ton cask with a hundred and 30 ton cask. There are all

2 kinds of technical scale up issues which in fact are one

3 of the major criticisms in the first study.

4 Beyond that, I find it refreshing that

5 someone would try to rehabilitate public credibility in

6 government science, but I think you\'re asking to be

7 eaten alive. And the criticism of the way you do

8 physical testing will drag down this very important

9 effort to update the modals.

10 I am so glad to hear that I am not the

11 only wet blanket in this room today with this issue

12 because I appreciate the other advice you\'ve gotten from

13 other people.

14 I would suggest as an alternative that you

15 forget about public relations and you forget about

16 public credibility and you do what Bill is offering with

17 cutting to the chase here and you worry about technical

18 evaluation.

19 And frankly given your budget, I mean, I

20 don\'t know, I heard you got about two million dollars to

21 do this job. I mean, you can\'t do anything near a good

22 regulatory done of a current model test in my opinion

241

1 without spending that whole budget. So maybe more money

2 can come from somewhere, I don\'t know. But you can do a

3 lot with full-scale and half-scale testing of critical

4 components.

5 And here I think the important thing is to

6 test your modeling of generic casks against components,

7 full-scale components from actual case.

8 Now getting a GA forecast is difficult

9 now, but I\'m sure you can get the bolts to the ceilings,

10 and I\'m sure that it is valuable to do more testing on

11 the NAC LWP which is an old-fashioned regs, you know.

12 It\'s gonna be here for the next ten years. It\'s

13 certainly important to do the proposed testing for that.

14 And on then on the rail cask, you\'re

15 getting actual rail cask and gamble. Here in Nevada we

16 know all about that, that you can envelope the range of

17 design and materials issued in the new big rail casks

18 and do some, probably I would say half-scale or

19 quarter-scale work on the gamma shields which would be

20 very useful.

21 But I think if you go down the road with

22 trying to do any full-scale testing and it doesn\'t meet

242

1 people\'s expectations, that\'s crazy. And, and you will

2 drag down your overall effort and your alternative.

3 I think probably it would probably take a

4 million dollars to do a good comprehensive component

5 testing program.

6 So I mean, I hate to say it that even my

7 suggestion doesn\'t get you off the hook on the money

8 issue, but that\'s how, how we see it.

9 At the same time, we think there\'s a lot

10 of value of running the codes. And I know that Miles

11 Rhiner has done it on a much less munificent budget that

12 most state contractors get. There are lots of

13 approaches that you use to both find the failure

14 thresholds and look at extra regulatory affects.

15 But I will say that I very much appreciate

16 the fact that can you\'re trying to deal with this issue

17 which we\'ve identified as a deficiency. And I don\'t

18 want to sound like an uncaring human being by laying a

19 harsh reality down on you, but I really think you will

20 rid yourself of this service if you proceed with a

21 full-scale testing approach as you you\'ve outlined.

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Bob, for the

243

1 hallmark and also for the way you expressed it. We\'re

2 gonna take the cards that are up and then see if there\'s

3 any questions in the audience.

4 And I know Ron\'s been waiting for awhile

5 and Kevin, and then we\'ll finish up with Judy on this.

6 But I think, Susan, do you have a point to make?

7 MS. SHANKMAN: I\'ll make it later.

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. All right, thank you.

9 Let\'s go to Ron Pope from the IAEA.

10 MR. POPE: Well, I guess I\'m feeling my age. I

11 feel truly like a breaker and also my body\'s telling me

12 it\'s 1:00 in the morning in Vienna. So if I\'m not

13 coherent, please bare with me.

14 I look around the room and I think I count

15 two other people who may have witnessed one of the full

16 scale nuclear tests, the tests that are referred to and

17 seen in the videos. I managed that program which OSHA

18 and I worked on for that time.

19 Yes, it was expensive, it was damn

20 expensive. All of the hardware was donated to us, yet

21 we spent over ten million dollars within two-and-a-half,

22 three-year period. And full-scale tests were all

244

1 preceded by scale model tests, not only the casks but

2 the transport system and an extensive computer analysis.

3 The British then came over and they had

4 one man who stayed with us for three months and

5 basically looked at everything we\'d done. They went

6 back and they proceeded their operations smash up as

7 they call it with eight quarter half and full scale

8 tests and structural analysis. I have no idea what kind

9 of money they spent on their program.

10 MR. HALSTEAD: Eight million.

11 MR. POPE: Any time you get into this, you\'re

12 talking big bucks. I, I guess the other point I would

13 like to make is it goes back to the work done at Edom

14 (phonetic), predict cask response using simulation. If

15 you\'re going do this to validate the codes that you\'re

16 using in this study, make it very clear in advance

17 that\'s what you\'re doing; you\'re not validating the code

18 you\'re using to analyze casks for regulatory purposes.

19 And secondly, up front did the cask

20 respond as predicted. Make sure you spell it out

21 beforehand what it is you\'re going to measure in that

22 cask response and make sure you analyze that, so that

245

1 you got the analysis that says the strength of this, the

2 definitions were this, the accelerations were this. And

3 then that\'s what you then measure and that\'s what you

4 then compare.

5 The other point that I\'d like to make is

6 the full-scale nuclear test program was done

7 specifically for the purpose of validating codes. It

8 was not done for public relation purposes and yet all,

9 all of the criticism that has come after the fact is we

10 tested the wrong cask. We did it because we couldn\'t

11 afford to test the right cask. So be careful.

12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Ron, for that

13 historical perspective and the lessons that it holds for

14 this. Kevin?

15 MR. BLACKWELL: Real quick. I just want to say

16 that cost is a reality, especially within regards to

17 there were a few comments made earlier about regarding

18 full-scale testing and the word regulatory in the same

19 context.

20 The reality in today\'s legislative area as

21 far as regulations is cost is a factor. It has to

22 consider the cost benefit. It\'s not an option unless

246

1 congress gives us the option of considering it\'s an

2 option, okay, which doesn\'t happen very often. You have

3 to do cost benefit analysis on any regulation on a

4 product that you develop.

5 And in the aspect of this and especially

6 in light in these times where physical responsibility is

7 a major issue with government in addition to physical

8 hysterity which is what we currently are under and

9 responsible spending the taxpayers dollars and

10 everything else, cost is a major issue.

11 And I just want to go on the record as

12 saying that I did hear some talk about, you know,

13 full-scale testing and regulatory criteria so you can\'t

14 just not consider it. I\'d say well yeah, it\'s expensive

15 but we can get around it. We can\'t get around it.

16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Kevin. Let\'s

17 finish up this discussion at least at the table with

18 Judy Treichel.

19 MS. TREICHEL: Well, as the queen of

20 unreasonability, for one thing this is \-- you\'re dealing

21 with people who do not have the opportunity to know as

22 much as about it or to work in jobs where you spend

247

1 eight hours a day, or in my case probably 10, 12 or 14

2 because I get a lot of phone calls, but just knowing

3 this stuff all the time, living with it. So you have to

4 look at what\'s out there.

5 One of the things that has people very

6 concerned in other parts of the country, but they call

7 here because they see the whole program, are some of the

8 casks that are being used for storage of fuel at reactor

9 sites, several of which of serious problems.

10 And there\'s one sitting out there in

11 Michigan that\'s needed to be unloaded for three years

12 now, I think, and nobody can figure out how to do it.

13 So it\'s just sitting there. And people are saying if

14 you can\'t do that, how in the world can you load this

15 stuff and drive it across the country. So that\'s where

16 some of this stuff comes.

17 You\'re not starting fresh here. You might

18 think you are. And this study may be of a singular

19 particular piece, but people see all sorts of this

20 program.

21 And one of the comments I wanted to make

22 earlier was when you say that there is one team that\'s

248

1 doing storage and there\'s another division or department

2 that does something else, that\'s a problem for the

3 public, too, because everything kind of runs together,

4 and the assumption is that you know what each other is

5 doing.

6 And then finally, when it comes to the

7 money, that\'s not a good argument. I realize that

8 you\'re gonna say that people don\'t like to pay taxes,

9 but as far as they\'re concerned, if you can\'t afford to

10 do what needs to be done, you can\'t license the cask.

11 That\'s all. That\'s very simple. You just have to, if

12 you don\'t have enough money, you have to have enough

13 courage.

14 But the people here in Nevada are banging

15 their heads against this physical austerity all the time

16 on this program because eventually when Yucca Mountain

17 is supposed to close, it\'s all loaded up, everything\'s

18 groovy, it\'s passed all of its tests, it\'s supposed to

19 close, there\'s supposed to be a titanium shield around

20 each of the storage cask and Nevadans are pretty sure

21 that the congress at this stage of the game is gonna say

22 oh, no, oh, no, no, no.

249

1 So we\'re real worried that there\'s going

2 to be cuts on money, that there\'s going to be physical

3 austerity and then we get into it just enough to know

4 where we\'re going and casks are too expensive or we go a

5 little cheaper or the project\'s too expensive so we go a

6 little cheaper. And that\'s not a new concept. That\'s

7 something people have been afraid of for a long time.

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Judy. Susan,

9 do you have something to say on that.

10 MS. SHANKMAN: No. I appreciate your time, but

11 I don\'t want to speak to the budget issue. I know you

12 understand it.

13 But I do want to speak to the storage

14 casks that you eluded to. And if you would like, I\'ll

15 send you whatever information you\'ll expect of those

16 casks and we will leave them safe as we know they\'re

17 safe as they are.

18 I\'ve had, the wells have been inspected,

19 the culture ultrasonic testing, and I\'ll be glad to send

20 you all the inspection reports. So the casks that you

21 are referring to is not unsafe.

22 MS. TREICHEL: Are you talking about Palisades

250

1 or \--

2 MS. SHANKMAN: Yes.

3 MR. CAMERON: And let\'s go and see if there\'s

4 any comments on the testing issue out here in the

5 audience and then I want to go quickly to \--

6 MS. SHANKMAN: I want to clarify one other

7 point here. I did not say that the teams have

8 reviewed \-- storage and transportation are separate. In

9 fact, in many cases the same people would review it.

10 What I did say was that the regulations for

11 transportation and for storage are separate regulations

12 and separate standards.

13 So a cask has to be certified for each of

14 its uses. It could be certified for storage and not for

15 transportation if it doesn\'t meet the transportation

16 regs and vice-versa. So it isn\'t as if they\'re separate

17 at all.

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Susan. Anybody

19 out here on the testing issue? I\'m not looking at you,

20 Alan. John?

21 MR. HADDER: John Hadder again with Citizen

22 Alert. I really have to speak on this one because this

251

1 is, of course this is what we hear all the time

2 concerning physical testing. And of course the public

3 wants to see that. They don\'t trust anything without

4 it.

5 I think I want to drive home a couple of

6 important points though in terms of the, in terms of the

7 computer simulations. And it was mentioned earlier

8 about what\'s the most conservative. I don\'t think

9 that\'s the important point.

10 I think the important point is are they

11 predictive. In other words, can you \-- from the

12 public\'s perception, can you say we have this computer

13 model and they\'re thinking of an accident scenario

14 unless, let\'s make it a realistic one, and you know, can

15 you then use, can that model then correctly predict the

16 results from a possible scenario there and connect to

17 the regulations. Do you see what I\'m saying?

18 So that, so that when you talk about the

19 cask being safe, when you talk about the testing, it\'s

20 connected to some reality and that the models have shown

21 that by some kind of real test. And a test that makes

22 sense.

252

1 And of course, of course the only way you

2 know for sure is if you do the actual test, and that

3 would be the full-scale test.

4 I think also it\'s important to remember

5 that the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions agency of the

6 federal government has a responsibility to the public

7 and the public voice. And this is what, this is what a

8 lot of the public voice is.

9 The physical, and I think Judy addressed

10 the physical aspect pretty well, and people are out

11 there talking about public safety and what kind of price

12 tag we want to put on that.

13 We may sit here in the room and say oh,

14 well, you know, you know, the costs of possible accident

15 may not be that high, but the public\'s in a different

16 place and we have a responsibility to the public. If

17 the public is \-- if, if the public\'s in such a different

18 place that we are sort of caught between a rock and a

19 hard place, then it\'s incumbent to do proper education

20 that\'s acceptable and that works. And so far that

21 hasn\'t happened because the public\'s not in the same

22 place at all and they feel like they\'re getting

253

1 incomplete information a lot of times.

2 So I think it\'s really important that

3 full-scale test I think \-- I think that Bob\'s comment

4 about the cost and what you pay, it could be, it could

5 be difficult you could get criticized anyway.

6 But if it\'s connected, if you show, if you

7 show that your data from your experiment and the results

8 of the computer models match up and you were able to

9 give, lay out some kind of uncertainty as to, you know,

10 what those models are giving us, in other words we get a

11 result of \-- we get a certain result from the computer

12 model and we believe it to be 10 percent correct or some

13 kind of air bar (phonetic), then it\'s gonna go a long

14 ways towards convincing the public that you\'ve got

15 something tangible.

16 For years they\'ve been told just trust us

17 and we don\'t want to do that anymore because we\'ve been

18 told that beforehand and something else happens. The

19 horse died and we didn\'t expect that. So you\'ve got,

20 you\'ve got to be prepared for that.

21 And I do think we do have a responsibility

22 from the governing agency to deal with that issue. And

254

1 I\'m very concerned about just side stepping it, and I

2 think we need to deal with the costs and I think that

3 the cost is in there.

4 I think I have, I think I have one more

5 point here that I wanted to make. If someone else wants

6 to speak into the meantime.

7 MR. CAMERON: John, I guess what you\'re saying

8 though is that if the analytical work was done in a

9 really clear and convincing manner and communicated

10 clearly, that that, that that might be acceptable for

11 the public?

12 MR. HADDER: Uh-huh.

13 MR. CAMERON: And not necessarily having to do

14 with full-scale testing; is that what you were saying?

15 MR. HADDER: Well, they want full-scale

16 testing. And I think that in order, and I think that \--

17 I think what some point needs to demonstrate that you

18 can have a model which was predicted in the full-scale

19 and then you can use and then you can connect that with

20 your, you can connect that with your scale down test,

21 then you\'re getting there, then your home. You\'ve shown

22 it. I think that\'s kind of what I was saying.

255

1 And one other comment that I wanted to

2 make about this telling of the story. You know, the

3 public\'s tired of hearing stories, you know. So we, I

4 think we have to be careful about how we think about

5 what we\'re doing something real and not just doing

6 public relations.

7 And in Nevada particular, Nevadans are

8 pretty wise to public relation stuff. They want to

9 know, they want something solid. So I think what we

10 need to do is we need to tell the truth and not just a

11 story. Thank you.

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay, good. Thank you very much,

13 John. I want to quickly cover process, and by that I

14 mean how can the NRC keep people involved in what\'s

15 going on on this study, continue to get good suggestions

16 as we have been.

17 And I\'m gonna ask Susan to just tell us

18 about the next step. But before she does that, I

19 thought I\'d just introduce Bill Brock who has joined us.

20 He is the director of the spent fuel project office and

21 he\'s here for a meeting tonight and also the meeting

22 tomorrow. All right. Susan?

256

1 MS. SHANKMAN: Okay. As I said at the

2 beginning, the next step for us, we\'re in phase one.

3 The end of phase one study is that Sandia will give us

4 options and proposed study report. That should be out

5 in the spring.

6 At the same time in, by March, we will

7 have published a new reg contractor report from Sandia

8 on the update of the assumptions used for the O170

9 environmental impact study that was done in the 70s.

10 It\'s an update of those assumptions. Those two reports

11 will form the basis of additional meetings.

12 We\'ve had suggestions to have them in St.

13 Louis and Atlanta and another one in Nevada and that\'s

14 what we\'re planning for.

15 If anybody has additional venues, we\'d

16 like to hear it and perhaps we can have \-- well, we can

17 look at the format. If this format worked, we\'ll try to

18 use it again.

19 But the point is that I am very happy that

20 everyone here did their homework and that they came with

21 specific suggestions and ideas. I would like the same

22 level of homework for the next meeting, so that we can

257

1 be as productive.

2 And those two reports will be available

3 through the site, the interactive site and on the NRC

4 web site.

5 So I ask you that when we plan those

6 meetings, you will allow at least five weeks between the

7 publishing of the last report and the first meeting.

8 MR. CAMERON: And I guess I should point out we

9 did hear already this morning, and I think that we\'ve

10 responded to some of the Nevada counties who are in

11 rural areas that these meetings that Susan is talking

12 about, that there were also the meetings that would

13 facilitate their participation by those counties, that

14 that wouldn\'t necessarily obviously mean a meeting in

15 Las Vegas, it would be something else.

16 MS. SHANKMAN: Right.

17 MR. CAMERON: Any process suggestions around

18 the table? In, in the Bethesda meeting we heard an

19 advis committee, an advisory committee suggestion.

20 Other people said that well, you don\'t necessarily have

21 to have an advisory committee but through periodic

22 meetings of a group like this, keep them informed. Jim?

258

1 MR. WILLIAMS: I think this format has worked

2 very well. There\'s some people in the audience who

3 probably ought to be up here as well. Don, for

4 instance, should probably be with us.

5 MR. CAMERON: Definitely.

6 MR. WILLIAMS: So I think this works well.

7 Actually I have two other transportation categories. I

8 don\'t know if you want to get to that. That\'s why I\'d

9 like to \--

10 MR. CAMERON: Just hold that and we\'ll take

11 those. Let\'s get this process out now and we\'ll go back

12 to that. Mike?

13 MR. BAUGHMAN: Yeah. I guess I would ask the

14 NRC staff and perhaps Sandia, a lot of time energy\'s

15 been put in by people to come in and provide input. You

16 know, Ron came all the way from Vienna which I wish we

17 all could have done that. But I think you had a lot of

18 input at Bethesda.

19 I would think that if it were possible in

20 the, sometime in the near future and certainly before we

21 start seeing any output from this work, that you perhaps

22 respond back to us as to what do you intend to do for

259

1 the recommendations that you were given today, which of

2 those recommendations are going, you know, become a part

3 of the work and you know others that maybe aren\'t so be

4 it, but at least give us some sense of how this input is

5 changing or influencing what you\'re doing before we

6 actually see the final result.

7 MR. CAMERON: So some sort of in camera report

8 on how the input from these meetings is gonna be used?

9 MR. BAUGHMAN: In shaping Sandia\'s scope of

10 work. I mean, I assume it could be influx.

11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Susan, anybody from the

12 NRC have anything to offer on that now?

13 MR. LEWIS: Well, I think that\'s exactly the

14 goal of the forum we\'re going to be sharing with you

15 sometime in the next future, probably in May. But that,

16 that thought is why we\'re doing that because it equals

17 input.

18 MR. CAMERON: I think what Mike is suggesting

19 for your consideration is that if there is a way, if

20 there\'s a milestone between these meetings and when the

21 final report comes on that that might be useful for your

22 consideration.

260

1 MS. SHANKMAN: Yeah. Thanks, Mike.

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Mike, did you have

3 anything more? Did I characterize that correctly?

4 MR. BAUGHMAN: (Positive nod of the head.)

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let\'s go to Bob. Well,

6 let\'s go to Ron first, Ron Ross and then Bob.

7 MR. ROSS: Mine\'s fairly short. And I just

8 offer this on the part of four regional groups that

9 represent governors and particularly the regulatory

10 staff if you may.

11 We meet on a quarterly basis. All of us

12 not together but each of us meet on separate meeting on

13 a quarterly basis and offer the opportunity to have the

14 people speak with us.

15 And certainly they\'ve gotten involved, as

16 you probably are well aware, on the issue of the foreign

17 spent fuel. We have all of those kinds of things. So

18 they\'re very knowledgeable on this.

19 MS. SHANKMAN: Ron, we\'ve responded to most of

20 the invitations that we\'ve gotten.

21 MR. ROSS: Okay.

22 MS. SHANKMAN: So let us know and we\'ll do our

261

1 best.

2 MR. ROSS: I\'ll give you the names and the

3 dates.

4 MR. CAMERON: Okay. All right, thank you very

5 much, Ron. Bob?

6 MR. ALCOCK: Well, Chip, I was one of the

7 people at the Bethesda meeting who advocated some type

8 of a formal advisory group or committee. And after

9 further discussions with your staff on all of the

10 bureaucratic impediments preceding on that and how

11 advantageous it might be, I would withdraw that

12 recommendation in favor of having this format repeated.

13 I know in some ways it\'s more, really more

14 awkwardly harder for you to hold us accountable than

15 maybe a advisory committee capacity, but I think it\'s

16 really important that you continue to keep meeting.

17 This is, for all the contentiousness, I

18 think this has been a very meaningful meeting today and

19 it I hope it has been for you and acknowledging that

20 there are some other things going on at the same time

21 like the Yucca Mountain draft AIS and the 73-10 rule

22 making which you may or may not want to have going on at

262

1 the same time, but I personally think this would be a

2 good format to continue.

3 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob. And I guess from a

4 facilitator\'s point of view, I would point out that if

5 you continue, if you had periodic meetings that, instead

6 of doing this broad scope which we have to do on all the

7 issues now, that you could select one issue, Bob.

8 You talked about study group or whatever

9 or focusing more on the accident rate issue, you could

10 devote more time and get more into the nuts and bolts of

11 something like that, too. Ron?

12 MR. ROSS: (Negative nod of the head.)

13 MR. CAMERON: What time is it in Vienna? It\'s

14 getting later. Let me let me go to John on this issue

15 and then Jim, we\'ll hear from you on your other issues.

16 John?

17 MR. VINCENT: Yeah, thank you. I\'d also like

18 to compliment the NRC for doing this process. I think

19 this is a much more welcome kind of format than we\'ve

20 seen in other place, not necessarily by the NRC but just

21 in general. So I appreciate this opportunity and I

22 think it would be good to continue this also.

263

1 In terms of the processing, you might want

2 to think about maybe letting the public get more

3 involved in the discussion sooner in the processing and

4 not wait so long. It might engage people. They\'re not

5 within the inner circle, but I think that might be

6 helpful. But in general I think that it definitely

7 recommend continuing this.

8 And I just want to say that it also leaves

9 citizens a little more hopeful that we can all move

10 together in a little better way to resolving what the

11 deal, how to deal with this very nasty stuff that we\'ve

12 created.

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, John, for that

14 positive comment. And to the extent that we limit our

15 agendas, there may be more opportunity to bring the

16 public in earlier as you suggested.

17 Did anybody else have a comment out here?

18 Jim, you want to throw out your issues for us?

19 MR. REED: Thank, Chip. I think you\'ve done a

20 good job as being facilitator. Thank you for that.

21 MR. CAMERON: Thank you.

22 MR. REED: You\'ve been fair getting everybody\'s

264

1 idea on the table.

2 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, sir.

3 MR. REED: My two issues in the other category.

4 One is, is the human factors question specifically in

5 relating to the factor of the performance of the

6 packaging. And this is something that the previous

7 modal study left hanging and it stated as much. And I

8 don\'t know \-- well, just throw it out. I don\'t know if

9 it\'s on your scope or not, but some kind of human

10 factors analysis as it relates to cask design,

11 maintenance operation, manufacture, you know, those kind

12 of factors that might contribute to worsening a severe

13 accident.

14 It might also even include you know, like

15 the operator of the truck, you know, the driver. That

16 might be a little beyond the scope but that is certainly

17 something that comes up in my view. So that\'s one.

18 And I would point to the commercial

19 vehicle safety alliance. They\'ve done a human factor

20 study of their drivers and people associated with the

21 trucking industry. I don\'t know. There might be some

22 ideas in there as far as methodology and so forth. That

265

1 was just completed within the last year or so.

2 The second area \-- that\'s the first one.

3 The second one has to do with the communication of risk.

4 And I guess I\'d like to request that as the NRC and

5 Sandia put this together, to think creatively how to

6 smell out your conclusions as it relates to risk.

7 Because it just seems like when you put it on paper,

8 it\'s not communicative to the public at large.

9 And the term latent cancer fatalities, I

10 think it needs more explanation than just throwing it

11 out there. They\'ll be one in 3200 years because people

12 look at that and say it doesn\'t make sense. One in 75

13 years or whatever it is.

14 So I guess I would just request that you

15 get, you know, non-engineer, somebody, maybe a creative

16 writer to think about how you communicate that risk, the

17 risk outcome has come up with the models in a way that\'s

18 understanding of what.

19 MS. SHANKMAN: Jim, just to tell you that even

20 before that comment, the contract we have was sent here,

21 requires that you give us both a technical report and a

22 plain English summary.

266

1 MR. REED: Great. I think that would be very

2 helpful.

3 MS. SHANKMAN: And Charles just told me that

4 will be the hardest part.

5 MR. REED: What we\'re trying to do at NCSL is

6 take these kind of technological and turning them into

7 something that the policy makers could use.

8 MS. SHANKMAN: We agree. We don\'t want to say

9 for a fish hill that the marine biologist specimen is a

10 hundred percent mortality response. That\'s not what we

11 want to do.

12 MR. REED: Great. Thank you.

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let\'s go around the table

14 for any final comments that people want to make. And

15 I\'m gonna \-- Ray has his card up. Let\'s go there.

16 MR. LAMBERT: I again would like to thank the

17 NRC for creating the venue that it has for this

18 production.

19 I guess when I listen to them, I may

20 generate a little concern and I don\'t know quite how to

21 touch it, but one might be in the NRC\'s extreme effort

22 to take input, and I\'m a little concerned that they

267

1 might either be persuaded or pushed and spend an

2 inordinate amount of their resources chasing what I

3 would call the more imaginary what if scenarios. I

4 think they have to be very careful to limit the scope

5 they look at.

6 And Bill\'s been trying, Bill Lake\'s been

7 trying to bring us back to some reality about

8 sensitivity. And I think before we just chase all these

9 bounty conditions and sound, you know, politically

10 correct, and I\'m not sure they\'re real, I think that in

11 a study, a modal study that was done many years ago,

12 they\'re trying to look at the real accidents and the

13 real things that happened had a real impact on health

14 and safety.

15 And I guess all this really comes back to

16 the assessment which the NRC has undertaken with great

17 enthusiasm and with support by the thermonuclear

18 industry, and that is to focus on the risk and form

19 approach.

20 And even though some of these what if

21 scenarios have to be looked at, they should be looked at

22 in the context of risk inform and not simply because

268

1 somebody\'s mentioned them charge off to the resources.

2 It\'s going to be a really challenging role for you to be

3 able to limit. You\'ll run out of money before you even

4 get past preliminary study.

5 And so we support it and I think it has to

6 be done in that context of real risk health and study.

7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Ray, on that

8 one. Anybody, any comments? John?

9 MR. EDLOW: Thank you. And the final comment

10 is that I too appreciate what NRC is doing, and I urge

11 that we go ahead but with caution similarly to what you

12 just said in that we do not and cannot risk the views

13 that the current regulations are somehow not adequate.

14 The comment, the exchange that took place

15 a few minutes ago like the Palisades cask is very

16 important because while there was an accident involving

17 that cask, nonetheless the cask remains in the same

18 condition.

19 And while you may be testing or evaluating

20 other, other scenarios under this study, there\'s nothing

21 to indicate that the current regulations and the current

22 equipment and the current regimes that\'s in the process

269

1 based on the IAEA is not adequate.

2 In fact, the public has to be assured that

3 it remains adequate and that they are safe at this

4 point, and if we were to continue with the process at

5 this time it, would be done in a safe way.

6 So while I\'m happy to see full-scale

7 testing or to validate the code, one has to understand

8 that what\'s been done so far has been involved in a same

9 way in the casks that are used, whether it be the NRC\'s

10 or others are adequate and that things are done safely

11 and securely. Thank you.

12 MR. CAMERON: All right. Bob?

13 MR. ALCOCK: Well, I spelled out these three

14 issues here. I\'ll summarize them briefly.

15 On the human factors issue, I am endorsing

16 what Jim suggested, and I think it has to go even

17 further. Specific pieces of hardware and their

18 transporter systems may involve specific opportunities

19 for human error. We\'ve analyzed the GA force truck cask

20 system extensively and I\'d like to make that point.

21 Secondly, there\'s a larger point. Various

22 people have raised from different angles and in some

270

1 ways it includes both comments that Ray and Jack have

2 made and comments that Judy made. And they go to the

3 whole issue of probable, probabilistic risk analysis and

4 particularly when it has to be based on historical data

5 and it\'s going to be applied to a system as is the case

6 now with the civilian radioactive waste program, the

7 real (phonetic) program and the clean up of the DWE

8 defense facility which includes all that DOE spent fuel.

9 The bottom line is it\'s difficult to

10 justify PRA that covers a 30 or 40 year period based on

11 30 or 40 years of historical data.

12 And everybody, the railroads will say well

13 those accident rates aren\'t \-- it\'s going to be quite a

14 job to figure out a convincing justification I think for

15 applying this approach.

16 And maybe that\'s one of the more general

17 topics that we ought to address when your new reg report

18 is ready in March is whether, if it\'s not too late at

19 that point to rethink the way that you apply a PRA

20 approach to this modal study up there.

21 And again, I want to thank in particular,

22 Dr. Massey again has put in a good performance and so

271

1 has the facilitator.

2 And without meaning to slate all the staff

3 and not to mention by name, I\'m going to say again that

4 I think it\'s very important for people who are high up

5 in the federal administrative management roles, people

6 who are in jobs like Susan\'s being here, the managers

7 need to understand what their technical staff are

8 dealing with, both in the complexity of the technical

9 issues and the, the horrendous battle that we\'re putting

10 them through when the state their involvement, whether

11 it\'s from an in-court, or whether it\'s from Nevada or

12 whether it\'s people speaking from the utilities.

13 I\'m sorry I won\'t get a chance to be here

14 because I\'ve got to fly north and try to get to Crescent

15 Valley for that DOE and that\'s very important, but I

16 appreciate the fact Mr. Brause is here as well.

17 And I think that\'s an important thing not

18 to underestimate when you\'re planning for the future.

19 And in particularly when you have these meetings in

20 Nevada or other places where they\'re accessible to the

21 people who at least view themselves as being the most

22 heavily affected state. I appreciate what all those say

272

1 here. Thank you.

2 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Bob. Ron?

3 MR. ROSS: Thank you. I want to really

4 emphasize Jim Reed\'s comment on human factors. Having

5 worked with the programs that we have in the west on

6 both spent fuel, high-level waste as well as risk, the

7 issues that we\'re dealing with on a fairly constant

8 basis which DOE has a wonderful term for, off norm, are

9 human factors and this really needs to be brought in. I

10 really want to be emphasize that.

11 I also want to give you support and really

12 ask you to give some emphasis on how to tackle the

13 critical issues such as the data issues involving those

14 who really need to get involved with that. Those issues

15 are real important.

16 Going through the reviews that we have

17 from Reed and some of the others on the last modal

18 study, that\'s where all the grinding on the road was

19 really at. And I know that Charles has read that

20 material and that we\'ve had some discussion, and I\'d

21 like to emphasize that we would really like to figure

22 out a way to get through some of that, so that we don\'t

273

1 have a bad reactor fact.

2 And then lastly, I\'m real interested in

3 your English version.

4 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Ron. Anybody else? Yes.

5 Bill?

6 MR. LAKE: I\'d like to say since I didn\'t

7 attend the one meeting in Bethesda this is, has really

8 been eye opening in a couple of perspectives.

9 I echo the comments Ray has on being

10 cautious and realistic, but by time we get this study

11 complete in 2003, we\'ll be making more shipments with

12 the DOE and other casks. And it says what we have to

13 do, do a better job today to help you tomorrow. So

14 that\'s really what I\'m talking about.

15 Also, that we haven\'t been able to

16 communicate our technical reports very well in plain

17 English. And while I give you my card, we can try to

18 help work on it, but it\'s a lesson that we need to

19 generally be reminded of and that we should start, we

20 should have started 10 years ago but we should again

21 start now.

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. I would, I\'m

274

1 gonna turn it over to Susan for any final words that she

2 has, but I would thank each and everyone of you for all

3 the thoughtful comments that you gave, including the

4 people in the audience. Thank you for your comments and

5 attentiveness.

6 And Klaus, do you want to wrap it up for

7 her?

8 MR. SCHUMANN: Yes. I\'d also like to take the

9 opportunity to thank the NRC for inviting me to be here.

10 I want to, want to specifically thank the Nevada agency

11 for nuclear projects. They have been very helpful and

12 quality information that was very helpful to us in the

13 general area of accounting is addressing and offering

14 information on subject matters where we did not get

15 necessary information from the NRC. The same is true

16 for the Triculine (phonetic) and to Nevada waste task

17 force.

18 I also want to, I would like to say one

19 more thing. The NRC, the task is foremost to protect

20 the safety and the health of the public. And we at

21 times get the impression the old processes is more

22 driven by the financial interest of the utilities than

275

1 really the health and the safety of the public. I think

2 you want to be careful about that and have a great close

3 for what I just said now. Thank you so much.

4 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I think I can say for

5 the NRC that, that we\'re doing all that we can not to

6 have the impression that we\'re doing anything for any

7 other reason than to carry out our vision to protect

8 health and safety. I would just thank all of you and

9 we\'re adjourned.

10 (Whereupon, the proceedings adjourned

11 at 4:45 p.m. for a dinner break.)

12 MR. CAMERON: Good evening, everybody. If

13 everybody would take their seats, we\'ll get started with

14 tonight\'s meeting. My name is Chip Cameron and I\'m the

15 special counsel for public liaison at the Nuclear

16 Regulatory Commission, and I\'m pleased to serve the

17 moderator for tonight\'s public meeting on the

18 performance of the shipping casks that are used for

19 spent fuel transportation.

20 The NRC is proposing to update a study

21 that was done on the performance of the shipping casks

22 and they\'re here tonight to tell you about what their

276

1 plans are and most importantly to hear from, from all of

2 you on what your concerns are about spent fuel

3 transportation in these shipping casks

4 And we\'re going to have some short

5 presentations from NRC staff for you that will give you

6 some background on what\'s going on and then we\'re going

7 to open it up for questions.

8 We are taking a transcript tonight. We

9 have the Fastest Pen in the West Stella here and JoAnn,

10 right, assisting. And what I would like you to do is

11 when you have a question or a comment when we are done

12 with the opening presentation, I will give you this

13 talking stick, so that you can speak into the

14 microphone, or if it\'s more comfortable for you, just

15 come up here to this standing mic and if you can just

16 state your name and affiliation if appropriate, so that

17 we have that for the purposes of the transcript.

18 We\'re not going to set any set time limit

19 set for, on people. I just want to make sure that

20 everybody has the opportunity to talk tonight to make

21 their comments. So I may ask you to, to summarize at

22 some point.

277

1 And I guess that we can get started with

2 the, with the first NRC presentation tonight. And it\'s

3 my pleasure to introduce Dr. Susan Shankman.

4 Dr. Shankman\'s the deputy director for

5 licensing and inspection of the spent fuel project

6 office at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She\'s been

7 with the spent fuel project office since 1996. And

8 she\'ll be telling you more about this, but Susan\'s group

9 is responsible for the review and approval of designs

10 for spent fuel storage systems and transportation

11 package systems for the NRC and her group is also

12 responsible for inspection and for the development of

13 regulations on storage and transportation.

14 And I think I\'ll just turn it over to Dr.

15 Shankman at this point. Are you gonna use this?

16 MS. SHANKMAN: Yes. Good evening. Let me

17 briefly go through a few slides and introduce the

18 purpose of the meeting and NRC to those of you who are

19 here. First let me say that I welcome you.

20 And as Chip said, I\'m the deputy director

21 of the spent fuel project office which within the NRC is

22 the group that is conducting this study group. We are

278

1 having Sandia National Labs do the development of a

2 plan, but the NRC has a team of reviewers who will be

3 reviewing that plan and we will make the decisions about

4 what is studied and how it is studied.

5 I\'d like to say it\'s not an academic

6 exercise for me because I live on the main rail line out

7 of Washington and going west and I also live a mile from

8 I-95. So I think I have, I\'m in the hub of

9 transportation around the Washington area.

10 We\'re here tonight to hear your concerns.

11 And let me talk a little bit about what the NRC is and

12 what our role is in this. NRC is an independent federal

13 agency and our job is to protect public health and

14 safety. This is our basic mission. We do it in many

15 ways, but mostly we do it through the experience we\'ve

16 had in regulating nuclear materials.

17 We regulate with the power plants, we

18 regulate the medical uses of radioactive material, we

19 regulate waste disposal and we regular transport of

20 radioactive material that\'s licensed by the Nuclear

21 Regulatory Commission.

22 Spent fuel of course is one of the things

279

1 that we regulate. And the staff who works for me some

2 of whom have over 20 years of experience reviewing cask

3 designs, reviewing fuel characteristics and nuclear

4 power plant fuel operations.

5 I want to start off by saying that we

6 believe that what is done today is done safely. Spent

7 fuel is transported and it\'s transported safely.

8 Our mission of public health and safety we

9 accomplish in several ways. I just want to say quickly

10 we do it by establishing rules or regulations, we use it

11 interchangeably but they have the force of law. We

12 approve what applicants ask us to do before they do it.

13 So for cask designs, we look at the cask

14 designs before any casks are built. We use standardized

15 criteria to review these designs and you can find those

16 on the NRC web under the standard review plant for cask

17 designs.

18 We provide guidance on how to meet the

19 regulations, we inspect performance and then we enforce

20 compliance with the regulations.

21 Our team that is going to review the study

22 is with us tonight, and I\'ll introduce them quickly.

280

1 Earl Easton is the section chief of the technical review

2 section and we have Sarah Kolpo who\'s with us who will

3 be reviewing retainment and Ron Parkhill who will be

4 reviewing thermal issues and Rob Lewis who\'s at the

5 table who\'s the project manager for this project.

6 We also have Sandia National Labs with us.

7 They\'re conducting the research for this study and

8 scoping the study and they will be working with the

9 comments that you make tonight. Dr. Charles Massey and

10 oops, Ruth, she must be out in the hall.

11 We also have with us Pat Eng who is the

12 section chief of the section that is conducting the

13 study and Bill Brock who is the director of the spent

14 fuel project office.

15 I want to urge you to speak to any one of

16 us if you don\'t feel comfortable making your comments in

17 the microphone. We also have outside sheets where you

18 can write to us. We also have an interactive web site

19 and Rob will tell you more about that. So this is not

20 the last chance to talk to us about spent fuel.

21 Transportation as I said is not a new

22 subject for NRC to work with. We have conducted studies

281

1 over the years and our current study is meant to add to

2 our knowledge base about transport of nuclear material

3 and spent fuel, in particular package performance under

4 severe accidents.

5 NRC\'s goal recently we have worked harder

6 at concluding risk insights into the way in which we

7 regulate our activities and this study is part of that

8 effort.

9 As I said, we feel that transport of

10 nuclear material and spent fuel is safe. We want to

11 maintain that safety.

12 We feel that public involvement can help

13 us in understanding what the concerns are, so that when

14 we design this study, we will spend our money on looking

15 at the risk insights that are of most concern.

16 We also have as a goal as an agency to be

17 effective, efficient and realistic. And we believe that

18 if we conduct this study impartially, that we will add

19 to that effectiveness.

20 NRC is not the only player in the

21 regulation of transport of spent fuel. We share that

22 with the Department of Transportation and we have

282

1 several people here from the Department of

2 Transportation. We have Rick Boyle who\'s from the

3 administration who works with hazardous materials.

4 Spent fuel is one of the class of radioactivity \--

5 radioactive materials that\'s a class of hazardous

6 material. We also have Kevin. Oh, okay.

7 But anyway, we have had representatives

8 today from \-- we had a long meeting today. So as many

9 as you may know, it started this morning at 8:00 and

10 ended around 5:00 and we had representatives from the

11 Department of Transportation.

12 We have with us Richard Swedberg who\'s

13 with the federal highway administration. So we also

14 have had today representatives of shippers, carriers,

15 federal agencies that have interlocking or complement

16 the roles in the regulation of transportation of spent

17 fuel. They are here tonight and we\'re all interested in

18 what you have to say.

19 I can only tell you that we only have one

20 goal; to listen to what you have to say tonight. So I

21 hope you\'ll be candid. I hope you\'ll tell us what

22 you\'re concerned about. And then in the spring when we

283

1 have a design for our study, we will come back to

2 Nevada, probably go to Atlanta and St. Louis also to

3 talk about our design and get comments on our study

4 design.

5 So with that, I\'ll give it back to Chip.

6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Susan. Before we get

7 Rob Louis up here, I thought that I should explain the

8 television camera except I guess that\'s the wrong way to

9 characterize it.

10 This is not TV, but the Nuclear Regulatory

11 Commission is making a video. Our office of public

12 affairs is making a video about spent fuel

13 transportation, so that that can be used to inform the

14 public about it. And as part of that, the camera crew

15 is going to be filming parts of the public meeting just

16 in case you were wondering.

17 Rob Louis, as Susan mentioned, is the

18 project manager for the project that we\'re here to

19 describe tonight. And Rob has a master\'s in nuclear

20 engineering from the University of Arizona.

21 And I\'ll turn it over to Rob. Rob, do you

22 want to use this?

284

1 MR. LEWIS: Thank you, Chip. Good evening,

2 everyone and thank you for coming tonight and taking

3 your time to be here with us.

4 My goal is to describe the project that

5 we\'re just starting a little bit. So we\'ll kind of kick

6 off with this discussion and then we can, we\'ll sit back

7 and turn the microphone over to you, so we can hear your

8 thoughts on what we\'re trying do.

9 And what that is is we\'re starting a study

10 to look at how casks to transport used nuclear fuel from

11 reactors to the Yucca Mountain site or to a storage

12 facility, how those casks that are used for

13 transportation perform when they, when they get into an

14 accident, if they get into an accident during the

15 transportation.

16 Before discussing the study though, I

17 think I would like to talk a little bit about the safety

18 of shipping spent fuel because the \-- we are confident

19 that the current system we use to ship spent fuel is

20 very safe and it has been proven to be safe. And the

21 confidence that we have in that safety will define how

22 we plan to proceed with this project. So this is

285

1 important to know.

2 Why do we know that spent fuel shipments

3 are safe with our current approach? There\'s three main

4 reasons. We have very rigorous cask performance

5 standards that are specified in our rules and every cask

6 design has to meet these standards. We have an

7 excellent history of safe shipments of spent fuel and

8 we\'ve also studied this issue extensively, increasing

9 our confidence that the product we use is safe.

10 I have a slide on each of these three that

11 I\'d like to share with you briefly. Regarding cask

12 performance standards, every cask design that\'s used to

13 ship spent fuel has to meet a series of tests that are

14 specified in our rules, in NRC\'s rules, and these tests

15 were developed considering the possibility of severe

16 accidents.

17 Now the cask is the primary safety device

18 that we use to make sure that during an accident the

19 spent fuel remains safely contained within the cask.

20 The test sequence involves an impact test,

21 a puncture test, a fire test and immersion test,

22 immersion in water.

286

1 After all these tests, the releases that

2 are allowed from the cask are very small. So small that

3 if that amount itself were transported, it would not

4 even require an accident resistant cask to be

5 transported.

6 We can talk more about these tonight if

7 you would like to learn more about how the cask

8 performance standards we have in our rules work and how

9 it fits together with insurance safety for shipments.

10 The historical safety record of spent fuel

11 shipments is very good. The historical safety record of

12 shipping all hazardous materials is very good.

13 In the last 20 years or so, we\'ve made

14 1300 shipments in NRC certified casks. Out of those

15 1300 casks, eight of those casks were involved in

16 accidents, four casks that were being returned and four

17 casks that actually had spent fuel in them at the time.

18 Now in every one of these accidents, there

19 was zero release, meaning the cask did its job as we

20 relied on it to do.

21 Now, the information regarding these

22 shipments is probably available. We collect that

287

1 annually in a report that we call the New Reg. And if

2 you would like some information about where these

3 shipments went, the routes they took or what they

4 involved, what kind of spent fuel were involved, please,

5 please discuss that with us and we can tell you how you

6 can get a copy of that report. It\'s published annually.

7 Now studies, the real reason we\'re here

8 tonight is to talk about risk assessment studies we do.

9 It\'s the third part of the puzzle that I have on the

10 first slide that shows why we have confidence that our

11 approach to shipping spent fuel is safe.

12 We\'ve done several studies. This is, this

13 is by far not a complete list of the studies we have

14 done, but we\'ve been looking at these issues since 1977.

15 And the reason that we keep studying this is that the

16 technologies keep changing, our analytical tools that we

17 have available to us continually improve, computer power

18 improves and factors change, such as back in 1977, we

19 were considering sending the fuel off to be reprocessed.

20 Now as a national policy, we are

21 considering disposal as the ultimate definition for this

22 fuel.

288

1 And as a result of that, the way we do

2 these assessments has changed. And so we keep looking

3 at these issues.

4 And in particular, next year we will be

5 issuing a update to our spent fuel shipment risk

6 assessment that we have that is being performed by

7 Sandia Labs and it is actually within NRC right now

8 being reviewed by the NRC staff and we hope to publish

9 that soon.

10 And in addition, we are starting a new

11 project called the package performance study which looks

12 at the risk of shipping spent fuel specifically related

13 to the risk involved for severe accidents.

14 I should have mentioned that the 2000

15 study that I have up here is not only looking at all

16 accidents but also at the risk involved with routine

17 shipment of fuel.

18 So with these two studies, I believe we\'re

19 looking at the entire spectrum of, of hazards that are

20 involved with shipping this material.

21 The final thing I want to \-- actually two

22 more things I would like to say. The general approach

289

1 we will use to, to do the package performance study is

2 shown by this slide. And it\'s the same approach we use

3 for all of our risk assessment.

4 First, we develop the sequences of

5 accidents that we think are, are possible. And once we

6 have these sequences, we try to determine the severity

7 of impact forces, collision forces if you will, and also

8 the severity of fires that could occur. And once we

9 have engineering estimates of those severities, we can

10 apply those courses to, to a cask, to determine how the

11 cask would have, would have responded to those forces.

12 And, and once we know the cask response,

13 we can estimate the releases, particular releases that

14 we could expect.

15 In the great majority of cases, there will

16 be no releases. The cask will perform its function.

17 But in that small fraction of accidents that are

18 releases as possibility, we do want to quantify what

19 could happen.

20 There\'s several ways to stay involved as

21 we develop this study. The best way is probably our web

22 site and you can see the web address that is up there.

290

1 If you do not like to use the web site, we are also

2 establishing a mailing list. There are forms in the

3 back and on the tables outside the door. And if you

4 fill out the form and leave it with us tonight or mail

5 it to us, we will add you to the mailing list and inform

6 you when, when we have had at various points as we

7 progress down the study.

8 And finally, we\'re having these workshops.

9 This is a, today is the second of these round-table

10 workshops we\'ve been having. We had one in Bethesda,

11 Maryland on November 17th. And as Susan mentioned,

12 we\'ve been in this room since 8 a.m. today with a

13 round-table type workshop.

14 But there\'s a lot to discuss for a day

15 long meeting, and we wanted to make sure that we came

16 back tonight and gave the audience whereas today was

17 focused more on the round-table discussion, we wanted to

18 give the audience and any interested members of the

19 public that couldn\'t make it today, we wanted to make

20 sure that we had a chance to hear what those concerns

21 were, so that we could add that on to the study as well.

22 We\'re going on to Pahrump tomorrow from 10

291

1 to noon at the Mountainview Casino and we will hear the

2 specific concerns that Nye County may have because Nye

3 County is of course the location for the potential

4 depository of Yucca Mountain Pass.

5 And when we publish the first part of this

6 package performance study that looks at accidents and

7 the year 2000 report that I mentioned that is an update

8 our risk estimates, early next year we\'ll be publishing

9 this for you, for the public to look at.

10 These last two products will be publishing

11 them and we want to come back once people have had a

12 chance to look at them and get further views because

13 early next year, I should say in the summer of next

14 year, we\'ll be deciding how we want to proceed with this

15 package performance study to look at the accidents, this

16 transportation accidents.

17 So we want to make sure that when we

18 decide how to proceed that we\'ve had, everybody\'s had a

19 chance to give us their views on what we\'re doing.

20 Thank you. And I turn it back over to Chip.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Rob. We just have

22 one, one more short presentation for you and then we\'ll

292

1 go on to you.

2 And Dr. Charles Massey is going to, from

3 Sandia Lab is going to give us some information on the

4 spent fuel casks that we\'re talking about.

5 And by way of introduction, Dr. Massey is

6 the manager of the transportation safety and security

7 analysis department at Sandia National Lab in

8 Albuquerque, New Mexico. And his group\'s responsible

9 for design testing analysis of all types of radioactive

10 material packages such as the spent fuel casks.

11 And Dr. Massey has been in Sandia for 10

12 years. He has a master, two master\'s degrees from the

13 University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate in radiation

14 health from the University of Pittsburgh. Charles? And

15 I will remember to give this to you.

16 MR. MASSEY: Thank you, Chip. Good evening,

17 everyone. I want to give a little background on what

18 exactly it is that we\'re talking about, movement in the

19 spent fuel casks and real descriptions of what the cask

20 is and its design and then talk very briefly about some

21 of the suggestions that Sandia has developed for

22 consideration by you as sort of box simulators for

293

1 things that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would like

2 to maybe perhaps look at in the package performance

3 study.

4 Now what I\'ve got up on the overhead right

5 now is picture of a fresh nuclear assembly typical of

6 types of assemblies of a fuel package in a spent fuel

7 cask once it\'s come out of the reactor and is in storage

8 period for transportation to its ultimate disposal site,

9 and this is the material. Once its out of the reactor,

10 it\'s highly radioactive, it contains a highly

11 radioactive material.

12 We\'re making sure it stays within the

13 package safely while it\'s transported from the imported

14 site and ultimately goes to the disposal site.

15 The spent fuel cask itself is a very

16 substantial piece of equipment. I can sort of go

17 through the major pieces of it and when we get to some

18 of our suggestions, I\'ll point out a few of these items

19 that you\'ll want to consider in the future study.

20 The main body of the cask is represented

21 in this center here. It\'s typically stainless steel

22 outer shell. I have a slice of it over here on the side

294

1 which please feel after the meeting to go up and look at

2 it, I\'ll be glad to explain.

3 But I\'ll give you a little bit of the size

4 and dimensionally of how big these things are and pick

5 it up and you get a real feel for the weight. A very

6 substantial piece of equipment.

7 Then we have some shielding for neutrons

8 that are admitted by the spent fuel inside the package.

9 We have some gamished (phonetic) extra shielding

10 material and more stainless steel for structural

11 integrity.

12 Inside the cavity in the cask is where the

13 spent fuel assemblies, typically the bundle. The next

14 piece then is to essentially enclose the fuel inside the

15 cask. There\'s a very substantial lid that is attached

16 to the cask. You can see in the bolts.

17 Then the final stuff is to put it on these

18 impact absorbers, impact parameters which contain

19 crushable material so if there is an accident, it begins

20 with a head on or a side corner kind of impact. These

21 will help absorb some of the collision forces and help

22 protect the integrity of the cask.

295

1 Just to give you a little bit of a scale

2 size, you can see here\'s a cask with this impact

3 perimeters on. This is sitting on a flat bed. Another

4 piece just to show one going down the road. You can see

5 these are large structures, weigh a lot. And we have

6 lots of confidence in the ability to safely transport

7 radioactive material.

8 Now based on the series of studies that

9 Mr. Lewis quickly went over, starting with the 1977

10 Barnicle (phonetic) statement, Sandia has reviewed that

11 current state of knowledge that\'s been accumulated over

12 the years, said okay, if we\'re going to do a package

13 performance, what would that spear on a modal study,

14 sort of complete some of the picture of what it is

15 that\'s of interest to the public.

16 And from a technical standpoint where we

17 see some areas where we can do some investigation, we\'ve

18 come up with a list of suggestions that we\'re

19 considering proposing but I want to get your feedback on

20 because that\'s something that modal can incorporate,

21 look at for our proposal to the Regulatory Commission.

22 The first is look at the accident rate

296

1 data. How likely is it that there could be an accident

2 in truck transport or rail transport of the spent

3 nuclear fuel. And go out at and look at the highway,

4 the railway type of scenarios and get some idea what\'s

5 the likelihood that there could be a derailment or

6 collision.

7 The next step in that is if there is a

8 derailment or collision, what happens? If the train car

9 goes off the track, will it roll over on its side; if it

10 impacts another structure, how hard is that structure.

11 So we developed essentially little trees

12 of events that can happen, and it will give us an idea

13 of forces of the cask we see. Is there a fire or not at

14 the end of that accident.

15 In the past \-- as I showed you the

16 proponents on the cask, there\'s quite a bit of detail,

17 particularly when you look at the seal out here on these

18 bolts. In the past we\'ve taken a sort of conservative

19 engineering approach to the modeling, how the cask,

20 particularly these closure features, respond in the

21 event of an accident.

22 I guess we want to do, we\'d like to do in

297

1 the package performance study is go into much greater

2 detail and look at these bolts.

3 For example, if you start to see failure

4 on one bolt, essentially you view it as like a zipper is

5 that when one starts to go, now there will be more force

6 put on the next one, we\'ll want to see how different the

7 collision impact will be that affects the performance of

8 the bolts.

9 We also look at thermal environments, how

10 that would affect the spent fuel assembly inside the

11 cask. To do that analysis, one the things we want to do

12 is look at the cask in detail and then do a test,

13 actually look at the cask and compare it with our

14 pretest conditions at speeds somewhere greater than 60

15 miles per hour. And then we\'re looking for some input

16 as to what that speed should be and how the scenario and

17 position that can get us to that side.

18 From thermal fire perspective, one of the

19 things we\'d like to do is do pretest calculations using

20 a newly developed three dimensional code on response to

21 the cask to the fire alarm.

22 We would then like to do a one-hour test.

298

1 And this is simply a suggestion on our part. One hour

2 we look at how much fuel is available to fuel a fire

3 right now versus \-- our thought is that one-hour\'s test

4 of a 20 foot standard fuel oil with a fuel fire where

5 the cask is sitting in the fuel and oil on fire and the

6 cask is lying on the ground.

7 For the regulatory tests that Mr. Lewis

8 described earlier, cask is essentially suspended in the

9 air and a cask fully engulfed by the fire.

10 We believe in most accident conditions a

11 cask will probably be lying on the ground so we would

12 like to actually look at a more real-life situation and

13 see how our ability to predict the performance, how good

14 that really is.

15 Just a couple more items here. Looking at

16 the fuel rods inside the cask, we\'d like to do more

17 analysis and do some experimentation on how the fuel

18 inside the package performs in the severe accident

19 environment.

20 In the past, we have not done more

21 realistic examinations of how that fuel performed.

22 We\'ve done some conservative estimates on cask failure,

299

1 how much material you can have with the rod inside the

2 cask. And we\'d really like to do some more

3 experimentation to get some more realistic estimations

4 of fuel application (phonetic). That\'s sort of a big

5 change in approach to the study of severe accident

6 analogy.

7 I think what we\'re proposing is that in

8 this case we go out and do our pretest calculations of

9 the response of the cask and its contents to the thermal

10 environment that we will define and to the collision

11 environment that we will define. Do a test and then

12 compare it to and see how well in this sort of severe

13 regimes, how well is our ability to protect cask

14 performance.

15 What we want to do then is if you have a

16 representative in that cask, then use the models that we

17 now appropriately demonstrate the accuracy of and apply

18 that to other packages that would be used for

19 transportation of spent fuel.

20 With that, I turn it back over to Chip.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay, that\'s great. And let\'s

22 leave that up there. You\'ve heard a lot of about what

300

1 the NRC is proposing to do and there\'s been some

2 discussion about NRC regulations and also the role of

3 other federal agencies.

4 We are here tonight to give you

5 information and get your comments about this proposed

6 update that the NRC is going to do.

7 But if you may have questions about the

8 NRC regulations, about how the shipment of spent fuel is

9 regulated in general, we\'ll be, we\'ll be more than happy

10 to try to provide you with the information on how that

11 all works and hear your comments on that.

12 So now it\'s your turn to let us know what,

13 what you\'re thinking. And I would just ask if there\'s

14 any, any questions or comments from the audience at the

15 point.

16 MS. LEVENSON: We\'re kind of outnumbered. It

17 seems like there\'s more people in suits than there are

18 citizens here tonight. I don\'t think I need a

19 microphone, I can speak loud enough.

20 (Whereupon, Mr. Cameron handed her the

21 microphone.)

22 MS. LEVENSON: I have a lot of questions to

301

1 ask. And the first, we know how notorious the

2 government is about O rings and unfortunately we\'ve had

3 many accidents. I\'d like to know about leaking and

4 about how you can ensure that these rings will not leak

5 in any way.

6 MR. CAMERON: Caren, could you introduce your

7 position and everything? Caren is with the local county

8 advisory committee.

9 MS. LEVENSON: Well, I have many hats tonight.

10 I am a citizen of this county, I represent my school\'s

11 PTA as a legislative advisor and presently writing

12 resolutions for the state of Nevada\'s PTA against the

13 transportation of nuclear waste. I sit on the Clark

14 County Citizen\'s Advisory Board, Comprehensive Planning

15 Nuclear Waste, but I forget the whole long title. So I

16 have a lot of hats in one tonight.

17 MS. SHANKMAN: I\'m not exactly sure what your

18 question is asking. In cask designs there is a closure.

19 And Ron do you want to speak to how that closure is

20 tested?

21 MR. PARKHILL: Sure. Do you want me to use a

22 microphone?

302

1 MS. SHANKMAN: Yeah.

2 MS. LEVENSON: Well, what I\'m looking at is the

3 seal and between that and the outer wall.

4 MS. SHANKMAN: Right. The thing that closes

5 the cask and makes it suitable for \--

6 MR. PARKHILL: You can see it right there and

7 it\'s held down through bolts. And this thing is

8 analyzed under our regulations to prevent leakage from

9 beyond the certain A2 (phonetic) value.

10 So basically we do the analysis to

11 demonstrate that the cask will not leak beyond a certain

12 leakage weight. And we fully test that leakage weight

13 to demonstrate that a certain amount that\'s considered

14 permissible won\'t go beyond that amount.

15 So it\'s been analyzed, it\'s been tested

16 and that\'s our normal way of insuring that these casks

17 won\'t leak.

18 But the study here is actually going

19 beyond what we do. Typically in design basis is

20 considering severe accidents, accidents that would

21 happen possibly on highways that could be construed to

22 be beyond our design limits.

303

1 So this, this study will postulate failure

2 in a very high consequence or very low probability

3 arena. So the leakage will be evaluated against the

4 scenario that\'s being evaluated and an assessment will

5 be done as to whether or not that leakage will be

6 acceptable based on the risk study.

7 But typically for transportation spent

8 fuel, we\'ve had no leakage for the accidents that have

9 happened, the eight accidents that Bob talked about

10 earlier. So we\'re designed for it, we test for it.

11 MS. LEVENSON: And how do weather conditions

12 factor in? When you\'re transporting from Ohio or New

13 York State all the way across country, how do you factor

14 in sudden tornados, earthquakes, ice storms, wind.

15 I don\'t know how many of you were here

16 yesterday. This area had lost power just because of

17 wind.

18 How can you ensure driver error in trying

19 to compensate for weather conditions and a driver making

20 an error and having an accident severe enough to do

21 damage?

22 MR. PARKHILL: You asked, I guess, a multi-part

304

1 question here. I guess weather comes into play, that\'s

2 why you look at severe temperatures, very cold, very

3 hot. We looked at structural bloatings (phonetic) from

4 a standpoint of again within our regulatory framework,

5 the accidents we look at, we analyze the loadings from

6 impact, we look at funnel stresses under it.

7 So for the design basis, we basically

8 evaluate and determine that the casks will not leak

9 under those conditions.

10 And you know, again, we have a very

11 conservative regulatory basis that we analyze this thing

12 for. It doesn\'t analyze for all severe accidents. And

13 severe accidents is what we\'re, part of what we\'re

14 studying and poses to this panel on of those

15 consequences and the actual, look at failure of that

16 seal, I guess up until it fails and beyond if it fails

17 so that we actually give you the results of that as it

18 did on the modal study. That\'s already been done.

19 And those consequences were determined

20 that the buyer by that study be acceptable.

21 MS. LEVENSON: And with the sudden and very

22 drastic temperature changes that we have here. I mean,

305

1 to vary 30 degrees from nighttime to mid-day is normal

2 here.

3 MR. PARKHILL: Actually from a temperature

4 standpoint during the day, these casks do not change

5 that drastically with quick changes to temperature

6 outside. It takes a longer sustained very hotter or

7 colder period for it to react to have a thermal nersha,

8 I guess it\'s not called in plain English, but it takes

9 awhile for the extremes to really have an affect and we

10 do analyze for an extreme conditions of hot and cold.

11 MS. LEVENSON: My other questions deal with

12 mostly the transportation and security issues. Okay.

13 Hijackings, terrorist attacks, things of that nature.

14 MS. SHANKMAN: Are you familiar with the NRC

15 regulations on physical security?

16 MS. LEVENSON: I am. I have heard a lot of

17 different things. The only security is the guy sitting

18 in the passenger seat with the driver. There is very,

19 very little security during transportation.

20 MR. CAMERON: Could someone provide sort of an

21 overview on this for Caren? Earl?

22 MR. EASTON: Basically there are a lot of

306

1 measures in place that are more than just having to ask

2 for it, that is the person in the other driver\'s seat.

3 We require that the truck be in

4 communication. They have to report in every two hours.

5 There\'s a mobilization device that a driver, he can

6 activate that will immobilize the truck.

7 We check for every route availability with

8 law enforcement along those routes, that law enforcement

9 can respond to a given period of time, very short period

10 of time, typically 15 minutes or so. We make sure that

11 the cellular communications are adequate all along the

12 route and those sort of things. There are a lot more

13 measures than just an escort. They\'re tabulated in Part

14 73 of their regulation.

15 MR. CAMERON: Caren, let me check and see if

16 anybody from the other federal agencies that are here

17 tonight, whether they want to offer anymore background

18 on the security issue. Anybody? Okay.

19 MS. LEVENSON: Okay. Really \-- and my last

20 questions have to do with growth along routes,

21 especially in Nevada where growth is so, can\'t be

22 planned for from day-to-day. I deal with the school

307

1 district so I know about that one.

2 And how you will not allow growth and

3 construction within a certain amount of feet, yards,

4 miles from these routes that are presently \-- most of

5 that land is under government control, but we know the

6 BLM now is selling off their land here.

7 And how you can assure us that these

8 routes that are still rural can remain rural to the test

9 site storage facility cuz they\'re the same and along any

10 other routes with explosive growth out here and also

11 damage to our infrastructure and our roads that we

12 presently have.

13 From what I understand, the weight of

14 these trucks and the amount of transportation of this

15 over the decade or 12 years that will do \-- we have

16 enough problems with our roads. We don\'t need trucks

17 tearing up our roads that we can\'t seem to not tear up

18 ourselves.

19 MR. CAMERON: It seems there is some

20 information on how routes are selected to consider

21 factors like that that might be informative for Caren.

22 Does anybody from the NRC or from the

308

1 Department of Transportation want to deal with that?

2 MS. SHANKMAN: Let someone from the Department

3 of Transportation answer that because the rules for

4 selecting routes come from the U.S. Department of

5 Transportation.

6 MR. CAMERON: This is Richard Swedberg.

7 MR. SWEDBERG: Richard Swedberg with Department

8 of Transportation. The route selection belongs to the

9 State of Nevada. And so the State of Nevada can analyze

10 and look at the different routes that they want to use.

11 And then because of that analysis, they can decide using

12 our guidelines what routes they want to have the state

13 use. And so it\'s more localized. You have more

14 influence on that because again, the federal government

15 only records the routes that the State of Nevada picks

16 for these types of shipments.

17 One thing I didn\'t mention, too, and I

18 wanted to talk about is that you mentioned driver and

19 driver error. There are a lot of regulations for

20 drivers who drive spent fuel trucks. They have to be

21 specially trained, they have to have medical waivers,

22 they have to have a lot of classes on classes dealing

309

1 with radioactive material. They go through a lot of

2 extra training.

3 They also get route plans that they are

4 provided when they start their transportation, and the

5 route plans specify exactly where they have to go, how

6 often they have to rest, where they have to get rest at.

7 So there\'s a lot of extra training really

8 involved in the drivers. And most drivers who drive

9 spent nuclear fuel transportation have to have an

10 excellent safety record. They have to have a lot of

11 extra qualifications. There\'s a lot of work that are

12 put into the drivers.

13 So does that answer your question?

14 MS. LEVENSON: Somewhat.

15 MR. SWEDBERG: Okay. But mainly the most

16 important thing is that the State of Nevada has a lot of

17 influence on route selection. That belongs to the

18 state. That\'s not something that the federal government

19 has.

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Richard. And

21 Caren, you may have some more questions and comments

22 before the night is over so we may be back to you.

310

1 Let\'s go to this gentlemen right here.

2 Yes, sir?

3 MR. BUSHMAN: Yeah. I\'ll probably make a fool

4 of myself but one needs to make attempts. I\'m Ernie

5 Bushman. I\'m from Michigan, in particular, the FERME

6 (phonetic) operation area and at one point was an

7 activist in opposition to FERME program. And I\'m trying

8 to stay abreast of the changes and things that are

9 occurring.

10 And my curiosity now goes to the fuel cask

11 and thermal dynamics, and I\'m wondering what you\'re

12 doing with the heat. I know there\'s still heat here. I

13 guess there\'s also some kind of a water jacket involved

14 in this thing. My concern goes to that because I know

15 that those are the kind of problems that were

16 experienced in most of the accidents that have occurred

17 in the nuclear power plants. It had to do with being

18 able to handle the heat.

19 And I also wonder if somebody can tell me

20 if there are thermal excursions occurring within this

21 cask and if not why not.

22 MS. SHANKMAN: I\'m glad we brought Ron

311

1 Parkhill.

2 MS. BUSHMAN: Please.

3 MS. SHANKMAN: Who reviews the thermal issues

4 related to the cask and so we\'ll ask him to answer your

5 specific questions.

6 MR. CHIP: And while Ron\'s coming up, he may

7 want to talk a little bit about the conversation that

8 happened this afternoon about for purposes of the

9 updated study what type of spent fuel, what assumptions,

10 assumptions do you make about the type of spent fuel

11 that should be shipped. Go ahead, Ron.

12 MR. PARKHILL: Well to answer your question,

13 yes, the package is analyzed for the K heat that\'s

14 included or that\'s licensed to be shipped in the

15 package. Generally the packages are evaluated for the

16 maximum to take heat and they\'re evaluated to dissipate

17 that the K heat order jacket that you referred to is for

18 neutron shielding in ways necessary for dissipation of

19 the heat even though the order that is taking credit for

20 its analysis for shielding purposes. It is also

21 considered thermal for the conduction that they have.

22 That\'s not really necessary, but we do. So yes, they\'re

312

1 analyzed and evaluated.

2 And once the package, before it\'s first

3 used, a thermal test is done providing there\'s a K heat

4 floating into the package above the certain value. The

5 package will be tested to verify that the, or the

6 temperature package will be measured to verify that the

7 analysis is roughly correct.

8 So there\'s physical verification on the

9 thermal analysis deal that tests. I guess you have \--

10 (inaudible).

11 MR. BUSHMAN: In particular about the

12 excursions that occur in reactors, will the thermal

13 excursions, can they occur within your cask I guess is

14 the question?

15 MR. PARKHILL: Basically no. The package is

16 analyzed from a reactivity standpoint. It\'s analyzed

17 for \-- even though the package is designed not to let

18 water in, it\'s analyzed for having water in it from the

19 reactivity standpoint. And it is only in this case of

20 water critical that you really start generating more

21 heat, so that the K heat actually dissipates over time.

22 So the longer the fuel system cools for

313

1 exposure into one of these casks, the cooler it gets,

2 the analysis actually assumes the hottest fuel that has

3 been licensed. So it\'s generally found in the analysis

4 of fuel.

5 So we\'re pretty confident that the package

6 has been analyzed for heat.

7 MR. CAMERON: Ray, do you have something that

8 you wanted to offer in terms of our \--

9 MR. LAMBERT: I\'m afraid I\'ll miss the point,

10 but I think the concern is about reactors, what happens.

11 And you know, young people tend to assume reactors are

12 like a shipping cask. And we\'re talking in shipping

13 with fuel that has heat for the order of one kilowatts

14 of fuel. These are like many orders of magnitudes less

15 than a popular reactor, a reactor when I was going

16 fishing, and they have very high levels of heat

17 associated.

18 There\'s no mechanism in a transport from

19 to generate other than the K heat that exists. And as

20 mentioned by Ron, it continues to go down. It\'s really

21 formal reaction and this therefore can\'t go through it.

22 There\'s no problems for excursions, no high reaction.

314

1 It just can\'t happen.

2 MR. BUSHMAN: What kind of temperature are we

3 running then internally?

4 MR. LAMBERT: The maximum planning temperature

5 on the fuel at the design basis could be designed to run

6 the order of about 380 BC. It normally runs about half

7 of that.

8 MR. BUSHMAN: Okay. Then my next question goes

9 to \--

10 MR. CAMERON: Let me have you \--

11 MR. BUSHMAN: I guess these questions are just

12 coming out of \-- most of the utilization of the fuels

13 themselves as I seen it were in a vertical position.

14 And certainly I believe that storage on site is vertical

15 or horizontal. Can anybody tell me?

16 MS. SHANKMAN: Both.

17 MR. BUSHMAN: Both. Are there thermodynamic

18 differences that occur just as a result of what a uteral

19 (phonetic) fuel in a vertical position or a horizontal

20 position because as you see here, you\'re transporting it

21 horizontally.

22 And I don\'t expect you to be able to

315

1 transport it vertically at this point, but I\'m wondering

2 about that fact, you know. We utilize it vertically,

3 how are you gonna finally store it down at Yucca, and

4 are there some differences here that are the result of

5 its position on the truck?

6 UNIDENTIFIED: We\'re not here really does to

7 discuss Yucca Mountain.

8 MR. BUSHMAN: No. I\'m sorry.

9 UNIDENTIFIED: All configurations of that fuel

10 is stored in and transported in are analyzed for the

11 removal of that.

12 MR. BUSHMAN: Vertically?

13 UNIDENTIFIED: Yes. There\'s storage, there\'s

14 a, one side I can think of stores it horizontally. It\'s

15 analyzed in that configuration. Most of the storage

16 designs are in the vertical configuration and they\'re

17 analyzed for that. And for the transportation they\'re

18 analyzed for the configuration of transport and it goes

19 on.

20 MR. CAMERON: So it\'s always in all cases

21 horizontally is I think what Ernie is asking about.

22 THE WITNESS: Yes. Thank you.

316

1 MR. MASSEY: If I can follow up on that.

2 MR. CAMERON: Yeah. Go ahead, Charles.

3 MR. MASSEY: The gentleman brings up a good

4 point. One of the things that we\'re looking at in the

5 package performance study is the fact that this spent

6 fuel, it generates some heat.

7 And as he stated, it could be a hundred

8 degrees, it could be 108 degrees Fahrenheit, a hundred,

9 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

10 (Whereupon, Mr. Cameron asked Mr. Massey

11 to speak up.)

12 MR. MASSEY: So there is some heat associated

13 with the spent fuel itself. And one thing we want to

14 look at is in a thermal environment, how does the heat

15 that\'s already representative by the spent fuel inside,

16 how does that add to any loads that you may see as a

17 result of the fire.

18 So you bring up a good point from the

19 package performance study. And we need to take into

20 account the spent fuel that\'s already in the package is

21 that an elevated temperature in relation to the normal

22 outside temperature and how does that temperature of the

317

1 spent fuel itself, how does that add to any loads that

2 we may see representative by a fire if the casks

3 (inaudible.)

4 So it\'s a very good point and

5 appropriate, too. One of the things we\'d like to look

6 at in a package performance study.

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Do we have any, anything

8 more from the NRC or anybody else to add to, to the

9 question that, questions that just came up? Shall we

10 move on to the next person?

11 All right. Anybody else have a comment or

12 question on spent fuel transportation, particularly this

13 this packaging issue. Paul?

14 PAUL : I know this is contrary to the

15 American way of life, but is it possible that the NRC in

16 their regulations could encourage a particular

17 shipper \--

18 MR. CAMERON: Can you stand up, Paul.

19 PAUL : \-- to use a consistent cask design?

20 That wouldn\'t necessarily mean that everybody had to use

21 the same design, but at least a particular campaign

22 would use the same design.

318

1 You\'re going to look into human factors

2 affects, and I think that human factors affects are

3 significant and different if you have a series of

4 different types of casks all thrown into the same place

5 and versus having all the same kind.

6 And I was wondering if there\'s any way you

7 could encourage specific shippers to use the same type

8 of casks in their campaign.

9 MR. CAMERON: All right. Susan? Thank you,

10 Paul.

11 MS. SHANKMAN: Let me answer that question by

12 saying that we have a consistent level of safety and our

13 regulations speak to criteria against which we judge all

14 designs.

15 Human factors is not part of that review;

16 however, we do require that cask users, Department of

17 Transportation as well as NRC expects that cask shippers

18 and carriers will have trained personnel.

19 So you\'re right that consistency of

20 training and consistency of use can do something to

21 standardize human performance.

22 But my area of expertise is human factors

319

1 engineering and there are many ways to standardize

2 performance, having procedures, having standard check

3 lists. There are many ways to standardize performance.

4 And we do expect anybody who\'s in cask to

5 follow the certificate of compliance and make sure that

6 the cask is used consistent with what we\'ve approved.

7 And all those approvals as I say are all measured

8 against the standard review plan in which we look for

9 certain attributes.

10 In direct answer to your question, no, the

11 NRC could not encourage anybody to use any particular

12 design, but they cannot use a design that hasn\'t had a

13 certificate of compliance from the NRC and that hasn\'t

14 been reviewed by us. So that way we ensure that there\'s

15 a consistent margin of safety.

16 Does that answer your question?

17 PAUL : Yes.

18 MS. SHANKMAN: Okay.

19 MR. CAMERON: All right. I thought that I

20 would just introduce someone. Calvin Meyers is with us

21 from the Moapa Paiutes and he\'s a transportation expert

22 for them.

320

1 Calvin, do you want to have to offer

2 anything or \-- at this point? And I apologize to the

3 camera, but do you mind going up here a little bit and

4 then I can get you on camera, okay.

5 MR. MEYERS: All right. Good evening. As Chip

6 says, my name is Calvin Meyers. I\'m a member of the

7 Moapa Paiutes. I\'m a former tribal counsel member. I

8 was vice chairman for three years.

9 I watched you people work and I watched

10 you people disobey the law, in disobeying the law. In

11 February or March, I was at a commission meeting I was

12 invited to in Washington. I had asked a question at

13 that meeting about trust responsibility. Counsel has

14 never given me a letter saying anything about trust

15 responsibility. And they know what it is now. They\'re

16 supposed to know.

17 It\'s not up to us to train you, it\'s up to

18 you to obey what\'s there.

19 I have a few \-- well, a lot, I guess,

20 concerns. But some of the concerns that I really have

21 is about when you transport, no matter how safe you make

22 it, you\'re still gonna have human error.

321

1 And when you study human error, you use

2 the public. Well, we\'re not part of the public. I\'m

3 sorry. We\'re not part of the county or the state, we

4 are a nation of our own.

5 But I\'ve talked to people about what would

6 happen if say when your truck drivers just fell asleep.

7 That\'s easy to do on these roads. I see a lot of people

8 run off the road where it\'s straight.

9 What happens if they \-- say our tribal

10 counsel is going to a meeting maybe here in Las Vegas,

11 maybe in Utah, it could be anywhere, and all of our

12 leaders are in that van? Do you guys \-- your shipment

13 hits that van killing everybody on board? Not only do

14 you destroy our government for the moment, which you\'ve

15 also destroyed six or seven lives, which \-- and I know

16 in the studies that have been done, it\'s acceptable.

17 But for the public, but we\'re not public. Six or seven

18 lives is a lot of people for us because we only have, we

19 have less than 290 enrolled members.

20 And in \-- and I\'m not sure of where what

21 you guys are gonna do about it or if you\'re ever gonna

22 think about it because I don\'t think anybody has because

322

1 nobody\'s ever said anything.

2 And most tribes, especially the Paiute

3 tribe, there\'s seven or eight of us. We\'re all small.

4 I think Moapa is one of the bigger ones or it might be

5 the biggest one. So that could happen to any of the

6 tribes, not just to my tribe.

7 And I have a concern about the

8 accumulation of radio, radio leak right along side the

9 road.

10 I\'m, I was on the site team for the

11 innermost transportation to Nevada Test Site for the

12 Department of Energy Nevada operations. Well when you

13 look at the study, the study had talked about nothing

14 but the area of where the innermost site was at. It

15 didn\'t say it was gonna go down what road because they

16 didn\'t study the road and how it\'s gonna get there or

17 how it\'s gonna get to the site and then from the site to

18 the test site.

19 That\'s \-- to me, that\'s your way of

20 thinking because when I first started, my reservation

21 wasn\'t even on the map and we\'ve been here a hell of a

22 lot longer than you guys have. We\'ve been here way

323

1 before. We said hi to you many, many years ago and now

2 we\'re kind of sorry about it.

3 But, but what we, what we had done with

4 about the region of influence because we, we think not

5 just of the way you\'re gonna walk on the sidewalk, we

6 think about what\'s crossing that sidewalk, how far does

7 the animals come to feed off of that sidewalk. You

8 know, everything that happens that concerns that

9 sidewalk. That\'s what we think about. We don\'t think

10 about well, we\'re gonna put it down the road and not

11 worry about it. And so we had taken their region of

12 influence from 50 feet to 20 or 30 miles. And if you

13 don\'t really actually want to think that way, well then

14 you\'re in big trouble because that\'s what happens.

15 Life in a city is completely different

16 from life in a rural place like where I live at.

17 There\'s not many people out there. We don\'t have the

18 pool from the government. The State does, we don\'t, yet

19 we\'re supposed to have that government-to-government

20 relationship with the United States government, but

21 everybody else has more than we do.

22 And just to show that fact, there\'s not

324

1 one tribe in the state of Nevada that\'s effective. So I

2 always tell them, you know, you people, the only way

3 (unintelligible) light a balloon over your railroad and

4 your interstate when you think about it. These things

5 are passing over my lands to protect me? I don\'t think

6 so.

7 And all the, all the problems I\'ve had is

8 because in my, in my feelings the way that you people

9 talk to me is like we\'re going to do this anyway, we

10 don\'t give a damn what you say, but we are supposed to

11 be able to keep \-- you\'re supposed to give a damn for us

12 because you have that trust responsibility to us and you

13 don\'t live up to it.

14 You have a fiduciary responsibility also

15 and you never lived up to any of that. So that\'s, I

16 guess more what I would like to bring.

17 And I still want to know from counsel if

18 you guys are going to obey the laws that are on the

19 lands already. Thank you.

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Calvin. I think

21 that there\'s a couple of points here that we may be able

22 to, to address.

325

1 One is the, the whole issue of human error

2 that Calvin brought up in terms of how our regulatory

3 framework or how the federal regulatory framework deals

4 with human error, the whole human factors discussion

5 that we had.

6 And I guess the second point, and this

7 specifically goes to Calvin\'s point on trust

8 responsibilities and the tribes, is could we offer any

9 information on how tribal governments specifically are

10 brought in in terms of the transportation of spent fuel?

11 And that\'s not just directed at the NRC.

12 It\'s directed at any of the federal agencies that are

13 here.

14 I think we can offer some things that we

15 are doing, the NRC is doing on that in terms of trying

16 to fulfill our trust responsibility to the tribes.

17 But why don\'t we start with human factors,

18 first, Susan.

19 MS. SHANKMAN: Okay. As I mentioned, there are

20 many ways of standardizing human performance. The three

21 basic ways that are used by anyone who is performing a

22 task or having a task performed are simply either to

326

1 engineer it in so that you can do it, if you have a bolt

2 where you can only screw it in one way and if you don\'t

3 do it that way, it won\'t screw in. So that would be an

4 engineer\'s way of controlling human behavior.

5 Another way to have procedures in which

6 there is check and recheck and the cask is checked by

7 somebody other than the person who did it.

8 And a third way is through training. As I

9 said, the Department of Transportation expects that the

10 people involved in the shipment of radioactive material

11 and spent fuel are trained.

12 The NRC also reviews the designs and

13 conditions of use, so that in our certificates we will

14 say there are certain tests that have to be performed

15 before something is shipped to ensure that it meets the

16 regulations, whether it\'s in testing radioactivity,

17 thermal tests, leak tests so that these, these must be

18 performed before it can be shipped. And there are these

19 conditions of use so to speak are in the certificate of

20 compliance.

21 The point of human error is that it

22 occurs. I\'m not gonna tell you that people do not make

327

1 errors. The point of what we did when we did designs is

2 to look at the potential for human error and make sure

3 that if there are any things that must be checked before

4 a shipment is made, that there is a check to make sure

5 that it complies with the regulations so that if it\'s

6 loaded properly and it has the right combination within

7 the cask, then the radioactivity that\'s tested for will

8 not exceed the regulation. I don\'t know if I\'ve

9 answered you directly.

10 MR. CAMERON: Well, let\'s give Ron a chance to

11 supplement that. Ron?

12 MR. PARKHILL: Well, I like what Susan said.

13 You mentioned that specifically about a driver falling

14 asleep, that type of human error.

15 I think that that type of human error in

16 particular will be part of the study because when we do

17 our predictions for the accident rates, so that we can

18 predict how many accidents we might expect.

19 We\'ll use historical records to make our

20 prediction about gas and the rates. And those

21 historical records, as you know a lot of accidents

22 happened to be because of driver error and those are in

328

1 the historical records of accidents.

2 So we would expect driver error in the

3 future to be included in the study with an upcoming

4 packet role study.

5 MS. SHANKMAN: I think to answer your question

6 another way, driver error encourage safety are at far

7 something that we\'re aware of and therefore we rely on

8 the cask and not the mode of transportation for

9 containing radioactivity when it\'s been transported.

10 The cask itself is the protection of

11 public health and safety, not carriage. Not the truck,

12 not the train.

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Before we go to some

14 comments on this specific tribal issue, let\'s see what

15 Calvin has to offer on that.

16 MR. MEYERS: I\'m really not worried about the

17 radioactivity getting out of the cask. What I commented

18 more on is, is the lives that could be lost from the

19 tribe and there\'s no way that you can repay us for

20 those.

21 And while you were talking, I was thinking

22 about the Department of Energy or the other atomic

329

1 energy commission when they were doing above-ground

2 tests. We already, we have enough cancers, thank you,

3 we don\'t need anymore. And to me this is \-- and when I

4 talk to people about it they think it\'s worst than I do

5 because I know a little bit about what you guys are

6 talking about.

7 But the public at home, my public, is

8 afraid of it. They\'re not real sure what it can do to

9 you. And in fact, you people don\'t really know what it

10 can do to you because you haven\'t played with it long

11 enough.

12 You can do the studies, you can do

13 whatever you want, but there\'s always gonna be \-- I

14 mean, even when you built that thing, how do people know

15 that they\'re all the same like the exact same as they

16 were tested, materials, craftsmanship, everything.

17 And you people seem to want to just focus

18 on just one little portion of the project. But it\'s a

19 project. It\'s a, it\'s a big project. It\'s not just

20 well, I\'m gonna do this and I\'m gonna do that type of

21 thing. And it\'s \-- and the training for the truck,

22 truck drivers, it still, it doesn\'t make that much

330

1 difference to me because you\'re still gonna have the

2 errors.

3 I mean, some of you could be driving down

4 the road. I\'ve seen it a lot where they go north on the

5 southbound lane. And it happens clear out in the middle

6 of the desert and there\'s no way that you can get on the

7 freeway. So there\'s a lot of things.

8 In fact, what I would like to do is see

9 one of these meetings out at my reservation. Come out

10 there and see where we live. You people never come to

11 the reservations. I guess you\'re afraid of us. I guess

12 you might think you\'re gonna get some of that radiation

13 from us that we already have.

14 And so I don\'t know what, how we can make

15 our point come across because it seems like it\'s always

16 come to deaf ears where they really don\'t want to listen

17 to us because we can raise questions that they can\'t

18 answer because they don\'t, they don\'t know the, they

19 don\'t understand us.

20 We don\'t think in, in the microscopic

21 world. We think of the whole world as one thing because

22 it\'s all tied together.

331

1 And one of these days you guys will learn

2 and you should have learned a long time ago when you

3 were told not to even play with the nuclear stuff that

4 you\'re playing with. Because you were told a long time

5 ago by a medicine man before you guys really got into it

6 that it\'s gonna kill you, it\'s gonna destroy you. And

7 it will because you don\'t want to learn. You want to do

8 what you can do to make that dollar, and that dollar is

9 gonna kill you. And that\'s the way, that\'s the way we

10 see the world.

11 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Calvin. I think that \--

12 and I won\'t, can\'t really speak for the NRC staff that

13 are here, but I think that the NRC staff would come out

14 definitely to talk to the tribal counsel and all we need

15 do is to try to arrange that, but I know there is a

16 willingness to come out and talk and we\'ll figure out

17 how to do that.

18 And other NRC staff people may want to

19 talk to that, but I\'d like to have two people address

20 Calvin\'s concern about how the tribes are consulted in

21 terms of transportation.

22 And first we\'re gonna go to Bob Alcock

332

1 from the Department of Energy and then we\'re going to go

2 to Earl Easton from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

3 Bob?

4 MR. ALCOCK: Thank you. I didn\'t know about

5 the cameras. Let me just address the Department of

6 Energy is a shipper of nuclear materials. There are

7 many thousand of shippers of nuclear material every day

8 in the United States. We are but one of them.

9 We are regulated by the Department of

10 Transportation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

11 with the things that we do. We are also required by

12 presidential executive order and the departments on

13 Indian policy to consult the tribal nations when we

14 prepare shipping campaigns.

15 And in this case of material for instance

16 that goes to our site in Idaho, we consult early on and

17 consistently with Shoshone Bannicks because both the

18 highway and rail routes into the Idaho national nuclear

19 and environment laboratory crosses the reservation

20 lanes.

21 About a year and a half ago we had a case

22 in northern Nevada with the Pyramid Lake Paiutes where

333

1 we were shipping research reactor fuel across their

2 reservation there on a rail line. We brought them into

3 the transportation planning process early on.

4 And as a matter of fact, I\'ve got a

5 meeting next week in Washington to follow-up on some

6 emergency response preparedness issues. We are

7 continuing to work with that tribe as, as a result of

8 that shipping campaign. Even though the shipment

9 happened a year and a half ago, we\'re still working with

10 them.

11 And in our case in Nevada, we have a

12 gentleman here from RW who can maybe speak to this, but

13 there are both internal and external issues as you well

14 know related to the tribal nations here.

15 But we do have in our Nevada operations

16 office a means of consulting with the tribes in the area

17 on the Yucca Mountain project.

18 And I hope I\'m not with the department in

19 2010 or 12 and 15 when we start shipping material, if we

20 start shipping material to depository. But I, I can\'t

21 imagine the tribes in Nevada and the tribes in proximity

22 to all the shipping routes that come into Nevada from

334

1 whatever point in the United States where this material

2 is now that the nuclear reactor would not be consulted

3 early on in the routing decisions and the security

4 decisions and the public health and safety issues, in

5 issues like where the safe havens might be or the rest

6 stops might be or the, you can, you know, they wouldn\'t

7 where appropriate where they have emergency response

8 responsibilities it would be involved in training, in

9 the training which we would pay for. The whole panophly

10 (phonetic) of logistical questions the tribes would be

11 consulted on.

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Bob. I\'m going to

13 go to Earl Easton now from the NRC staff and then we\'ll

14 see who else has questions here. And if Calvin has a

15 comment, we\'ll come back to you.

16 MR. EASTON: I\'d just like to make two brief

17 comments about your second one, the rights of Native

18 Americans and that shipping study. First, I think it\'s

19 an excellent idea to go visit the reservation. We have

20 done so. We have an application in the state of Utah

21 where we have held meetings on reservations, on

22 sovereign Indian nations. They\'re up against the

335

1 problem was the state. The state thought that they

2 didn\'t have the influence. So I think it\'s a great

3 suggestion and I think we ought to follow-up on that.

4 The second, the commission is undertaking

5 an initiative. We have an advance notice of public rule

6 making that\'s bureaucratic jargon for saying we\'re

7 asking people for comments on a ruling about

8 notification of Native Americans when there are spent

9 fuel shipments.

10 And this is out for comment. I don\'t

11 think it\'s necessarily that the comments have to be

12 narrowed in scope so if there are other issues that are

13 related to shipment of spent fuel, I think they\'re

14 welcome.

15 And I think this is really a first stage

16 in this dialogue, this type of dialogue to get the

17 public and Native Americans involved.

18 MR. CAMERON: And thanks, Earl. And I think

19 just one technical correction on that is I don\'t think

20 it\'s been issued for comment yet although it has been

21 approved. And Calvin, we will make sure that we get you

22 a copy of that for, for commenting. When it comes out,

336

1 we\'ll send it to you directly.

2 I think Richard Swedberg from the

3 Department of Transportation has something to offer on

4 this. Go ahead, Richard.

5 MR. SWEDBERG: Calvin, I just want to tell you

6 also to follow-up with what the Department of Energy

7 says that we in the code of federal regulations for

8 Department of Transportation, we recognize Indian tribes

9 and their sovereignty for wherever our routes cross

10 Indian lands and the definition in 49 CFR 397 where we

11 talk about routing authority in gratitude (phonetic.)

12 Any time a route crosses Indian tribal lands, that state

13 routing agency has the sovereignty and ability to

14 designate wherever routes they want to transportation to

15 proceed.

16 So if there\'s any time that a route

17 crosses an Indian land, you can have \-- we recognize as

18 separate from the State routing agency Indian tribal

19 routing agency, and you can route of where you want the

20 shipments to go as long as it\'s within your sovereignty.

21 The other part of it is is that the, there

22 are also registration fees that are prepaid for all

337

1 hazardous materials transportation. And those funds are

2 also opened to tribal lands (inaudible) for emergency

3 responses.

4 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Richard, for

5 telling us about that. Before I check back with Calvin

6 or Ernie or Caren, does anybody else, or Paul or anybody

7 else who has a question or comment for the NRC at this

8 point? Okay.

9 Caren, do you have any other discussions

10 or anymore questions from your perspective?

11 MS. LEVENSON: No.

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Ernie?

13 MR. BUSHMAN: Well, I just \--

14 MR. CAMERON: And let me bring you the mic.

15 MR. BUSHMAN: I just wanted to say thanks for

16 the outreach effort that seems to be appearing. It\'s

17 more than has happened in the 40 or 50 years of the

18 nuclear industry. There\'s been so much that\'s been

19 placed or played so close to the chest of the agency

20 that the public really has not known and probably could

21 not know what was being done.

22 But the nuclear agents certainly has been

338

1 here during my life time and it\'s certainly impacted my

2 life personally. And for that reason I find myself here

3 in Henderson after retiring from Michigan and finding

4 the same stuff standing up there on the board that I saw

5 way back there with the Repo Ferme 1 (phonetic) and the

6 Repo Ferme 2 (phonetic) and Palisades and all the

7 accidents that we need not mention. But certainly some

8 effort\'s being made to deal with the public now and I\'m

9 thankful for that.

10 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Ernie. And thank you

11 for being here. I mean, that\'s what makes it all

12 possible, that people from the public come out to, to

13 talk to, to the agency.

14 Paul, do you have anything else at this

15 point?

16 PAUL : No.

17 MR. CAMERON: All right. Calvin, do you have

18 anything?

19 MR. MEYERS: It\'s all good and well to hear

20 that current management does have some type of a

21 program. Consultation to me and if you ask the tribe,

22 it\'s getting the big boys to talk to our counsel.

339

1 When you go to Japan, when President

2 Clinton talks to Japan, he doesn\'t send the janitor

3 over, he goes himself or he sends the people that\'s

4 rightful. He doesn\'t send the janitor. He goes. They

5 get higher up people, we get the flunkies, we get the

6 janitors. That\'s not government, government.

7 When you say consultation, sending a

8 letter in the mail is not consultation. And who says

9 that that letter gets to the tribe?

10 Some of the things that I heard tonight

11 too is surprising because I\'ve never heard it. That\'s

12 how much early on involvement the tribe has.

13 You know, if you call this early on, it\'s

14 not very many years from now that that shipment\'s gonna

15 be coming down the reservation route and then we\'re

16 gonna be looking at the way we live from now on.

17 Because that land is a desert to you.

18 It\'s nothing. It\'s nothing but dirt and weeds in your

19 eyes because your eyes are closed. You don\'t know what

20 is in the desert. You\'re afraid. Most people are

21 afraid of desert because they don\'t know how to survive,

22 and it\'s real easy.

340

1 The Department of Energy really doesn\'t

2 have a consultation to the tribe. The Yucca Mountain

3 project, and you\'re talking about part of it, has come

4 out to my reservation once in the whole time they\'ve

5 been looking at Yucca Mountain. That\'s consultation.

6 Consultation is getting the tribes

7 involved early on. But when I talk to you about that

8 study that I was on for the Nevada Test Site, their

9 study was already over. It was already written. That\'s

10 how early on, not just the Department of Energy, not

11 just NRC, but the whole, it seems like the whole

12 government itself treats the tribes.

13 I can stand up here and really just say a

14 lot, but I don\'t know if \-- to me this isn\'t the right

15 place. I mean, I can talk to you individually and tell

16 you how I feel about what should happen.

17 And I know one thing is that if the tribe

18 is at fault for not giving you in my mind the way you\'re

19 supposed to consult with us, but consulting is not up to

20 the tribe to go to the DOE and ask them for pennies so

21 we can go somewhere, but it\'s up to the DOE to bring us

22 dollars because they\'re the ones \-- the Department of

341

1 NRC, you people are the ones that are doing the action

2 that can get back the tribes, it\'s not the tribes

3 getting back the action.

4 So let\'s \-- and I kind of \-- when I

5 listened to the guy from the Department of

6 Transportation, that rule is nice and fine but there\'s

7 only two roads on the reservation.

8 The power of the reservation is not just

9 within its boundaries, the power of the reservation is

10 outside of its boundaries. And that\'s written into the

11 law with the sacred sites law that\'s out. And sacred

12 sites are always on the reservation within, within the

13 boundaries.

14 So I, I know that transportation, we\'ve

15 always been told they can\'t tell us because we\'re a

16 security risk. I\'ve heard that many times. And they\'ve

17 never told us anything. They\'ve never told us when

18 they\'re coming down the road, they never told us what\'s

19 even in the shipment because we\'re considered national

20 security risk.

21 I\'m not sure if all tribes are, and I know

22 that Idaho works better with the tribes up there, but we

342

1 have Yucca Mountain. And they don\'t know how to work

2 with the tribes. They have geologists as their head

3 consultant to the tribes. A geologist. And then I\'ll

4 tell you this and this is the way I feel about what goes

5 on.

6 In \'93, \'92, \'93, I was at a meeting here

7 in Las Vegas with the Aladdin with the national counsel,

8 national congress of American Indians. I was asking

9 Carl Briggs who is the acting manager, they\'ve always

10 got the acting in front, too, the question about \-- I

11 can\'t remember what the question was, but anyways he

12 wouldn\'t give me an answer. He talked about the man on

13 the moon, but he wouldn\'t answer my question.

14 Well after the meeting was over with and I

15 was the vice-chair for the tribe at the time. So not

16 only was I there as a representative of the tribe in the

17 nuclear waste division, but I was also there as a

18 counsel member.

19 Well, after this meeting was over with,

20 the two consultants, one of them is a geologist and I

21 don\'t know what the other, what the lady was, came and

22 yelled and screamed at me. They screamed so bad, so

343

1 hard that they started turning red. And I stood there

2 and I listened. And I didn\'t say anything back to them.

3 I let them do whatever they wanted, but a couple days

4 later the secretary of energy knew about it.

5 That\'s the way a lot of the, especially

6 with Yucca Mountain project, treats the tribes. And

7 even though I stand up and I\'ll, I\'ll tell you things

8 like no trust responsibility, that\'s not a lie. That\'s

9 not something to fight about, that\'s something that

10 needs to be worked over, that needs to be talked about,

11 that needs to be implemented, not just go in one ear and

12 out the other.

13 So it\'s hard for me to tell you, go on

14 with this because it takes too much time.

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Calvin. You

16 made very important points about what early consultation

17 means, what it has to mean and personal interaction

18 between the agency and the high level management of the

19 agency and the tribal counsel.

20 And I\'m sure that there may be NRC staff

21 who will take you up on your offer to talk to you

22 personally after we break tonight.

344

1 Are there other comments? And we\'re gonna

2 go to you now.

3 I would just say from the film crew that

4 if there are other people here who want to do an

5 interview with the, with the film crew that didn\'t want

6 to talk now for whatever reason, that they will be

7 available and would like to do an interview with anybody

8 who wants to share their perspectives on spent fuel

9 transportation, right, Jennifer?

10 JENNIFER : We\'ll be in 5C across the haul.

11 MR. CAMERON: 5C. There\'s a room over there.

12 They\'ll be there after the meeting is over. Anybody who

13 wants to take that opportunity, please do so.

14 And I think we\'re gonna, we\'re gonna go

15 for one more brief comment and then I think we\'ll

16 probably be ready to adjourn for the evening.

17 And if you can just stand up and just \--

18 and stand up and be short and \--

19 MR. VESPERMAN: Okay.

20 MR. CAMERON: And just introduce yourself to

21 everybody.

22 MR. VESPERMAN: Yeah. My name is Gary

345

1 Vesperman. I live here in Henderson, and I have been

2 associated with two companies of interest here. One is

3 the Containment System Incorporated. They have results

4 for a cask that\'s standard of EPA standard, safer,

5 stronger and half the price of the one we\'ve been

6 talking about. They also have just had an engineering

7 nearly completed on the portable truck mounted nuclear

8 fuel, radioactive fuel neutralizer.

The actual transportation technology was developed by another company I
have and that is Cridergy (phonetic.)

This is a photograph of a flake of non-radioactive copper that used to
be radioactive thorium. The flake of radioactivity is called lower
energy nuclear transportation, and currently it can change or transmit
radioactive thorium and increase the radioactivity of storing by 90
percent in about an hour by day and the radioactivity\'s about all gone.

They have also developed the biggest of another process similar to this
that they did about a million times more powerful than the one that they
have.

So really, folks, I believe that exercise that we would be indulging in
is kind of academic because we now have the method, the technology for
neutralizing the radioactivity of waste nuclear fuels right on site at
the nuclear power plant.

MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Gary. And there is a formal statement that
was submitted that will be part of the record.

MR. VESPERMAN: I have extra copies of my letter if anybody wants a copy.

MR. CAMERON: And if you want to talk to Gary about this or get a copy of
the letter, just see him after we adjourn the meeting.

I don\'t think that \-- anybody have any final comments for us besides
the deputy director of thespent fuel project? Susan?

MS. SHANKMAN: I just want to sort of mention the next steps. As Rob told
you, you have way to get in touch with us if you want to get on our
mailing list.

The other thing is the end of phase one which is the development of the
study design will occur in the spring. We will be back in Nevada, we
will probably be as I said in St. Louis and probably in Atlanta.

But the point is that I will tell you that the study design will be on
the web site at least five weeks ahead of the first meeting.

So I would ask that anyone here who\'s interested would either be on the
mailing list or interact with the web site and make sure that you know
what Sandia is proposing to the NRC as a study design. So we can get
your comments either at the meeting or through the web site. So thank
you for coming tonight. Chip.

MR. CAMERON: I would just, I don\'t think anything more needs to be
said. Thank you. Thank you all. And we\'ll be here for personal
interactions. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the proceedings concluded at 8:55 a.m.)