UNITED STATES

NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD

WINTER 2002 BOARD MEETING

January 29, 2002

Bob Ruud Community Center

150 North Highway 160

Pahrump, Nevada

[NWTRB BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT]{.underline}

Mr. John W. Arendt

Dr. Daniel B. Bullen

Dr. Norman Christensen

Dr. Jared L. Cohon, Chair, NWTRB

Dr. Paul P. Craig, Morning Session Chair

Dr. Debra S. Knopman

Dr. Priscilla P. Nelson

Dr. Richard R. Parizek

Dr. Donald Runnells, Session Chair

Dr. Alberto A. Sagüés

Dr. Jeffrey J. Wong, Afternoon Session Chair

[SENIOR PROFESSIONAL STAFF]{.underline}

Dr. Carl Di Bella

Dr. Daniel Fehringer

Dr. Daniel Metlay

Dr. Leon Reiter

Dr. David Diodato

Dr. John Pye

[NWTRB STAFF]{.underline}

Dr. William D. Barnard, Executive Director

Joyce Dory, Director of Administration

Karyn Severson, Director, External Affairs

Linda Hiatt, Management Analyst

Linda Coultry, Staff Assistant

[I N D E X]{.underline}

[PAGE NO]{.underline}.

**Call to Order and Introductory Statement**

Jared Cohon, Chairman

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board . . . . . . . 5

**Welcoming Remarks**

Jeff Taguchi, Commissioner

Nye County, Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

**State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects**

Steve Frishman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

**Program Update**

Lake Barrett, Acting Director

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management

U.S. Department of Energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

**OCRWM Scientific Programs**

Paul Craig, Session Chair

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board . . . . . . . 53

**Yucca Mountain Project Update**

J. Russell Dyer, Project Manager

Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office

U.S. Department of Energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

**Fluid Inclusions**

Drew Coleman

Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office

U.S. Department of Energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

**Yucca Mountain Scientific Update**

Mark Peters

Bechtel SAIC Company

Los Alamos National Laboratory . . . . . . . . . . 83

**Comment Period for Citizens Unable to**

**Speak at Later Public Comment Periods** . . . . . . 127

**Yucca Mountain Hydrogeologic Investigations**

Dan Bullen, Session Chair

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board . . . . . . . 139

[I N D E X]{.underline}

(Cont.)

[PAGE NO]{.underline}.

**Regional Saturated Zone Model Update**

Frank D\'Agnese

U.S. Geological Survey/Yucca Mountain Project. . . 139

**Site-Scale Saturated Zone Model Update and**

**Integration of New Regional and Site-Scale Models**

Al Eddebbarh

Bechtel SAIC Company

Los Alamos National Laboratory . . . . . . . . . . 158

**Unsaturated Zone Flow and Transport Model Update**

Bo Bodvarsson

Bechtel SAIC Company

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. . . . . . . 185

**Results of Recent Nye County Well Testing**

Dave Cox

Questa Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

**External Reviews**

Jeff Wong, Session Chair

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board . . . . . . . 218

**U.S. Geological Survey Letter to**

**Undersecretary Card**

William Alley

U.S. Geological Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

**Clark County Review of TSPA**

John Bartlett, SC&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

**Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste**

**Review of TSPA**

John Garrick, ACNW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

**Public Comment Period** . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

**Adjournment**

Jared Cohon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

[P R O C E E D I N G S]{.underline}

8:30 a.m.

COHON: Good morning. Thank you all for being here for this first meeting
of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board of the year 2002. And it is
a very important meeting, because this is an important time in the
history of the Yucca Mountain Program, for, as you all know, I am sure,
the Secretary has announced his intention to recommend the site to the
President.

My name is Jared Cohon. I\'m the Chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical
Review Board. Our Board meets three to four times a year, usually in
Nevada, and at least one of those meetings in Nye County. And we were
taking a poll before. We believe this is the third time we\'ve met in
Pahrump in recent years, and we\'re very pleased to be back here.

Many of you have come from quite a long way to be with us today, and we
really appreciate that, and I want to extend a special welcome to
Commissioner Jeff Taguchi of Nye County, who will say a few words of
welcome after my remarks.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board was created in the 1987
amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Congress established our
Board as an independent federal agency to evaluate the technical and
scientific validity of activities of the Secretary of DOE related to
nuclear waste disposal. We are required to report our findings and
recommendations at least twice a year to Congress and to the Secretary.

The President appoints Board members from a list of nominees submitted
by the National Academy of Sciences, and this is as specified in the
1987 law which created us. The Board is, by design and by statute, a
highly multi-disciplinary group with areas of expertise covering a full
range of issues related to nuclear waste management.

I\'d like now to introduce you to the members of the Board. And as I do
so, let me remind you that we all serve in a part-time capacity. In my
case, I am President of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. My technical expertise is in environmental and water
resources systems analysis.

John Arendt is senior consultant and founder of John W. Arendt
Associates, Inc. His areas of expertise are nuclear materials,
facilities, quality assurance and control, and inspection. John chairs
our Panel on Waste Management Systems.

Daniel Bullen is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa
State University. His areas of expertise include performance assessment
modeling and materials science. Dan chairs both our Panel on Performance
Assessment and the Panel on the Repository.

Norman Christensen is Professor of Ecology and former Dean of the
Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. His areas of
expertise include biology, ecology, and ecosystem management.

Paul Craig is Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of
California Davis, and is a member of the University\'s Graduate Group in
Ecology. His areas of expertise include energy policy issues, especially
those associated with global environmental change.

Debra Knopman is Associate Director at RAND Science and Technology
located in Arlington, Virginia. Her areas of expertise include
hydrology, environmental and natural resources policy, systems analysis,
and public administration. Debra chairs the Board\'s Panel on Site
Characterization.

Priscilla Nelson is Director of the Division of Civil and Mechanical
Systems in the Directorate for Engineering at the National Science
Foundation. Her areas of expertise include rock engineering and
underground construction.

Richard Parizek is Professor of Geology and Geoenvironmental Engineering
at Pennsylvania State University. He\'s also President of Richard R.
Parizek and Associates, consulting hydrogeologists and environmental
geologists. His areas of expertise include hydrogeology and
environmental geology.

Donald Runnells is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geological
Sciences at the University of Colorado. He also is a technical
consultant to Shepherd Miller, Inc., environmental and engineering
consultants. His areas of expertise include geochemistry,
hydrochemistry, and mineral deposits.

Alberto Sagüés is Distinguished University Professor in the Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South
Florida. His areas of expertise include corrosion and materials
engineering, physical metallurgy, and scientific instrumentation.

Jeffrey Wong is Deputy Director for Science, Pollution Prevention and
Technology in the Department of Toxic Substances Control of the
California Environmental Protection Agency. His areas of expertise
include risk assessment, toxicology, and hazardous materials management.
Jeff chairs our Panel on Environment, Regulations and Quality Assurance.

That\'s our Board.

Our Staff, you\'re not looking that great this morning, Staff.
Generally, I\'m moved to comment on their either satorial splendor or
something. But there\'s just no way to paper this one over. You don\'t
look very good. But they\'re all here, and as Bill just said, they have
had a busy month getting out our award letter. Sitting at the end here
closest to me is Bill Barnard, the Executive Director of the Board.

Let me turn now to a brief overview of what is a very ambitious agenda
that we have planned for today and tomorrow. First, this morning, Steve
Frishman will be standing in for Bob Loux, who unfortunately is snowed
in in the Carson/Reno area. I was there yesterday. I guess I made it out
on like the last plane, or something like that. He will give us some
views on behalf of the State related to the potential siting of a
potential repository\--just one potential is enough\--potential siting
of a repository at Yucca Mountain.

After Steve, Lake Barrett, Acting Director of the OCRWM, will give a
general update on program activities. And the morning presentations will
conclude with a series of talks about OCRWM\'s scientific programs,
including a Project Update by Yucca Mountain Project Manager, Russ Dyer,
a presentation on fluid inclusions by Drew Coleman, and a scientific
update by Mark Peters.

In the afternoon, we will have a special session on Yucca Mountain
Hydrogeologic Investigations, including presentations on regional and
site scale saturated zone modeling by Frank D\'Agnese from the U.S.
Geological Survey, and Al Eddebbarh and George Zyvoloski from Los
Alamos.

Bo Bodvarsson from Lawrence Berkeley Lab with give a presentation
describing new unsaturated zone modeling investigations, and we\'ll
conclude that session with a talk by Dave Cox on results from recent Nye
County well testing.

Also in the afternoon, we will have a series of presentations by
representatives of groups that have commented in the on the technical
basis of Yucca Mountain science. To start that session, Bill Alley,
Chief of the Office of Ground Water of the USGS, will discuss a letter
that the survey sent to DOE Undersecretary, Robert Card, last year.

That will be followed by a presentation of the Clark County review of
the DOE\'s Total System Performance Assessment, which is the main
analytic tool that DOE uses to evaluate potential performance of a
repository at Yucca Mountain. That presentation will be given by John
Bartlett of Sandy Cohen and Associates. As many of you know, from 1990
to 1993, Dr. Bartlett served as Director of OCRWM.

Concluding the afternoon\'s presentations, John Garrick will present the
findings of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission\'s Advisory Committee on
Nuclear Waste. Dr. Garrick was appointed to the ACNW in 1994 and served
as Chair for four years.

On Wednesday morning, we are privileged to have Tonis Papp, Chairman of
the International Review Team that evaluated DOE\'s TSPA. Dr. Papp
traveled here from Sweden, and we appreciate greatly his extra effort to
get here.

A discussion of regulatory considerations and developments will complete
our agenda for this meeting. We will begin with a description of the
legal requirements contained in NRC\'s licensing regulation, 10 CFR 63.
Those requirements will be summarized by Tim McCartin. And Jerry McNeish
from the Yucca Mountain Project team will summarize the TSPA supporting
the Site Suitability Evaluation and the Final Environmental Impact
Statement.

Then Peter Swift will present a report on uncertainty analysis and the
strategies that the DOE might use to address those uncertainties.
Finally, the meeting will conclude with a presentation on the methods
and findings of the NRC Sufficiency Review, which will be presented by
Bill Reamer, Chief of the High-Level Waste Branch at NRC.

Let me turn now to a letter report that the Board sent last week to
Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, President Pro Tempore of the
Senate, Robert Byrd, and Secretary, Spencer Abraham. Copies of the
letter are available in the back in the corner, and we hope you\'ll take
it, read it carefully, and draw your own views about what we\'re saying.

This is an important letter. In it, the Board presented its views on the
technical basis of OCRWM\'s performance estimates for a potential
repository at Yucca Mountain. And I want to take a moment to summarize
for you the key findings and observations that we make in that letter.

In evaluating the DOE\'s technical and scientific work related to
individual natural and engineered components of the proposed repository
system, the Board found varying degrees of strength and weakness. And I
want to emphasize we\'re talking here about the technical and scientific
work that undergirds the performance estimates that DOE has prepared.
And we found varying degrees of strength and weakness. This kind of
variability is not surprising, given that the Yucca Mountain Project is
a first-of-a-kind, and very complex undertaking in many respects.

When the DOE\'s technical and scientific work is taken as a whole, the
Board\'s view is that the technical basis for the DOE\'s repository
performance estimates is weak to moderate at this time.

The Board makes no judgment in its letter on the question of whether the
Yucca Mountain site should be recommended or approved for repository
development. Those judgments, which involve a number of public policy
considerations, as well as an assessment of how much technical certainty
is necessary at various decision points, go beyond the Board\'s
congressionally established mandate. It\'s very important that you
understand this.

The DOE has produced estimates of repository performance using Total
System Performance Assessment, a complicated model which relies on
mathematical representations of and data on several physical and
chemical phenomenon.

Uncertainties due to gaps in data and basic understanding result in the
Board having limited confidence in current performance estimates that
are the products of this performance assessment model. This is not an
assessment of the Board\'s confidence in the Yucca Mountain site. The
focus is on TSPA and performance estimates. At this point, no individual
technical or scientific factor has been identified that would eliminate
Yucca Mountain from consideration as the site of a permanent repository.

Over the last several years, the Board has made several recommendations
that we believe could increase confidence in the DOE\'s projections of
repository performance. For example, the Board believes continued
scientific investigation could increase basic understanding of the
potential behavior of the proposed repository system, and, as our letter
indicates, if the site recommendation is approved, the Board strongly
recommends that these investigations be pursued with vigor.

Confidence in waste package and repository performance potentially could
increase if the DOE adopts a low-temperature repository design.
Furthermore, the Board has recommended that the DOE identify, quantify,
and communicate clearly the extent of the uncertainty associated with
its performance estimates.

The Board has also recommended that the DOE use other lines of evidence
and argument to supplement the results of its performance assessment.
Moreover, the DOE could strength its arguments concerning how multiple
barriers in its proposed repository system provide \"defense-in-depth.\"
The DOE has made progress in each of these areas that I\'ve mentioned,
but more work is needed, in the Board\'s view.

In its letter, the Board acknowledges that eliminating all uncertainty
associated with estimates of repository performance would never be
possible at any repository site, including, obviously, Yucca Mountain.
Policy makers, not the Board, policy makers will decide how much
scientific uncertainty is acceptable at the time various decisions are
made on site recommendation or repository development. The Board hopes,
of course, that the information that we presented in the letter, and the
attachments, will be useful to policy makers as they make these most
important decisions.

Again, we encourage you to take a copy of the letter, and to study it,
as us questions during breaks, tomorrow morning, which I\'ll say more
about in a moment. We\'d be happy to give you our responses. We want you
to understand what we\'re saying.

Let me close my remarks by talking a bit about public participation,
which is something that\'s very important to the Board. We\'ve provided
three opportunities for public comment during this meeting. There is a
brief 15 minute comment period around noon, or 12:15 today. It\'s on the
agenda. I don\'t remember the exact time. And I\'m going to hold that to
15 minutes. We\'re reserving that, and I hope you\'ll respect it, as a
time for those to speak who cannot be here at either of the other two
comment periods at the end of today\'s session and at the end of
tomorrow\'s session. Those sessions can be more or less open ended. No
one wants to be here all day and all night, but we don\'t have to watch
the clock so carefully as we will have to watch it today at noon. So,
please be respectful of that.

To sign up to make a public comment, please see either Linda Hiatt or
Linda Coultry\--Lindas, would you raise your hands\--sitting at that
table. They\'ll be happy to assist you.

As always, we reserve our, or I reserve the right to limit time
specifically so we can stay on schedule. But, again, I\'ll be much more
liberal about it at the end of today and at the end of our session
tomorrow.

Let me also remind you that we always welcome written comments for the
record, either to supplement your oral comments or as your only form of
comment. It\'s especially useful doing it this way when your comments
are lengthy, and time will not allow them to be presented orally.

We\'ll have an opportunity tomorrow morning at 7:30, before the meeting
convenes at 8:30, to have an informal discussion over breakfast in this
room. So, please join us. Board members will be here, and it\'s a chance
just to talk one on one about issues you\'ve heard today, or about
anything at all. We\'ll be happy if you\'ll come.

Finally, let me offer our usual disclaimer so that everybody is clear on
the conduct of our meeting and what you\'re hearing and the significance
of it. Our meetings are spontaneous by design. Ignore the fact that
I\'ve read much of what I\'ve said. It\'s the last time during the
meeting that you\'ll see anything scripted by us. And those of you who
have attended our meetings in the past know that the members, and
especially this group of members of the Board, don\'t hesitate to speak
their minds. But let me emphasize that when they do, that\'s precisely
what they are doing. They\'re speaking their minds. They\'re not
speaking on behalf of the Board.

When we are articulating a Board position, we\'ll let you know.
Otherwise, it\'s that individual Board\'s comments, views. We\'re happy
to hear them, but they do not necessarily reflect the position of the
Board.

With that, again, welcome to our meeting. Thank you for having us here
in Pahrump, and I\'m pleased to introduce to you Commissioner Taguchi.

TAGUCHI: Good morning. I think I\'ll dispense with the formalities
again. I was politely chastised as I walked in here because those of you
who remember last year, I commented on those who wore ties. And, again,
I at this particular point, made reference to the fact that yes, I am
wearing one, so I will function in the same capacity as last year. And
those of you who prefer to remove your tie, may do so at your own
leisure. That\'s kind of one of those things you get caught in your own
trap. I didn\'t expect anybody to remember that.

Truthfully, I was in Washington, D.C. a few months ago, and somebody
commented on that issue. And I find that rather amusing that someone
would remember something like that. All right, I\'ve dispensed with the
formalities.

As Chairman of the Nye County Board of Commissioners, I once again
welcome the Board members and Staff to Nye County. As the host county
for the potential Yucca Mountain repository, we\'ve always appreciated
the Board\'s commitment to meet once a year among the people who will be
most directly and permanently affected by any decision to the site
repository here.

We feel, actually I feel that our speech writers do a pretty good job at
conveying Nye County\'s message, and also add a little bit of
intellectual promise to the speech giver. So, this morning, what I\'m
going to do is I think those of you who are old enough, I think I\'m
going to pull a Barry Goldwater on them. If you remember Senator
Goldwater, certain eccentricities, his staff didn\'t know what he was
going to say, and would always caution him over his remarks. So, I will
tell my staff that the intent of the message will still be there.
That\'s one of those eccentricities I have, and they\'re well aware that
I change words around.

What\'s funny is is that during one speech in Washington, D.C., I just
kind of augmented the speech, and those augmented quotes ended up in the
Washington Post and the Las Vegas Review Journal. Funny.

But anyway, let\'s face some facts. You know, the complicated social and
scientific issues affecting our communities need to be examined very
carefully. Yucca Mountain is going to have an effect on the local
communities, and these issues need to be addressed, as well as the site
itself. These effects will be cumulative as time progresses as the
population of this county grows. And since you were here last, the
population has probably increased roughly 6 to 8 per cent. So, you\'re
looking at a different Nye County than you were when you were here in
Amargosa last year.

New economic endeavors associated and disassociated with the potential
future repository are going to be of critical concern for all affected
parties. And the need for critical review on all of these issues is of
paramount importance in my purview.

This Board, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, and Nye County,
the State of Nevada and others must have continued oversight of the DOE
program at Yucca Mountain. In other words, no sunset clauses. The
Secretary\'s announcement has provided Nevada Bell with more phone
traffic than a Los Angeles freeway at rush hour, and with the
President\'s looming approval of the site, magnifies the importance of
the discussions you will have over the next two days.

Any discussion concerning the letter that Jared has read to the
Secretary and Congress of January 24th is of particular interest to my
staff and me, because we are looking forward to hearing some of those
issues presented in the format that you have outlayed here.

Nye County has appreciated the opportunity to share our scientific data
with you. As you know, our independent science investigation program is
conducting the Early Warning Drilling Project and the Alluvial Tracer
Complex study, and Dr. Dave Cox will bring you an update on our most
recent well testing work. And Dr. Parviz Montazer would like to share
with you his ongoing work on an alternative conceptual design for a
ventilated repository on an informal basis during one of the public
comment periods.

Nye County has remained neutral in its positions concerning the
facility, but Nye County\'s commitment to its residents has revolved
around three specific issues: the health and safety of all Nye County
residents, the method and mode of transportation of waste package, and
the economic structures that are needed to support such a project.

Your discussion this week will send a message to the citizens of Nye
County and its residents, the State of Nevada, and to this country. And,
so, what kind of message will that be? That\'s what we\'re looking
forward to hearing.

Again, on behalf of the Board of Nye County Commissioners, welcome to
Nye County, to Pahrump. We hope you enjoy our hospitality here and our
facilities. I\'m looking forward to hearing what you have to say this
morning, and tomorrow. Thank you very much.

COHON: Thank you, Commissioner Taguchi. Thank you very much.

As I said in my opening remarks, Steve Frishman will stand in for Box
Loux. Bob is from the Nuclear Waste Project Agency. Steve, please,
you\'re on.

FRISHMAN: Thank you. For the record, I\'m Steve Frishman. I\'m
representing Bob Loux, who is Director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear
Projects. Bob has asked me to convey his apologies for not being here,
but he is having a very difficult time even getting out of Carson Valley
with the snowstorm late yesterday afternoon, and on a plane later.

We\'re at a point now where the meaning of the Board has become really a
focus in this Program. I view your role as informing an extremely
important policy decision, and I believe that your letter report has
fulfilled that requirement.

The Governor has responded to the Secretary of Energy on his letter of
intent to recommend the site. The Governor is particularly disturbed
about the fact that it had little to do with site suitability. It had
much more to do with other issues, all relating to security in one way
or another, and there has never been an evaluation of the Yucca Mountain
Project versus an issue of national security or energy security. So,
we\'re in a situation where we have to question whether the perceived
need on the parts of some people is a justification for any compromise
in safety. And we believe that that is not the case, that Yucca Mountain
site suitability has been an issue since the writing of the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act, and suitability has been a word that has been bantered
around for many years, and its meaning has become prescribed by the
Yucca Mountain site.

So, we\'re in a situation now where the Department of Energy and the
Secretary of Energy are claiming that a site is suitable based on a
notion that the site itself helped to invent. Up until about 1995, site
suitability meant are the characteristics of the site such that we can
achieve geologic isolation of high-level radioactive waste.

Since about 1995, suitability has been can we invent a system that
compensates for the fact that the site can\'t meet that requirement. So,
we\'re in a situation now where the Board\'s information to policy
makers is very important, because the policy makers back in 1982 laid
out a policy for geologic isolation of waste, and now the Secretary of
Energy is in the position of trying to make a decision on a different
policy. That different policy being can we engineer a system that will
isolate waste long enough to meet an artificial regulatory compliance
period. And, yes, maybe it can be engineered, but that\'s not what the
policy required.

So, I think it\'s very important that you in your letter have talked
about the natural barrier, and talked about the information that is
lacking, the information that is uncertain, some that can never be any
more certain than it is, and also, in a way, directed the Department to
go back and look and define the natural barrier as well as it can, so
that we can all then understand whether we are dealing with a repository
that meets the existing policy requirement, or whether we\'re dealing
with a federal or national decision that meets the capability of Yucca
Mountain, and, by the way, is somewhat attuned to someone\'s perception
of the need to have Yucca Mountain because there isn\'t anything else on
the list.

So, we take this situation extremely seriously. We are gratified that
the Board has met our expectations in terms of looking at the technical
validity of the Department\'s work, and we\'re going to do our utmost to
make sure that the policy of the nation is upheld. And as you all know,
we\'re going to be doing that both through our somewhat unique methods
of persuasion that we have been involved for all over the world
probably, but also through the courts.

And one of the cases that we\'re going to be making in court is that the
Project, as it is apparently going to be recommended\--it seems pretty
clear that the Secretary made up his mind even before he came to Yucca
Mountain for an hour and a half and kicked the tires\--it\'s pretty
clear that the Secretary is going to make the recommendation, and what
we\'re going to do, among other things, and it\'s already in progress,
as you all know, is we\'re going to challenge whether that
recommendation decision is in tune with the national policy. And we
believe that in a fair test, that it will be found to not be in tune
with the national policy, and if this nation wants a policy that is
dictated by the capabilities of Yucca Mountain, then the Congress needs
to make that decision in an open and proactive way, rather than in a
default.

So, I guess that message is clear, and when the recommendation is made,
because we believe it probably will be, then you\'ll see that we\'re
going to be turning literally everything that we have to trying to keep
this nation from making a mistake that, first of all, is permanent,
second, sets an example to the rest of the world that this nation cares
more about its interests in satisfying economic needs, satisfying
perceptual needs, than it does in satisfying the basic premises of
democracy.

So, that\'s where we are. Thank you.

COHON: Thank you, Steve. Questions from Board members?

Steve, I have a question that\'s sort of a technical policy/legal
question. This key point that the State is going to be pursuing about
whether a site recommendation based on what\'s known as consistent with
policy, is that\--let me make a statement, and then ask you if it\'s
right.

That seems to be based on the old siting guidelines, and the argument
then is that the new siting guidelines are not appropriate. Or are you
saying even under the new siting guidelines, you don\'t believe the
recommendation is justified?

FRISHMAN: We\'re saying under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the
recommendation is not justified, because the Nuclear Waste Policy Act
made it very clear that when you are looking to geologic isolation of
waste, that the geology, and as it encompasses everything, is primary,
and the Act used the word primary.

COHON: So, you don\'t need to argue that the new siting guidelines are
inconsistent with that Act to make that point?

FRISHMAN: We argue that as well.

COHON: Okay. But that\'s sort of a parallel argument in support of your
first one, but the first one doesn\'t rely on the second; is that
correct?

FRISHMAN: The first does not rely on the second. We read the Act, and
the Act laid out what was the intent of Congress and what was the intent
of many of us who were involved with states and other parties in the
evolution of thoughts that led to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.

COHON: I understand.

FRISHMAN: The guidelines are a result of the requirements of Section
112(a) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. So, we have a policy argument
here, and we also have an implementation argument, which is the 960
versus 963 guidelines.

COHON: Debra Knopman?

KNOPMAN: Knopman, Board.

Steve, could you comment about the State\'s position on the technical
scope of the Environmental Impact Statement? And does that come into
play here?

FRISHMAN: That will come into play, and we have seen, and, well, you\'ve
obviously seen our written comments on the Draft Environmental Impact
Statement, and we find it to have fatal flaws. And in case there\'s any
doubt, if the final comes out looking anything like the draft in terms
of the fatal flaws that we pointed out, that will be the subject of
another lawsuit. And the technical basis of it is, in many ways, already
obsolete. What is described as the proposed action really isn\'t the
proposed action anymore in terms of even a first level of detail.

The no action alternative is a hoax, because it doesn\'t represent an
action that any responsible person or government would ever undertake.
And it will be challenged on that basis, and the technical content of
it, as it describes a repository, was only the repository de jure. It
isn\'t anything like what we\'re thinking about in terms of evaluating
the latest information as you were sort of forced into doing, waiting
until November to make a statement in January.

So, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement didn\'t really describe the
project that we\'re even thinking about today, and probably doesn\'t
describe the project that we\'d be thinking about a week from now.

So, one of the things that we\'ve been looking at, and we have asked the
question of the Department, we have an answer from the Department,
regarding what is the meaning of this final Environmental Impact
Statement when it comes out. And we have a statement from a
representative of the Department that the final Environmental Impact
Statement will not even be accompanied by a record of decision, which
means that it is not a final Environmental Impact Statement. The
National Environmental Policy Act lays out that the record of decision
is the legal document, the final impact statement is incorporated into
that.

But for some reason, the Department has made a case to us that the
Secretary\'s decision to recommend the site is not a final decision.
Well, this is bogus. Read the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. And the final
Environmental Impact Statement is a key piece of the Secretary\'s
decision, and we\'re going to require that the Secretary have a final
Environmental Impact Statement that in fact describes what he is
recommending, rather than what was the, as I said before, repository de
jure at the time that the draft was written.

COHON: Priscilla Nelson?

NELSON: Steve, from your perspective, does the State reject the
Department\'s argument for geologic isolation as being demonstrated, or
does the State reject Yucca Mountain as a site capable of doing geologic
isolation? Can you help me to understand and separate those issues?

FRISHMAN: We reject the site, because it is incapable of meeting the
requirements of geologic isolation.

NELSON: So, you reject the site and, therefore, DOE\'s characterization
of the site as one offering geologic isolation would not be possible?

FRISHMAN: DOE is offering a platform for engineered isolation, and
that\'s essentially what Yucca Mountain is. And, so, we reject Yucca
Mountain as a site because it does not meet the needs for geologic
isolation. It\'s just a place to put a metal container.

COHON: Thank you very much, Steve.

FRISHMAN: Thank you.

COHON: We\'ll now hear from Lake Barrett, the Acting Director of OCRWM.
Lake?

BARRETT: Thank you, Jared. Good morning, members of the Board. I have to
admit I\'m the one that spoke to Jeff about his tie this morning,
because I will tell you that we at DOE, when Nye County speaks, we
listen and we do remember.

I appreciate the opportunity to update you on the events since we last
spoke to you in September. Many things have happened, but the most
significant one occurred on January 10th when Secretary Abraham notified
the Governor and the State Legislature of Nevada of his intention to
recommend the Yucca Mountain site to the President for development as
the nation\'s first geologic repository for spent fuel and high-level
radioactive waste.

If the President decides to recommend the site, the State of Nevada will
have the opportunity to disapprove the recommendation, meaning that
Congress will ultimately have responsibility for designating the site
for development, the next stages, or determining another unknown
societal course of action for the responsible management of this
nation\'s spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste.

The Secretary\'s notification comes after an extensive process of review
and consideration of the body of scientific information that we have
collected and analyzed during the 20 plus years of site
characterization. As recognized by the Board in your letter, it is a
matter of policy as to whether to proceed with site recommendation while
the remaining uncertainties in the estimates of the repository
performance are further evaluated.

We agree with you that eliminating all uncertainties would never be
possible for any repository site. The Secretary, after his considerable
personal review, believes that the science is sound and the site is
technically suitable, and should continue into the site designation
process under law.

The Secretary also cited compelling national interests to complete the
siting process and move forward to determine if this will be a suitable
site. Those interests include the importance of a repository in our
national security, the secure disposal of nuclear waste, our energy
security, and our efforts to protect the environment throughout this
nation.

We agree with the statement of the Board that \"no individual technical
or scientific factor has been identified that would automatically
eliminate Yucca Mountain from consideration.\" We also agree that our
technical work is not finished and the ongoing course of research is
appropriate to ensure the safety for the citizens of Nevada and the
nation. This research, as contemplated by the Secretary and also by you,
should reduce the uncertainties and increase the confidence in the
long-term projections of repository performance.

If Yucca Mountain is designated as the repository site, such research
would last throughout the construction, operating and monitoring
periods, as much as 100 to 300 years after its opening.

If the repository development process moves forward, we will continue to
evaluate issues that the Department, the Board and the NRC identify. We
specifically agree on the recommendation in the latest letter to
continue a well-integrated scientific investigation to increase our
fundamental understanding of the potential behavior of the repository
system.

We will be continuing to investigate the performance analyses
sensitivities and uncertainty impacts associated with our future design
and operating mode decisions. We understand your issues associated with
our technical program basis, and our work plans prioritize the actions
to address the key uncertainties based on performance risk, and we
believe these efforts will adequately address the issues in your letter.

Our goal is to develop a flexible repository design that can evolve with
advancements in understanding and analytical capabilities inherent with
a multi-decade program. Accordingly, we are explicitly preserving the
ability to select, from a broad thermal range, a design for repository
licensing and initial operations. We are continuing to develop a
flexible design concept that would have sufficient technical basis for a
license application.

We recognize that maintaining this flexibility will require further
testing and analytical efforts for the lower end of the thermal range.
In order to prepare for licensing, we are expanding our work related to
uncertainties. These particular areas will include:

The continuing theoretical and experimental program on waste package
passive film corrosion, to better understand the underlying fundamental
scientific processes.

The continued review and modification of the Performance Confirmation
Plan to address performance uncertainties far, far into the future.

Continued modeling activities to further incorporate multiple lines of
evidence for processes that affect long-term performance.

Performance of additional uncertainty and sensitivity analyses to better
understand the major contributors to long-term performance.

And continued review and validation of the parameter ranges and features
and events and processes screening to ensure additional insight into
total system performance.

These analyses will be used to supplement information on a
lower-temperature operating mode, and the updated results from the
testing programs will be used to expand the technical basis for the
lower-temperature end of the flexible design.

Our ability to perform the desired technical and scientific work
continues to be constrained by funding. While the President has
supported increased Program funding, we rely on Congress to make the
final decisions to fund the important research called for by ourselves,
the Board and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

This year, Congress appropriated \$375 million, a significant shortfall
of \$70 million from the President\'s request for this year. Of this
funding, nearly \$300 million will be used for the Yucca Mountain
project testing, evaluation, and license application development
activities. A small amount, approximately \$4 million, is earmarked to
initiate transportation planning and preparation for that endeavor,
should it occur.

Next Monday, I will be able to share with you details of the
President\'s 2003 budget request for this Program. At this moment, all I
can say is the Secretary and the Administration will strongly support a
continuing comprehensive scientific and technical program to ensure
public health and safety for the citizens of Nevada and this nation.

Last year, in response to repeated funding shortfalls over the past
several years, and especially this year, and in anticipation of the
situation in the future, we began a process of evaluating and
identifying the scope and schedule impacts on the body of additional
work to support a license application. Our management operating
contractor, Bechtel-SAIC Corporation, is developing a revised baseline
that will include the work supporting a submittal for a license
application.

The revised work plan and schedule will focus the project on the work
needed to meet our goal of submitting the potential license application
to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 2004 time frame, and
sustaining our potential ability to receive material from sites around
this nation at a facility in 2010. The revised baseline for developing
the Yucca Mountain facility is a careful balance of the technical,
legal, institutional, managerial, and fiscal constraints on a complex
program of this size.

We are also currently awaiting the National Research Council\'s report
on the design and operational strategies associated with the concept of
a staged geologic repository facility. We expect the report to be
completed later this spring. Thus far, stepwise development for a
geologic repository facility, with the design and operational
flexibility and reversibility, coupled with a continuous learning
feedback loop, has shown promise that could be extremely important for
maintaining confidence for this first-of-a-kind program.

We are also awaiting the confirmation of Dr. Margaret Chu. She has been
nominated by the President to be the director of this Program. I would
admit many of you may know her from her scientific work at Sandia
National Laboratories. It is our hope that her extensive talents and
energies will be available to this Program soon.

In closing, we have reached a key decision milestone point after more
than 20 years of study. I am extremely proud of the work of the
thousands of scientists, engineers and experts have performed over the
site characterization phase of this Program. If this Program is allowed
to continue, I am confident this team will serve the citizens of
Amargosa Valley, Nye County, the State of Nevada, the United States of
America, and the global community as a whole very, very well.

I also believe that continued constructive views of this Board has made
our technical program stronger than it was, and you have been an asset
to this Program in your comments over many years. I would also like to
extend gratitude to you, the Board members, and your staff for many
years of dedicated, exceptional work. It has been a pleasure to work
with you on what I believe is a significant first-of-a-kind endeavor
that is addressing a very, very important worldwide societal need and
responsible management of this material.

I thank you for your contributions, and I would address any questions
you may have for me.

COHON: Thank you, Lake. Questions? Dan Bullen?

BULLEN: Bullen, Board.

Lake, you mentioned some of the funding constraints associated with sort
of the change. If there\'s a recommendation and if you proceed to
license application, how are you going to balance that big emphasis on
changing to the we\'ve got to get the license application in versus we
have to continue the baseline science and the baseline fundamental
development, as outlined both in our letter\--and, by the way, thank you
for the kind words about the continuation of the scientific work,
because I think that\'s very important. But I just wondered how do you
do that balance now that the emphasis would shift toward license
application, and that\'s more engineering as opposed to science? Could
you comment on that?

BARRETT: Well, we don\'t see them as separate. They\'re going to be
integrated together, integrated science. The natural science, as any
engineering, work together in an integrated system. So, you can\'t just
do one and not do the other. Yes, there will be more of a shift to bring
along more of the engineering that we\'ve had to defer over the last
several years, but pre-closure engineering we need to accelerate.

But we are also going to continue a very substantial scientific program
as well to address the Nuclear Regulatory Commission key technical
issues that you\'ve heard about. We need to continue work there. But it
will be more focused work on the safety case for a license application.
But it will be a balanced program. You cannot just do all engineering,
you can\'t do all natural sciences. It\'s difficult.

I am very pleased with the support we\'ve gotten so far within the
Administration. The numbers that will be announced next week I think
will show that. But it\'s premature for that. We did put our report out
last summer, alternate means of financing and managing the Program for
the future to Congress, which talks about freeing the rate payer funds
that are paid into the government treasury, you know, for use in this
program. If we can work that out, you know, within the Congress, if the
site, of course, is approved. I believe there will be sufficient funds
to do a job that we can all be proud of on an integrated science
program.

BULLEN: Bullen, Board.

Along those lines, just one more quick question, and that was you did
mention that last year\'s budget had sort of a very small amount of
money for transportation, and I guess you can\'t tip your hat yet at
what next year\'s budget might have. But transportation is an issue
that\'s very important to the people in this county, and so I just
wonder if you might want to comment on the types of studies or types of
information that you\'d need for transportation. Or is that just a
nationwide issue?

BARRETT: It\'s very important within Nye County. It\'s very important in
the State of Nevada. And it\'s also a very important issue nationwide.
And it\'s also a worldwide issue as well. It\'s not well understood that
today in Europe, as much fuel as is being moved in Europe today, as will
be moved when this program is running in full capacity ten years from
now. So, it is being done, and it\'s being done successfully, you know,
within the industry.

What our plan would be is to basically use private industry and the
industries that exist and build on that. We have a draft and request for
proposal on our website which lays out our basic business plan to do
that. What we are presently looking at is how we can best modify that
and improve that with the experiences we\'ve had in the last five years
with that, and a better integration basically of the states and local
and public safety aspects into the national program. And also the
siting, once the siting is decided under the Act, then routing within
the State of Nevada will be an issue that we basically would want to
engage Nevadans to basically primarily say what would be the best
situation for routing intra Nevada.

BULLEN: Okay, thank you.

COHON: John Arendt?

ARENDT: Arendt, Board.

I have two questions. The first is when you speak of sound science, what
do you mean by sound science? And, secondly, what is the status of Dr.
Chu\'s confirmation?

BARRETT: The last one is easy. She was nominated by the President. She
cleared the Energy Committee. She now awaits floor action by the Senate.
This is a time-honored tradition back to the time of George Washington
to basically torture nominees, no matter what they are, kind of thing.
So, we just have to wait until the 100 Senators decide it\'s okay and/or
a decision is made there in the political room.

Regarding sound science, we have sufficient information scientifically,
sound science, for the step we\'re about to take. We are not in a
situation today where we are sealing a repository up and walking away in
an irreversible situation. We\'re nowhere near that. We are at a
situation now, we believe, there is sufficiently sound science to make a
site designation to go to the next step, which is a political process.
The Governor has the right to disapprove the site, or the State
Legislature, and it may be disapproved. It\'s a political decision that
will be made, but you need to have sufficient science to start that
process.

Then there\'s another step for license application. We have scientific
work to do for a sufficient license application. So, it is not sound
enough today for a license application, but we believe we can be
tomorrow.

Then for receipt of material, nominally 2010, there will be another
demonstration, and the science will be sounder yet. And then in the
monitoring period, you know, have sufficiently sound to receive it, and
to go to the next steps.

So, it\'s sufficient information for each step of the process, because
this is a staged process. We believe that it\'s sufficiently sound for
this step after, you know, almost \$4 billion of study and 20 years.
Others may have a different opinion. The Board, I think you\'ve spoken
very clearly in your report how you saw it, and there is never zero
uncertainties. So, how certain must it be? How much uncertainty can you
tolerate is basically a call, and then review of the Secretary, after
his review of this, does he believe it\'s sufficient at this step?

COHON: Debra Knopman?

KNOPMAN: Knopman, Board.

Lake, in your statement as you give the list of research areas that you
intend to pursue, I believe I heard you say something about further
understanding of sub-systems behavior. Is that correct?

BARRETT: Yes.

KNOPMAN: Does that mean that you\'re going to do the what we\'ve called
the \"one on\" analysis now?

BARRETT: We are looking at that, and we haven\'t gotten the results from
Bechtel, as they are struggling and balancing this with our existing
funds that we have in 2002. How much of that we\'re going to do right
now, I don\'t know. At the end of the month, or in March, they\'re going
to come in with their proposals. I don\'t know how much of that is going
to be done now. We\'re going to be looking at that, you know, more as we
go forward. I\'m not sure, the jury is really not in yet on the balance.

KNOPMAN: Do you think it should be done?

BARRETT: Do I think it should be done?

KNOPMAN: Yes.

BARRETT: I don\'t know. I mean, I think there\'s value in doing it, and
it\'s an issue of how much\--if we had gotten our full budgets, we would
have done it. Okay? I think EPRI has done some of the work, that you\'re
well aware of, and I think there\'s value in doing more of that. So, I
don\'t know if it\'s going to quite make the cut.

KNOPMAN: Maybe by way of explanation for the audience, what has been
referred to as \"one on\" analysis, means that you look at the behavior
of the system, adding barriers, adding engineering, adding different
processes, one at a time, to gain insight into the workings of
individual components, as opposed to looking at the whole complex system
at once and one at a time, taking something away to try to understand
what the value of that barrier might be. That\'s called, what I just
described, \"one off.\" The Board has recommended on various occasions a
\"one on,\" that is, starting with the system just as it is without the
engineering, and gradually adding things one at a time to gain insight
into sub-system behavior.

BARRETT: And there is value in that.

COHON: Jeff Wong?

WONG: Jeff Wong, Board.

Lake, as Steve Frishman earlier claimed, that the basis for the decision
to move forward is inconsistent with the demands of the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act, do you have any official or personal views, or responses to
that particular claim?

BARRETT: Well, we\'re getting into legal challenges. We have multiple
cases before the courts now. I\'m an engineer. I am not a lawyer. And I
would say that our counsel and the Department of Justice, as we\'ve
presented what we\'ve done, are completely comfortable that we are
complying with the law and the intent of the law as it is. And I\'ll
leave it at that.

COHON: Priscilla Nelson?

NELSON: Sort of in followup, the question about the demonstration of
geologic isolation as opposed to the preeminence of the waste package in
terms of the outcome of TSPA, and as a tool for sensitivity analysis of
importance, Steve\'s response indicated that, I interpreted it as the
overwhelming predominance of the waste package in the TSPA and in the
analysis does not satisfy the sense of some requirement for
understanding the natural processes, independent from what the waste
package is doing. And that sense of balance, I noticed in the string of
activities, you had technical, legal and other things that you\'re
kicking into now, the sense of the natural system wasn\'t there, unless
you would include that in technical.

This question is one which continues, and it really is very important to
the State. With the focus directly on LA, though, and with the TSPA as
the tool and the waste package being the predominant entity in providing
isolation during the regulatory period, it\'s going to take\--natural
systems may well take a back seat. When you say balance, how are you
going to achieve balance regarding this in the Project?

BARRETT: Very difficult to do. First of all, technical to me, the way we
look at it in the Program, is a combination of both the engineered and
the natural sciences. So technical covers both of those. It\'s not just,
you know, engineering, science and engineering. So, we constantly are
balancing the work we\'re doing in both of those to try to get a
balance, and they will see-saw a little bit as we go along. We must
demonstrate regulatory compliance. The waste package is an important
part of it. The natural system is as well. We can\'t have all our eggs
in one basket or the other, and we try to have the balance.

Initially, this Program back in the Eighties and the early Nineties, it
was 80, 90 per cent on the natural sciences, as I think it should have
been that. And then we basically tried to shift, we\'ve added to it the
best available technology, talking about after the \'92 Act and EPA
standard, the best available technologies.

What we\'re looking for is to build the best system that we could at
Yucca Mountain, and the Board was part of that back in the early
Nineties, where the Board recommended, I don\'t know if any of you
members were there at that time, but basically looking at the more
robust waste package. And we started to do that as well, and we now in
our projections, although they are estimates, we\'re coming in several
orders of magnitude below the regulatory standards.

But we\'re not just comfortable with that. We still want to continue to
look at the uncertainties, and we will continue to work in the license
application on both natural and the engineered side, and the work that
Bechtel is now doing is they\'re re-balancing the scope of the LA to
have the right balance of natural science and engineering. But there is
more of a shift as we\'re adding more of the engineering in now, but we
are keeping a very strong top on the natural. But it does turn out to be
a judgment.

One of the things in the next meeting, we\'ll have Bechtel\--done that,
and I think you will be quite impressed with some of the work that
Bechtel has done, sort of looking at the various inputs in as we\'re
trying to basically make the management decisions about how much money
goes to unsaturated versus saturated versus stable film versus
manufacturing capabilities\--with the waste packages, to try to balance
that program out.

NELSON: Nelson, Board.

Just in followup, I guess maybe the focus comes down to the soundness of
the natural science, and the soundness of the engineered barrier science
and engineering. When the TSPA, as it\'s constructed now, is the tool
and the waste package is there, it\'s very difficult to, with clarity,
view the soundness of the natural science as it impacts on geologic
isolation. So, the offer that you just indicated, that Bechtel would
come and show us that this is important to them, and that they\'re
working to achieve a balance there, is important, and I appreciate that,
but the Board has asked and I think the international review panel has
also asked for this idea of an understanding of the natural system
separate from the waste packages being really a fundamental underpinning
of that soundness of science appreciation.

BARRETT: The \"one on\" that Debra was referring to actually do that,
and we\'ve talked quite a bit about that. And it\'s not our intention to
just mask the natural with a very good waste package. That\'s not what
we want. That\'s not what we want to do.

NELSON: But I must admit, honestly\--Priscilla Nelson talking,
Board\--that the number of times that something has seemed important and
it doesn\'t show up as important in the TSPA sensitivity analysis, is a
source of continuing wondering for me in some areas. I appreciate it.

COHON: David Diodato?

DIODATO: Diodato, Staff.

Lake, you talked about the idea of delivering the license application to
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2004, in that time frame, and there
are other agreements I guess with the NRC at this time to come to
closure on some of these key technical issues, 290-some key technical
issues. Is the schedule for LA consistent with achieving closure on all
those issues at this time, I mean, the agreements as they stand now?

BARRETT: This is a key part of the license application scheduling that
Bechtel is doing, is to address all of those key technical issues, as we
said we would. The details of that, and the balance of that, we\'re
working that all out for the balance for the rest of \'02 and \'03. It
also depends very much on how successful we are with our \'03 budget
presentation. So, yes, that will be in, and the key technical issues for
the NRC is a very critical driver in the scheduling.

COHON: Richard Parizek?

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board.

Just a point of clarification. There\'s obviously studies that could
continue in the engineering, and studies could continue in the natural
science area. On the other hand, there\'s a question of what reliance do
you put on the natural barrier. You\'re not saying that you could put
the waste anywhere, given that robust waste package? We\'ve often heard
that statement by various people. You\'re saying there is credit in the
mountain, and your program reflects that, and you wouldn\'t necessarily
agree with Steve Frishman\'s view that there is really\--not doing you
any favors in that mountain.

BARRETT: Absolutely. They have to go together.

PARIZEK: And to that extent\--

BARRETT: You cannot rely on one.

PARIZEK: To that extent, you\'ll continue the natural science
investigations that underpin that conclusion?

BARRETT: Yes, absolutely. The natural science is an important part of
the program, and will remain so.

COHON: Lake, I have a statement, and then a question.

The statement builds on some questioning by two of the Board members
before, and you can respond to it, but it\'s not necessary to do so. And
that\'s the concern that I have, and I think it\'s reflected among most
of the Board members, that as the Program shifts post-SR in its focus,
that the effect of that will be to concentrate the science program in a
way that is very much driven by what\'s needed for LA, and then
presumably after that, performance confirmation.

And I\'m not questioning whether that\'s the right strategy or not, but
the concern is, and one of the things that one cannot, should not forget
about is in looking at such a complicated system that has to perform
over such a long period of time, there are potential surprises,
so-called unknown unknowns, things you can\'t fathom right now. And the
more focused you are in your investigations, in my view, the less likely
you are to detect potential surprises when you want to detect them,
before they matter.

So, that\'s\--I\'m not sure what one does about that, other than one
possibility is to make sure that all that DOE does is subject to very
rigorous and intensive review from outside from all sorts of different
quarters, people with maybe ideas that are totally out to lunch, you
might think, but they can be very productive and creative.

The question. In your statement you made reference several times to
things in our letter with which the DOE agrees. Are there things with
which you disagree in our letter?

BARRETT: As a judgment issue, I disagree with the weak to moderate view.
That\'s my opinion. I understand your opinion on that. But I don\'t
think it is weak. That\'s my judgment on the science. Basically, I think
as you go through on the strengths and the weaknesses, I would, again a
judgment call, but I\'m perfectly satisfied and I think you did an
outstanding job in your report. I think there could have been a little
more discussion on the strengths versus the weaknesses. But nonetheless,
I\'m sure the State will tell you the weaknesses needed more work versus
the strengths. But overall, I think your report was very fair and very
well done.

COHON: Other questions for Lake? Don Runnells?

RUNNELLS: Runnells, Board.

Lake, this question that keeps coming up about the role of the natural
system, it seems to me that in the Repository Safety Strategy Report,
there was a graph that essentially was a \"one off\" graph for the
natural system that showed that its role in reducing the doses was
something like six or eight or ten orders of magnitude. That\'s
something we don\'t often hear about. It seems to me that that would be
something that would be something that would be a concrete kind of
response to the question does the natural system play any important
role. Am I correct in recalling that? And it is of that large a role,
isn\'t it? I mean, it\'s many, many orders of magnitude.

BARRETT: Yes. The natural system at Yucca Mountain is a very good
system, despite the report that you might hear about. You know, what
we\'re trying to do is to have a system that provides a very good margin
of safety, you know, for the entire system. So, we are going to look at
the\--we are looking, we have looked a lot at the nature, and there is a
lot of contribution from the natural system.

When we had the first big budget cuts, when the budget got cut in half
in \'95, we had to make a lot of very hard choices as to what we\'d do
with what resources we had, as we did that 800 person layoff back then.
And some people argued the time is basically to stop the natural science
work and just go to the waste package and the titanium drip shields, and
that sort of thing, and we chose not to do that, because we felt that
was going too far with not a balanced program. And we basically
struggled with that.

But nonetheless, there is a lot of evidence, and we have not gone out
and, as we say, spotlighted the natural aspects of it, because it gets
more into a presentational part as it does to the fundamental science.
And the TSPA number, we\'re not satisfied at all if the number comes out
to be 2 per cent less than what the regulatory standard is. That
doesn\'t mean you\'re home free at all. I mean, the whole
defense-in-depth concept, you know, alternate lines of evidence are
going to be necessary and required in the licensing process.

So, the black box TSPA is not the end-all, and we try to keep a proper
balance that TSPA is necessary, but insufficient, you know, to
successfully finish this. And when we get into the presentational
aspects, I would like to be able to have clear presentational materials
to counter charges that, you know, you could put the waste package in
the\--you know, Yucca Mountain leaks and Yucca Mountain is a bad site,
et cetera, and yet we have not spent resources really in the
presentational aspects of it, and in many quarters, it would be helpful
to have it, and we don\'t have it as crisply as we would like it. And
the \"one on\" might do that. That\'s why we are thinking about it.

COHON: I want to just pick up on your last comment about TSPA being
necessary but not sufficient\--my words, not yours. But that was the
thrust of it, something with which the Board of course strongly agrees.
And echoing some comments earlier when people made reference to the
international review group of TSPA, also I think there was an ACNW
committee, one of the things that comes out of there is the importance
of understanding the repository system as a system, and not just
demonstrating compliance. The latter does not necessarily imply the
former.

And this idea of understanding the repository as a system really
integrates and brings together Priscilla\'s concerns especially, but not
just her\'s, about the natural system. You just heard from Don as well,
and others, and my issue also about the unknown unknowns, anticipating
surprises. The better and deeper, the richer the fundamental
understanding, the better positioned the Program is to anticipate issues
like that.

BARRETT: A few years ago when we started with the monitored geological
repository, we changed the name and we ended in a substantial
monitoring\--it was that in mind, to allow more time for science to look
at these things so we could have more confidence in our\--see them go
forward. So as part of our plan in making this reversible stepwise was
to bring that component in, because we don\'t, you know, on the issue
that technological arrogance that, you know, you know all the answers
and you\'re going to do this, that\'s not here, and we\'re not there.
But we think we have sufficient science for the step that we are at, you
know, in the scheme of things in this nation.

COHON: Let me observe that if all goes as you plan, this is likely your
last appearance before the Board in your current capacity. I have to, as
the Chairman of a Board that is fiercely independent of DOE, I have to
be measured in what I say at this moment, but indeed I think your
appreciation of what the Board is and the fact that it is independent of
DOE and must remain so is one of the most noteworthy things I think that
you\'ve contributed to the Program, from our point of view. So, that\'s
probably as much as I should say, but on behalf of the Board, we thank
you for all that you\'ve done, and we congratulate you.

BARRETT: And I thank the Board.

COHON: Thank you. To show you what a caring chairman I can be, you have
an extra minute by that clock. We have a 16 minute break, until five
after 10:00.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.)

COHON: Please take your seats. We\'re about to reconvene. For Board
members benefit, I want you to know that this publication at your places
is given to you compliments of Sally Devlin. And though I don\'t believe
she\'s a shareholder in Saddle West, she also wants us to know about the
two for one lunch special at Saddle West today. Apparently, there are
coupons just outside the door there for those who want to take advantage
of it.

Our next session will be chaired by Board member Paul Craig. Paul,
you\'re on?

CRAIG: Russ, you\'re on. And the procedure is that we are required by
law to end at 12 o\'clock, Jerry\'s law, for public comment, and we will
do that. So, you are scheduled for 30 minutes, 20 minutes of talk, and I
will warn you when you\'ve got five minutes to go.

DYER: Fair enough, Dr. Craig.

Okay, let\'s go ahead and get started. Next slide, please. I\'m going to
set the stage for some of the scientific and technical talks that will
follow, but I\'m going to also talk a little bit about some other things
and Project status. I\'ll cover some of our recent accomplishments,
Project path forward, touch on a technical issue, and then talk about
some of the evolution of the Project that lies before us.

Recent accomplishments. Of course, as has been alluded to several times
today, our mission, the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project
mission was to provide a technical basis for the national decision
regarding the development of a repository at Yucca Mountain. That has
been provided.

To echo Lake\'s comments, we absolutely appreciate the Board\'s
participation and contributions, particularly those instances where the
Board\'s insights and observations helped us to develop a more robust
technical basis.

This is a busy diagram. It\'s probably better in the handout. This is
the document hierarchy that we\'ve talked about over the years, with
supporting documentation down at the bottom, the process model reports,
and below those, the analysis and modeling reports, and below those, all
of the data reports, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, some of
the documents that came out in the spring and summer. And then at the
top, or near the top of the pyramid here, there are a couple of things,
the NRC sufficiency comments of course are in place. We\'ve completed
the fee adequacy and TSLCC. Other documents are part of the decision
basis for the potential Secretarial recommendation, and the potential
Presidential recommendation. So, this document hierarchy has been filled
in over time.

What lies before the Project here? Well, we will continue to support the
SR process until the final determination, either affirmative or
negative, on site designation. Should the site be designated, the
Project is planning to prepare and submit a license application.

We have some major work activities that will lead to development of a
license application. These include addressing the 293 agreement items
reached between the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission on the NRC\'s Key Technical Issues, which are mapable into
the process of modeling report organizational scheme that we use.
Continuing pre-licensing interactions with the NRC, and also continuing
technical meetings with the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. We
have scientific activities underway and that are planned that we will
continue to address uncertainties, and we\'ll be doing more work in the
design arena.

As Lake said, science will continue at Yucca Mountain. We have some
tests that have been going on for a long time, the drift scale test, for
instance, which we turned the power off to in January. We will continue
to monitor that test through its cool-down period for the next four
years. In the test evaluation arena, there are other hydrologic and
long-term thermal tests that we\'ll be looking at. Materials testing and
evaluation, there are tests that are ongoing, and there are some that
are in the \"Q\" that we hope to initiate soon.

Site and regional environmental monitoring has been going on for a very
long time, and we will, of course, continue that, and continuous
improvement of models and analysis, and I think this is kind of the
heart of a couple of the questions a little bit earlier. I\'ll call it
the technical program, the science and technical program must be robust
enough to continually challenge the basis for the models that are used,
either at the process level model, or its roll-up into a TSPA.

Obviously, if something is not addressed in a TSPA, then it is
absolutely insensitive to the TSPA. So, what are the critical things
that need to be in the Total System Performance Analysis? And part of
the Program has to be based on a philosophy of continually challenging
the adequacy of the sub-models and the total systems model.

Engineering activities will advance. Detailed surface, subsurface and
waste package designs will evolve. We\'ll be looking a construction and
fabrication techniques, operational concepts and methods, and looking at
quality control and safety processes. And I\'ll talk a little bit more
about this toward the end of my presentation.

An example of a technical issue that arose in the spring that was
addressed successfully, and I\'m just going to hit the highlights of it
here, Mark Peters will talk about it a little bit more, what happened
was that we took water samples from the drift scale test in superheated,
greater than 140 degrees centigrade zones, and those water samples
showed relatively high fluoride concentrations, and a low pH.

This could have considerable impact on waste package performance,
because the fluoride could be deleterious to waste package and drip
shield materials performance. A hypothesis was that the source was
either Viton borehole packers or Teflon tubing, or potentially the host
rock itself. If it was the host rock itself, then this obviously has
some very strong implications on waste package performance.

We responded rapidly. The Thermal Test Team put together a strategy to
identify the source of the fluoride, and within a few days, had a
proposed strategy which was approved through the system. And what that
strategy essentially focused on was looking at boreholes that did not
have the suspect introduced materials, characterizing the waters out of
those boreholes, and to determine whether we were seeing the fluoride in
that water vapor.

We collected the water samples, and then we took some of the Viton and
Teflon packers and tubing and put those, some that were already somewhat
degraded, put those into those boreholes, the pristine boreholes, where
we had taken water samples, and then observes what happened there.

The results of the tests were that the fluoride concentrations and low
pH were detected only after the introduction of suspect materials. This
leads us to conclude that this phenomena is associated with the
materials. It is not a result of some kind of geochemical process
between the steam and the rock. The source of the fluoride is de-gassing
of the hydrogen fluoride or leaching of fluoride at high test
temperatures.

There\'s a couple of things I\'d like to kind of point to, and this is
an example of the kind of environment we want to have, and that is that
an issue was raised, it was addressed by management, it was floated up
to top management very quickly. We paid attention to it. We put
resources on it. And we tried to resolve this uncertainty, an unknown
unknown, if you will, that had popped up, tried to determined what was
the cause of it, what it really meant.

The technical concern was quickly and effectively resolved by
investigators from the Thermal Test Team. The results have led to an
improved understanding of the experimental environment and they removed
the concerns raised by the initial fluoride detection. They\'ve also
provided a lesson learned, reinforced some of our earlier constraints
that we put on materials selection for the repository environment. If
you\'re not very careful about what you introduce into the repository
environment, you can change the environment in ways that you perhaps did
not think of.

The next topic I would like to briefly touch on is an evaluation of
thermal operating modes. This is a report that was just finished last
week. I hope it was distributed to the Board. This is a snapshot in time
evaluation. This is what we promised in our letter back in May, an
integrated look at pros and cons of high temperature versus low
temperature thermal operating modes. It draws on a lot of existing
information, the Supplemental Science and Performance Analysis, the
Preliminary Preclosure Safety Assessment, and some other previous work.

What we\'re looking at is the suite of uncertainties and risks that one
needs to look at, not just the postclosure performance question, but
preclosure safety and performance, costs, constructability, some of the
other questions, and trying to get an understanding of is there any one
approach, whether it\'s high or low, that based on our state of
knowledge now, is absolutely preferable.

The results of the integrated evaluation, and as I said, this is
probably the first of a series that will occur, either operating mode is
likely to comply with applicable regulations and standards. The
uncertainties associated with the lower temperature mode appear to be
fewer, certainly in the postclosure performance arena. The costs of a
higher temperature mode are lower. Construction and operational safety
appears to be a little better in the higher temperature mode. But this
is based on our state of knowledge at this time.

In related work, work is ongoing to enhance the flexible design to get a
design that can truly be operated either at a higher temperature
operational mode or a lower temperature operational mode. Design
evaluation study will be completed to support the license application.

We have scientific analyses ongoing to improve the technical basis for
the waste package. Right now, the target for what is considered a low
temperature goal is 85 degrees C. We would like to develop a better
basis as to whether that\'s 82 or 91 or exactly what that might be. We
will complete additional analysis in conjunction with the in-drift
design development, and we\'re pursuing further development of in-drift
ventilation models.

Now, as we move from one phase of the Project to another, from the site
characterization focus of the Project into a licensing focus, there are
things that are expected to occur in an NRC dominated environment that
are a little different from the research and development environment
that we\'ve experienced for almost two decades.

There are expectations of a license applicant that differ from the
environment that is pervasive in a collegial scientific research
environment. Discipline is one of the main things that is expected in an
NRC licensing environment. And these are some of the things that are
expected in an NRC environment, some of which you\--strict and literal
procedural compliance, that\'s a discipline issue. Attention to detail.
But there are some others that are not inconsistent with a good research
environment also. Commitment to excellence, an inherent questioning
attitude, continuous improvement, teamwork, collaboration and
communication, honest objective self-assessment, regular and critical
reviews of work, internal and external reviews of work. So, yes, there
are some changes we need to make, but I think we are well poised to move
into that new environment.

In the coming months, we\'ll take several important steps toward
defining our evolving mission. We have a large strategic planning effort
going on that Lake alluded to. We\'ll be completing detailed multi-year
work plans, trying to sort out what\'s the most important thing to do
during this balancing that we were talking about, because we are living
in a realm of limited resources, large, but limited resources. We\'ll be
working with stakeholders and oversight bodies, including the Board, to
clearly communicate our plans and objectives, and to seek your input and
feedback.

We\'ve provided the basis for the national decision, and we\'ll see how
that plays out over the coming months. We plan to develop and submit a
license application should the site be designation. The site designation
action lies ahead of us still.

Work activities will include continuing technical advances in science
and engineering. And we are in the process of implementing cultural
changes needed to make this transition from site characterization into
the licensing focus, not dominated, but focused organization.

With that, Dr. Craig, I think I\'m available for questions here.

CRAIG: Thank you, Russ. You\'re definitely way ahead of scheduling, and
that\'s good, because we\'re going to have a lot of conversation. All
right, Norm and Don, but let me ask a couple first of all, and Richard
and Jerry.

DYER: And Dan.

CRAIG: And Dan.

DYER: I should have talked slower, obviously.

CRAIG: This kind of interaction is definitely the way to go. I\'d like
to ask you to say something about your perception of how the Board and
you folks might interact in this next phase. What kind of changes do you
see as desirable in the next phase of the operation in terms of
relations between the Board and the DOE?

DYER: I guess I hadn\'t really thought that any major change in the
structure approach was necessary. I think the technically focused
reviews and candid feedback and very, very valuable for us. That\'s
where we get a lot of very valuable information.

CRAIG: We continue as normal, as we have in the past. Good. Thank you,
that\'s very helpful.

Norm?

CHRISTENSEN: Christensen, Board.

Russ, I think the two things that you emphasized here, one of them is
the transition into the licensing mode, and the kinds of cultural
changes that are occurring, also the emphasis on the, let\'s call it the
refinement of a flexible approach. It strikes me that these two things
at least potentially come into conflict, in that many of the
expectations of the NRC are going to require increasingly, if you will,
a stationary target to shoot at. And the issue of, for example, the KTIs
and how\--I guess the question I\'m getting to is do you perceive some
conflict, as the program wishes to move forward with a flexible design,
in meeting the expectations of the so-called nuclear culture of the NRC
and its expectations to be able to really pin down the features of the
design?

DYER: Not necessarily. We can take the flexible design forward and make
a rational informed decision at some point in the future, and if we care
to pursue a point design in the licensing phase, we can have a basis for
that decision. That does not mean that we are precluded from continuing
to examine ways that the system might be made better.

CHRISTENSEN: So, the issues, for example the KTIs that may come up,
let\'s say, with a design that might be significantly cooler than the
design that\'s currently being considered, you feel like there is the
flexibility in the licensing process that will occur over, let\'s say,
the next four years that will allow that kind of flexibility?

DYER: Yes, I think so. Now, we\'re talking about 293 agreements which
are predicated on some working assumption going forward. If the basis
for that changes, if we were to decide to go to, say, a lower
temperature operating mode, we\'d probably have to revisit and perhaps
renegotiate some of those agreements. They\'d have to be re-couched in
terms that are applicable to the new situation, whatever that might be.

CHRISTENSEN: Okay.

CRAIG: Don?

RUNNELLS: Runnells, Board.

A couple of questions that are related to each other. One is first you
haven\'t talked about the schedule, other than to mention if the site is
designated, the license application becomes, you know, the dominating
feature, and that\'s 2004.

Prior to that, what would the next major documents be that will be
produced? What will we see next, let\'s say, in terms of major
documents?

DYER: I guess I would expect to see a couple of things come out. As the
design documents mature and become available, those would be available,
I think, and I suspect those would come out not as some huge design, but
there will probably be periodic design reviews that we\'ll go through at
certain stages along the way.

RUNNELLS: And are those prior to license application? Those are prior to
2004?

DYER: Yes, some will be. I mean, we\'ll look at them internally and make
sure that we stand behind them before we wrap them into a license
application.

RUNNELLS: What else in terms of major comprehensive sort of summary
documents? Are any of those scheduled?

DYER: That\'s a little unclear right now. That\'s one of the things that
the planning process is laying out, is what are the major internal
milestones and documents that we need to produce, just like the document
hierarchy that we put together. I\'m sure that there will be revisions
of the AMRs and the PMRs. There may be some systems level look at all of
those, but exactly what that is and the timing is not clear yet.

RUNNELLS: My second question is in your previous slide, Page 14, Slide
14, you mention complete detailed multi-year work plans. You probably
know that one of the things the Board has criticized the DOE for,
perhaps not publicly, is the Board doesn\'t see planning documents. We
don\'t see the design of experiments. We see sort of the end product.
Will the Board have a chance to have input into the DOE\'s multi-year
work plans?

DYER: I guess I would\--

RUNNELLS: Criticize them, if you like?

DYER: I would say yes, and I would say that the letter you just sent is
already providing input into those work plans.

RUNNELLS: I would encourage that, because that is a thing that the Board
has worried about, is sort of seeing the end result and not having a lot
of input into, or not having a chance to have input into the design or
to comment on design experiments as much as we would like.

DYER: That might be an area that we might want to pursue, if the Board
is interested in getting into that.

CRAIG: Richard Parizek?

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board.

On discussion of 2004, I think there was mention of the fact\--what\'s
the relationship between, let\'s say, a site recommendation and the need
for an LA within a fixed time period? Is there some slippage in there? I
thought when one decision was made, you really had a short fuse when you
had to go with the LA submission.

DYER: I guess you can look at that two ways. I mean, the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act has a linkage in there, but appropriations language for the
last several years has told us very explicitly to focus on the site
recommendation, and let the license application slide. Now, which of
those has primacy, I don\'t know. But, the most recent instructions we
got from Congress were to focus on the site recommendation.

PARIZEK: So, there is\--you would have a license application within a
year or two years of that decision, it\'s not required?

DYER: No. But as prudent managers, you\'d like to do it as quickly as
you can put together a quality license application, a successful license
application.

PARIZEK: What if you went to, say, a cooler temperature operating mode,
you want an implication that you might save some time on the KTI
concerns that you have with the high temperature operating mode. But
wouldn\'t that maybe kick in other new KTIs that a low temperature
operating mode requires? And I don\'t know whether you\'ve had much
discussion about this with NRC anticipating there may be other
difficulties that you have to deal with.

DYER: Well, that\'s exactly right. In fact, Chairman Mazur made those
comments somewhat earlier last year.

CRAIG: Jerry?

COHON: Cohon, Board.

Norm covered already my major issue, but I want to review it again
because it bears repeating. I\'m personally very concerned about this
transition in culture that you\'re embarking on. It\'s understandable
why you would be doing it. On the other hand, I think that it\'s
expecting a great deal of the program to be able to shift to this LA
dominated culture and still maintaining the kind of research program
that the Board feels is very important. It\'s hard to do, period, but I
think it\'s especially hard to do under schedule and budget constraints
that you know you\'re facing already.

Lake make reference to a National Research Council report on staged
repository development that we\'re all expecting in the spring. Did DOE
commission that report?

DYER: Yes, we did.

COHON: Have you anticipated what they might be saying, and has that been
factored into your plans over the next few years?

DYER: Not explicitly.

COHON: When it does come out, let me ask anyhow for the record, even
though it\'s a completely gratuitous question, when it is issued, will
you factor that into your planning?

DYER: It depends what happens. I mean, if the recommendation, say, of
the National Academy recommends a change in national policy or approach,
that may take some statute. Certainly we would respond to that. If there
are things that are within our authority, yes, I think we would look at
those things that are within our authority, and try to accommodate the
things that make sense.

COHON: Thank you.

CRAIG: Okay, I have Dan Bullen, Alberto, and Priscilla. Anybody else?
All right, Dan?

BULLEN: Bullen, Board.

Could we go to Figure Number 4, please? It\'s your pyramid, I think, of
all the document hierarchy. And as much as I hate people who use their
position in a gratuitous manner, I want to ask a question with respect
to access to these documents.

Most of these had been web based before the 911 incident.

DYER: Right.

BULLEN: And for the reasons of security, they have been taken off. But
they are all available on the public reading room. And, so, I guess the
question, since I\'m such a lazy researcher, and it\'s a whole lot
easier to go to web and search those PDF files, do you think they\'ll
ever come back on the web? And, if so, particularly with the
modifications of AMRs and PMRs? I just want to go on the record as one
Board member, not the whole Board itself, that sure would like to see
them back on the web as an easy access.

DYER: So would we.

BULLEN: Okay. You don\'t even have to comment on that one. Now, can we
just go to 12? I would like to actually make a comment. I\'m very
pleased that your scientific analysis for ongoing improvement in the
technical basis for the waste package is there, but I\'d kind of like to
point out maybe something that we said in our letter under waste
packages. We\'re concerned about the extrapolation and the performance
of C-22, Alloy 22, in the higher temperature regimes. And you evaluate
the current technical basis for that 85 degrees C. I might want to point
out that we cited, and I\'ll quote it here, \"The theoretical basis for
making such long-term extrapolations of corrosion resistance for Alloy
22 is still very limited. In addition, data on aqueous corrosion for
Alloy 22 above 120 C under conditions relevant to Yucca Mountain are
essentially nonexistent, creating a serious data gap.\"

Are there plans to address that data gap? And I just wanted to sort of
highlight that in the transcripts of this meeting?

DYER: I\'ll say yes. I know that there is talk about not just
continuation of some of the materials tests, but also bringing some new
tests on line.

BULLEN: Thank you.

CRAIG: Alberto Sagüés?

SAGÜÉS: Yes, speaking here as a Board member, I just want to talk a
little bit maybe on a point that Jerry mentioned just a moment ago, and
this has to do with the so-called culture evolution concept that was
introduced here. Again, speaking as an individual, the words may be
alarm or dismay come to mind when something like this is taken in these
terms. Maybe the words regimented science, if we\'re going to be talking
about science, and so on. I think that this is a problem, of course, in
that this is a very much one of a kind, unprecedented kind of project.
This is not designed in a plant or the reactor of a system following a
tradition that has been established over a certain amount of time.
We\'re talking about doing something totally unique.

And the problem when I see this particular statement is that this may be
moving in the direction of something exclusionary, but do away with the
exploratory kind of research that looks for elements that are quite
unknown, things that may come up that no one had thought about, and so
on, and instead of that, spending time testing to verify that certain
parameters have been measured right. I assume that that is not the
intention, but it certainly could be interpreted in that fashion when
looking at it.

DYER: That is not what that means.

SAGÜÉS: And I would like to hear you amplify on that.

DYER: Okay. You\'ve got to have one part of your program that\'s focused
on licensing, and there needs to be a clear traceable documented trail
that lays the basis for why you\'re making whatever argument you\'re
making.

Now, there can be another program going on simultaneously which is
looking at challenging, if you will, the models that you\'re using. The
idea of continuous improvement in here I think is consistent with that.
You should never be satisfied necessarily with where you are, but
looking to make things better. And I do not see an inconsistency between
those.

SAGÜÉS: So, then what I interpret, and this is what I certainly would
like to see if you wanted to clarify that, is that indeed we\'re talking
about a sort of parallel path, if you will, a continuation of research
that has an exploratory nature, together with activities that are going
to develop parameters properly certified for a license kind of purpose.

DYER: Yes, but I\'ll take that a little further. Even, let\'s say, the
exploratory science arena needs to have a level of discipline associated
with it. Now, that discipline can be pretty much measured by what good
science would do. I mean, you would take good, accurate measurements,
you would need to make sure that you calibrate the equipment that
you\'re using, that you keep records for that, that the work you\'re
doing is repeatable, that your inputs are documented some way, whether
it be a communication or maybe it\'s a telephone call from a co-worker,
but keeping that documentation chained together is one of the things
that we talk about in attention to detail. And I don\'t necessarily see
an inconsistency there, and I think that you can do good science in an
environment like this.

Now, the NRC licensing environment, kind of the paradigm that has been
thrown out, is that that is applicable to a mature industry, an
operating nuclear power plant, and there are certain expectations on the
part of NRC for that environment. That, like it or not, that\'s the
standard that has been set for us. Now, maybe over time, if that
doesn\'t make sense, maybe there can be some adjustment to those
expectations. But that\'s not our unilateral call to make.

SAGÜÉS: I would like to ask one more question, if I may.

CRAIG: You\'re cutting into Priscilla\'s chance here.

SAGÜÉS: Okay. Well, I can defer to her then.

CRAIG: We really are running out of time.

SAGÜÉS: Okay.

CRAIG: Priscilla, a fast one?

NELSON: Okay. Nelson, Board.

Russ, what I\'m trying to investigate here is this. The Project has
developed a strategy which really is to exercise the high temperature
design that\'s existed, with the spacing of the drifts, to really
understand whether it\'s possible to develop, and what kind of low
temperature operating mode underground. The questions about high
temperature operation regarding corrosion that Dan Bullen brought up
raise the prospect that there could be unknown unknowns that appear in
non-linear responses, things like this.

The question about hydrologic and thermohydrologic independence of
drifts in this design is an assertion which would be difficult actually
to validate in this time framework. The model for humidity and
ventilation for heat removal is one which I don\'t understand how the
Project plans to go about validating. And I think the question about
validation of models in general and input properties, including thermal
conductivity, are things that are going to take time.

The report that you referred to mentions all sorts of issues relating to
natural\--coupled processes, with water around the underground opening.
We\'ve got a year 2002 where there was not full budgeting, and a 2004
time for LA. You\'ve got not very much budget, and maybe next year will
be a good year, but not very much time. Realistically, I really don\'t
understand how you\'re going to be able to develop a viable low
temperature, for example, or even thoroughly develop the high
temperature operating mode in this time frame with this budget, but
particularly the adding on of the low temperature operation.

So, maybe that was moire of a statement, but it just seems impossible in
a two year period to do all the things that really are indicated to do.
So, does there have to be a prioritization that you\'re going to go
through pretty quickly here?

DYER: Well, yes, there will have to be a prioritization. But I guess I
would disagree that everything has to be done within two years. We need
to have a plan to get information at appropriate times along the
process, but some of these tests are going to be very long term. They
may a decade long test. The key will be getting the most important tests
fielded reasonably soon, and then observing them for a period of time,
and then taking the observations and the information back into the
decision process.

CRAIG: I have to break in at this point, because we\'re running out of
time. This is a good conversation. Pursue it off line, please.

DYER: Okay. I apologize for speaking so quickly.

CRAIG: Fluid inclusions have been at the core of one of the most
interesting of the scientific issues that we\'ve heard about. We\'ve
heard a lot about fluid inclusions and their consequences. Today, we\'re
getting an update from Drew Coleman.

COLEMAN: My name is Drew Coleman, and the purpose of my talk is to give
the DOE perspective on that recent fluid inclusion report.

I\'ve got a brief recent history slide here. In 1996, the State of
Nevada scientists reported that elevated temperature fluid inclusions
were in calcite and were evidence of deposition from upwelling
hydrothermal fluids. The Board reviewed the State\'s work and
recommended additional studies to assess the State\'s fluid inclusion
observations.

The DOE funded a joint study with scientists from the State of Nevada,
University of Nevada Las Vegas, and the USGS as participants.

The objectives of the study were to determine whether two-phase fluid
inclusion assemblages (FIAs) indicating elevated temperatures are
present in the host rock, and they were. Determine the spatial
distribution of the elevated temperature fluid inclusion assemblages,
and they were found pretty much throughout the ESF and the cross-drift.
And measure the range of fluid inclusion temperatures which were
reported from 35 to 85 degrees Centigrade.

And, finally, and most important I think, to establish a temporal
framework of fluid inclusion formation by defining a paragenetic
sequence and geochronology of secondary minerals containing fluid
inclusions.

I have to be a little sensitive on this slide. I talked to Susan Lynch,
and, you know, the opinions or the work of scientists doesn\'t always
represent the position of their manager, so it\'s actually the State\'s
scientists\' conceptual model implications. And I think the key point
here is the proposed model implies that the vadose zone is occasionally
subjected to an upward flux of heat and gas-charged fluid, upwelling
waters hypothesis.

And the reference is the Scientific Status of the Lingering \"Upwelling
Water\" Controversy in Light of the Joint UNLV/USGS/State of Nevada
Research Project that was given to the Board in May.

The USGS concluded that secondary minerals and associated fluid
inclusion assemblages are consistent with vadose zone formation.
There\'s no evidence of supporting flooding of the unsaturated zone. The
extremely sparse and heterogeneous distribution of the deposits is
specifically inconsistent with flooding.

And, finally, Paces, et al. conclude, \"The physical and isotopic data
from calcite and opal indicate they formed from solutions of meteoric
origin percolating through a limited network of connected fracture
pathways in the unsaturated zone rather than by inundation from
ascending groundwater originating in the saturated zone.\"

The UNLV conclusions were consistent. They concluded, \"The results from
this study are not consistent with models requiring formation of
secondary minerals in a saturated environment at Yucca Mountain.

Results, furthermore provide no evidence for the former presence of
upwelling hydrothermal fluids.

Alternatively, the results are consistent with infiltration of a cooling
off tuff sequence by descending meteoric water.\"

And, finally, \"This study demonstrates that the hypothesis of
geologically recent upwelling hydrothermal fluids is untenable and
should not disqualify Yucca Mountain as a potential nuclear waste
storage site.\"

Currently, the UNLV group has submitted a manuscript to Geochemica and
Cosmochemica entitled Thermochronological Evolution of Calcite Formation
at the Potential Yucca Mountain Repository Site, with Part 1 being a
Secondary Mineral Paragenesis and Geochemistry by Wilson and Cline, and
Part 2 being Fluid Inclusion Analyses and Uranium Lead Dating.

The GS recently released their Ages and Origins report from the Water
Resources Investigation Division.

I talked to Susan Lynch again of the State of Nevada, and the State is
withholding their final conclusions until they can review the Cline
work. It\'s currently just in house and submitted to Gosmochemica and
Geochemica. The DOE concludes that the data and interpretations by both
DOE and UNLV scientists confirms that the conceptual model of descending
percolation is accurate. DOE may continue to examine secondary minerals
in conjunction with other studies.

And, finally, DOE concludes through this study, in conjunction with
previous work, that upwelling waters or seismic pumping hypotheses for
the origin of secondary mineralization at the Yucca Mountain site have
been adequately addressed.

And that\'s the last slide, I believe.

CRAIG: Thank you very much, Drew. Questions?

COLEMAN: I guess I\'ll take questions, try to answer questions.

CRAIG: Pardon?

COLEMAN: I\'ll try to answer questions.

CRAIG: Okay. Debra? Others? Debra Knopman?

KNOPMAN: Knopman, Board.

Drew, did you mean maybe discounted, or discontinued, on this last slide
here?

COLEMAN: Well, I guess it\'s worded a little awkwardly, I agree, but
what I\'m trying to say is that we don\'t think any additional field
work will be necessary. We have the data in hand to continue to address
the alternative conceptual model in our future documents.

KNOPMAN: And just for the record, could you explain what your role has
been in this process?

COLEMAN: I was functional monitor for the cooperative agreement task
under which Jean Cline operated, and the participants.

KNOPMAN: And could you also just describe sort of the foundation of
these studies was in terms of a common base of data gathering and
analysis methods, that each group that then independently drew their own
conclusions was working from the same data base? I just want that to be
clear.

COLEMAN: Yes. Mostly the Cline study, they took 155 samples throughout
the ESF and cross-drift, and they plan to cut five thick sections, and
keep two and give the middle one to the State, and then give the other
two to the USGS, and that process went somewhat slow. I\'m not sure I
ever saw any data presented by the State on the actual UNLV samples, but
I know they had some in hand. The GS is finishing out their set of the
samples, and they have a report due at the end of the fiscal year this
year.

KNOPMAN: But I just want to be clear that there is not an ongoing
scientific disagreement among the parties here about the methods of data
collection, and the analysis of the samples, that the disagreements, as
they still exist, relate to the interpretation of data that everyone has
brought into in terms of their intrinsic value.

COLEMAN: I would agree with that. I haven\'t seen any evidence that
anyone disputes any of the data collected on stable isotopes or fluid
inclusion work. Mostly, the disagreements between the USGS and UNLV on
the one hand, and the State on the other revolved around the
interpretation of the data.

CRAIG: Leon Reiter?

REITER: Leon Reiter, Staff.

Drew, we had a meeting in May where the various parties presented their
views, and it seems that USGS and UNLV and Bob Bodner was a consultant
to UNLV, a former consultant to the Board, all seemed to agree that the
hypothesis of upwelling, we really couldn\'t find evidence for that. But
people like Bob Bodner raised a number of interesting issues that arose
that were questions, and I wanted to ask you, or I want to sort of list
those questions, and I wonder what you guys are planning to do about
this.

There were some questions about what\'s the source of salinity in the
fluids. Another question was what was the source of the magnesium in the
enriched layer that was found, and there was also questioning about the
matching of the fluid inclusion data with the model of this cooling off
of a magna body. In fact, I\'ve heard somewhere that some people from
the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analysis are also looking at
that to try to figure out what\'s going on, and they say, although they
may not have, from what I understand, made out implications for
upwelling, implications for other models that the DOE is looking at. Are
you going to be addressing these kinds of issues?

COLEMAN: Well, Joe Whalen is still looking at the fluid inclusions at
the USGS in Denver, and I\'m talking with him regularly. So, that work
is ongoing. Brian Marshall is still modeling the fluid inclusion
temperatures, and I had some discussions with him recently. And, so,
that effort is ongoing, among other things. Everything is being looked
at under the Plan B replanning effort, and I\'m hesitant to make any
statements that are too bold. But, yeah, we\'re going to continue to
look into those kinds of questions, at least finish out the Whalen
portion of the fluid inclusion studies, and continue with the Brian
Marshall modeling of the fluid inclusion temperatures.

CRAIG: Other questions? Drew, thank you very much.

COLEMAN: Thank you for the opportunity to address the Board.

CRAIG: We now move to one of our old standby regulars, Mark Peters. Good
old Mark Peters, who has appeared before us many times to cover massive
amounts of material on the scientific program.

Mark, you\'ve got a full hour, including the questions. You\'ve got 40
minutes to talk, and I\'ll warn you when you\'ve got five minutes to go.

PETERS: Can everybody hear me okay? Thanks, Paul.

COHON: Could I ask a question? How did you lose all that weight? You
look terrific.

PETERS: It\'s this project. No, it\'s on purpose. My wife said you\'ve
got to lose some weight, so I went and lost some weight.

And thanks for the introduction, Paul. This is, again, a similar
presentation to what you\'ve seen from me several times now. There is a
lot of material. I will say there is a lot in the backup. I moved some
to backup, given the limited time. And I also have an advantage that Bo
and Al are going to talk this afternoon. So, I might be able to gloss
over some of the UZ and SZ relatively quickly.

I\'m going to try to go through it. I apologize for the length, but I
did want to give you a feel for all the things that are still going on
in the testing area.

So, the same objectives that I\'ve had in previous meetings, just to
provide you a status on the data collection and testing program in both
the natural and engineered barrier areas in support of the models and
also the design.

I\'ll start, as always, with the unsaturated zone, elaborate a little
bit on the drift scale tests, about the fluoride measurements that Russ
alluded to in his presentation, an update on Chlorine 36 validation.
Then some slides on two tests in the cross-drift, Alcove 8 and the
bulkhead experiments. Then an update on the status of where we are with
data collection for the Busted Butte test. Finally, a very quick status
on the alluvial testing complex in the saturated zone.

Nye County will be presenting, I believe it\'s later today, and they\'ll
talk a lot more about their program, and of course this is all being
done in cooperation with the Nye County program.

Moving into the engineered barrier, an update on the thermal
conductivity measurements that we\'re doing, primarily in the field, a
very quick update, something I have not talked to the Board about before
is investigations that we have ongoing in the rock properties area, and
also a very quick status on the natural convection tests at the Atlas
facility. Finally, a set of slides on waste package materials
investigations at Livermore, as well as General Electric. And then two
quick slides on Argonne work in waste form area.

I\'m going to try to sprinkle in credit where credit is due. I\'m
presenting a lot of people\'s work here. I\'ve done none of this work
myself. I\'m trying to give you an overview of what all these great
scientists have done on the Yucca Mountain Project.

Starting with the ESF, I\'m going to talk mainly about the drift scale
test, and also about Chlorine 36 validation. Remember, there we\'re
collecting samples from the Sundance Fault that crosses the ESF right in
this area here, and the Drillhole Wash structure that crosses just
upstream of the cross-drift.

I won\'t dwell on the details here. This is a diagram you\'ve seen
before. Here is the ESF, and then the cross-drift with the alcoves
located with the potential repository block here to the west.

Starting with the drift scale test, I think it\'s old hat, and we\'re
out there evaluating thermally coupled processes in the rock in the
middle non-lithophysal unit of the Topopah Spring. This is just a
diagram that shows the scaled back test with the wing heaters and the
boreholes both above and below the heated drift.

Russ I believe mentioned in his presentation that we\'ve started the
cooling phase of the test. That\'s the main point of this slide. Here,
it\'s time and days versus total power shown in the blue, and drift wall
temperature shown in the red. January 14th, a couple Mondays back, we
did turn off the heaters. It\'s not a controlled cooling where we\'re
turning back the heat. We actually just flipped the power off. So,
we\'re right now in a natural cooling phase.

Back up one second. I\'m not sure what just happened when the fluoride
slide comes up. So, at any rate, again we\'re seeing drops in
temperature that we would have expected, very rapid drops in temperature
early on, and it will, of course, level off as we approach a steady
state. That\'s the basic gist. What\'s shown in the power here is just
the various increments when we turn back power as we were maintaining
the temperature at 200 C. at the drift wall.

This right here is 200 C. I apologize for that. That fell off of the
graphics. This is 200 Celsius right here. Sorry about that. It might
actually be on the same scale. I think we might have fitted it to the
same scale. I was out there the next day, and it was down on the
canister, it was down a good 15 degrees in the first day. I did not call
out there today to see how far it is down now, but I would say 30, 35
degrees C. it\'s gone down on the canister. The rock is cooling much
slower, of course, because of the thermal conductivity of the rock.

There\'s a whole set of slides in the backup that talk about the
predictions that we had had for the heating phase, the bullets for the
different processes. Bo is going to allude to some of that in his
presentation, so I won\'t dwell on that. But they\'re back there.
There\'s about five or six slides that talk about the predictions.

Moving into fluoride, Russ already gave us a good introduction. In the
spring and summer time frame we collected water samples from some of the
hydrologic boreholes from the superheated areas, above 140 C. And, so,
these were samples that condensed from steam, and when we took them to
the laboratory, well, first of all, we were measuring pH in the field,
and the pHs were very low, down in the 3, 3.5 range, much lower than
what we were getting from water samples that were taken at sub-boiling
temperatures. We took them to the laboratory and did analysis and saw
really high fluorine concentrations. That caused us to really think real
hard what\'s causing this, obviously. These were anomalous readings. We
had not seen those before in the drift scale test, any of our coupled
process testing.

So, we went, and as Russ alluded to, we followed a process where we put
together a strategy to test basically two hypotheses, one, the fluoride
was coming from material we had introduced to the test, namely the Viton
for the packers, or the Teflon for the sampling tubes, or the host rock
itself where the fluoride primarily is contained within the fractures.

So, we did a field test. We went out and we said, okay, if it\'s coming
from the introduced materials, let\'s take a hole that has not had any
introduced material in it, sample some steam, then go into that same
hole, introduce some Viton and some Teflon, and then resample. This is
summarizing those results. This is just time elapsed from the first
sample collected versus measured values in either ppm or pH. So, pH is
shown in the triangles, whereas fluorine in ppm is shown in the\--excuse
me\--in diamonds, and these are shown in triangles.

So, here we\'re collecting samples, coming along at basically no
fluoride in the water, pH is up around 5, 5.5, which we would expect,
introduced the Viton and Teflon into the boreholes and saw the dramatic
rise in fluorine concentration with precipitous decline in pH.

There\'s additional samples that aren\'t plotted here that we just
analyzed that continue to pick this trend up. The longer it was in, the
higher the fluorine went, the lower the pH went. So, the results of this
field test have really allowed us to confirm the hypothesis that the
source of the fluoride was introduced by the fluoroelastomers or the
introduced materials from the Viton or the Teflon.

We\'ve also got a laboratory testing program that we started in parallel
with the field experiments to address some of the more detailed
questions. And there\'s some preliminary results from that as well where
we\'re doing autoclave experiments where we\'ve got steam, water and
steam, with the water and steam with the introduced materials, as well,
to confirm in fact what we\'re seeing in the field test. There\'s been a
high temperature reaction chamber test set up at Berkeley, as well as
similar experiments at Livermore in an autoclave, and they show the same
systematics. If you introduce the Viton, you get really high fluoride
concentration and very low pHs, much like you see in the Livermore
experiments. These were initiated in parallel prior to the results of
the field experiments, because we weren\'t exactly sure what kind of
definitive results we\'d get out of the field. We were very, very
pleased with the results from the field. But we\'ll continue these
through fruition.

Moving to Chlorine 36 validation, here again we\'re validating the
occurrence of \"bomb-pulse\" Chlorine 36 at two locations in the ESF. I
pointed out the Sundance Fault that crosses the ESF down near Alcove 6,
and the Drillhole Wash that crosses the ESF just upstream of the
cross-drift breaking out.

By way of an update, the last meeting, I told you about us using common
crushing and passive leaching techniques for all the analysis of the
validation samples from here forward. The USGS has leached, they\'ve
resampled validation core. We\'re now off of the reference sample that
we were doing the leaching experiments on, and we\'re back to unknown,
the validation core. They\'ve been doing the leaching of crushed core
providing that leachate to both Livermore and Los Alamos.

Los Alamos has also continued some leaching testing on some of the ESF
samples to compliment what we\'re doing with the validation with the
validation samples, and the data that we have to date from this new
batch of unknowns that we just analyzed, it\'s on the order of 24 or 25
samples from the Sundance Fault, again, leached passively for an hour
and then analyzed, and the good news we feel is that when Livermore and
Los Alamos take those leachates and do the analyses, they\'re getting
the same answer.

Whereas, if you remember, in the past, I\'ve been up here telling you
that we\'ve had these discrepancies between the two laboratories and
datasets, and that\'s why we went through the whole process of leaching
tests, et cetera, et cetera. We feel like we\'ve worked our way through
that, but I\'ll talk about the fact that we have yet to see
\"bomb-pulse\" in these validation samples.

This is just a couple plots that show that this next set of validation
samples, Livermore results plotted on the Y, Los Alamos on the X, this
is just a one to one line showing the error bars. Remember, the early
results, Livermore results for these validation samples were down in the
50 to 100 times 10 to the minus 15. This is reported in ratios of times
10 to the minus 15 of Chlorine 36 to total Chloride. Whereas, Los Alamos
was getting numbers up in this range. So, there was a pretty big
different. We think now we\'ve solved that problem using the common
leaching and processing techniques.

The next plot just shows the same samples. Here, we\'re just talking
Chloride concentration rather than Chlorine 36 to total Chloride.

I put this diagram in because I find it useful to talk through the
complexity of the Chloride, the systematics in the Yucca Mountain rocks.
What we\'ve got here is Chlorine 36 to total Chloride ratio times 10 to
the minus 15, versus increasing leaching time. What I\'m trying to get
at here is there\'s different reservoirs of Chloride in the rock, and
leaching time is going to have a significant effect on what answer you
get.

Early on, this conceptual model would suggest that early on with short
leaching times, that\'s when you\'re going to exploit the \"bomb-pulse\"
component.

As you continue to leach, you will start to leach some of the matrix,
more of the matrix component, some of the accessible pores, causing the
ratio to decrease. The reason there\'s differences in times here is
because, as you know, the Chlorine 36 production rate varies with time,
so you\'d expect there would be some variability in this, depending upon
the age of the water.

These lines separate, because if you go to a very aggressive leach, you
could start to pick up rock chloride, which is dead chloride, which
would cause the ratio to go down pretty dramatically. Whereas, if you
continue a passive leach, this conceptual model would suggest that you
would start to leach salts that are greater than 10,000 years old that
could cause the ratio to go up.

Again, I\'m not trying to say that this explains everything we see. But
I find it useful to help us to think through why we\'re still seeing
these differences in systematics.

I should also mention that when you talk about the early June
Fabryka-Martin data, we were looking at leaching times on the order of
24 to 48 hours, and she was still seeing evidence of \"bomb-pulse.\" So,
that\'s somewhat of an inconsistency with the way I just explained that,
and I realize that. But, again, this doesn\'t explain everything. It\'s
just I find it useful on how to think through the systematics. But
we\'re still thinking through this.

Go back one second. I should also mention the Cathay leaching times were
down in here, but remember that Mark Cathay did more of an active leach.
He tumbled the samples.

So, the final set of bullets on Chlorine 36, I already alluded to this.
We\'ve looked at the next set of validation samples. We think we\'ve
solved the discrepancy between the two lab data sets, but we have yet to
find \"bomb-pulse\" Chlorine 36 in the validation samples. Remember,
those were drilled from boreholes, whereas the early June Fabryka-Martin
data was taken from samples from the total walls. So, it could be that
there are still differences due to the sampling. We\'re investigating
that.

One of the things that we are going to do now is we have core from Niche
1, which is a niche located just off the ESF right near the Sundance
Fault. June Fabryka-Martin did look at core here, not samples taken from
the total wall, but core, and she saw evidence of \"bomb-pulse\" in a
high percentage of those samples. So, part of our path forward will be
to go back to those cores, reprocess some of those samples, and see if
Livermore and Los Alamos, using common processing and leaching
techniques, can in fact find \"bomb-pulse\" in those samples.

So, I think it\'s still a status report. We\'re still working through
some of the issues.

Moving into the ECRB, this is a diagram you\'ve seen before, the
cross-drift showing the contacts for the different sub-units of the
Topopah Spring as you go down the cross-drift, with the middle non-lith
exposed in this area\--excuse me\--the lower lith exposed over a large
section of the tunnel, the Solitario Canyon Fault right here. North is
in this direction. It shows the locations of the test alcoves. The
regular font black, are the existing test facilities, with the Italics
blue are facilities that are in the multi-year plan for the out years.

I\'m going to talk today about results from the cross-over alcove, the
drift to drift test between the cross-drift and the ESF, and also tell
about the bulkhead experiment which is going on in this back half of the
cross-drift.

One of the things that I\'ll clarify a little more when I get to the
bulkhead investigation, notice there\'s another bulkhead here now. When
I talked to the Board in September, we were talking about taking this
first bulkhead and moving it down tunnel. Since that time, and I\'ll
talk about why we\'ve reevaluated that and we\'ve kept this first
bulkhead at the same place, and added a fourth bulkhead here.

So, starting with Alcove 8, Niche 3, the cross-over alcove, I\'ll mix
those back and forth, here we\'re looking at flow and seepage processes
in the potential repository horizon rocks at the scales of tens of
meters.

This is just a schematic diagram that you\'ve seen before showing the
layout of Alcove 8, Niche 3 below. This distance here is on the order of
18 meters. There\'s boreholes drilled down as well as up for monitoring
the travel of the wetting front, the moisture front. And as you
remember, we\'ve got an infiltration plot in the floor of Alcove 8, and
we\'re collecting seepage in Niche 3 below.

This is a picture from the back of Alcove 8 looking out toward the
opening. Remember that the infiltration experiment is right now
concentrated on a fault that\'s exposed to the floor of Alcove 8, and
also exposed down in Niche 3. So, we\'ve got four chambers that are hard
to see in this picture where we\'re infiltrating with infiltration
permeameters, putting in a constant head and looking at how the fault
takes the water, and how much seeps into the opening below.

These are just some bullets on the status, uninterrupted ponded
infiltration since March, over 60,000 liters applied. How much the
fault\'s intake rates along the fault, it\'s decreased from about 250
liters per day, down to like 170 liters per day earlier this month.

We did a test where we were just infiltrating water with 10 ppm Lithium
Bromide. In October, we introduced the pulse of tracer that had a higher
concentration of the Lithium Bromide, as well as 25 ppm of
polyfluorobenzoic acid. And we\'re again collecting water in Niche 3,
quantifying that, and also now doing the tracer analysis.

Bo is going to talk about this as well, so I will not dwell on it. This
is some of the information from the tracer recovery in Niche 3. Time
versus normalized concentration for all three, the Lithium Bromide and
the fluorobenzoic acid. Important points here, Bromide is acting as a
conservative. The fluorobenzoic breaks through prior to the Bromide.
That\'s being interpreted as the effect of matrix diffusion. That\'s why
we had Bromide, Lithium Bromide, and PFBA in there, was to look at the
effects of matrix diffusion, and we\'re in fact seeing systematics that
are consistent with our conceptual understanding of that. And, again, Bo
will probably expand on that some when he gets up here.

This is just a picture of the collection trays in Niche 3 where we
quantify the water. And there\'s backup on Alcove 8, Niche 3 that show
the time history of infiltration versus collection. I just didn\'t have
time to go through that.

Again, the bulkhead investigations, we\'ve got the back 918 meters of
the cross-drift isolated from ventilation. We\'re looking for rewetting
and monitoring for liquid water. This bullet, read this as monitor for
free liquid water from either dripping or condensation from the vapor
phase.

This test has been going on for over two years. We had a bulkhead entry
just after the last Board meeting. We went in on October 1st. I\'ll talk
some about what we saw when we went in there.

I\'ve already alluded to some of this. This is a picture looking down
the cross-drift past probably the first bulkhead. I don\'t want to
confuse you here, but I mentioned that there\'s now four bulkheads. In a
slide that\'s coming up here, I\'m still talking about three. But I\'ll
clarify that as we go along.

The three bulkhead doors were opened on October 1. We\'ve now put a
fourth bulkhead in at 22+01. The last three were sealed in November. We
sealed the one at 17+63, the first bulkhead, in December, and now the
test is now back to no ventilation monitoring. We did a lot of
enhancement to instrumentation inside the drift this time around. We
added cameras, which are very useful because we\'ve got them focused on
areas that were showing evidence of liquid water, looking at the drip
clause, looking at other areas, to see how the wetting is occurring
realtime. So, we can sit down in downtown Las Vegas, move the cameras
around. It\'s an interesting system.

But I did mention at the previous meeting that I said that we were going
to take this first bulkhead and move it down. After we saw what we saw
when we went in in October, there were some wet areas that were
developing down in this part of the tunnel that weren\'t well developed
in the previous entry that were getting more well developed, and they
were really raising some questions about what we were seeing in this
part of the tunnel, whereas before most of the phenomena had been
occurring down at the back end. So, we looked at that, and also through
conversations with the NRC, we made a decision to keep the configuration
as is, but add a fourth bulkhead.

This is just a picture, I\'ll explain it, it probably doesn\'t mean
much. This is paint, green spray paint on the wall of the rock, and this
is rock around it. It\'s a little dark. It might show up a little better
in your hard copy. But what this is is this is water droplets that
collected on the spray painted part, but didn\'t collect on the rock. We
saw a lot of evidence where there were shotcreted sections. The water
was collecting on the shotcrete, but not on the rock next to it.

But what we saw when we went in is there was alternating dry and wet
areas. So, that\'s not immediately straightforward to explain in terms
of condensation within the drift. Why would it be alternating? So,
we\'re looking at that in the context of what\'s going on also with the
surface geology, how it ties to the infiltration map. I think Bo can
probably expand on what he thinks it all means. But I think the bottom
line is you need to continue the test to answer some of these questions.
It\'s telling us something about what\'s going on in the drift as well.

But, again, it was dry just before the first bulkhead, and wet through
another 200 meter section. I can go through this in the questions if
you\'re interested in the details of where it was wet and dry. But in
the wet sections, the dampness was more pronounced on the upper parts of
the drift walls.

Again, down by the Solitario Canyon, it was relatively dry, and back
behind the third bulkhead, and here I\'m talking about first, second and
third in the past, I haven\'t added in the fourth, if that\'s clear, so
this first is 17+63, the second is 25+03, and third here is the one just
behind the TBM.

Remember, the TBM was on and powered through a lot of this test, and
that was probably causing some complicating factors for us. The TBM is
now off. We\'ve turned it off to hope to isolate that as a variable.

These are some pictures from the October entry. I think you can probably
see drops on the utility lines here, also water collecting on the
conveyor belt. There were droplets on the conveyor belt, whereas, the
underside of the conveyor belt tended to not have droplets, but this is
where it had puddled and was running.

NELSON: What\'s the date on that?

PETERS: What\'s the date? October 1st. This was October 1st. What we did
on October 1st is we went in without ventilation. We opened the doors
and didn\'t ventilate because the minute you ventilate, you start to
lose a lot of this evidence. So, we went in with supplied air, a couple
of the scientists went in with supplied air to try to get some of these
observations documented prior to it all drying out. Although, the dryout
still leaves salt residue and rust spots and things, you can still get
meaningful information.

The next slide is another picture from October 1st. Here, what this is
trying to convey is water droplets on the mesh and on the shotcrete
versus the rock next to it, which does not have any drops, and then
water collecting on the underneath of the vent line. So, this is the
kind of moisture that we\'re seeing inside there when we go in in that
initial entry, similar character to what we saw in the previous entries.

NELSON: Do you think that the rock is not wet because it\'s absorbing
the moisture?

PETERS: The question was do I think the rock is not wet because it\'s
absorbing the moisture. There\'s people in the audience who could
probably address that better. I think it has to do with the temperature
of the wall. And it\'s interesting, it could have to do with the
temperature of the wall and the fact that it\'s shotcrete, so it\'s
different thermal properties of the wall, and the spray paint would do
the same, or it could be that the spray paint and the shotcrete are in
fact causing\--I think it\'s either one. It could be not absorbing the
water. The bottom line is you could be right, or it could have an effect
on the temperature at the wall itself that could be causing it to
condense there, a cold spot where it condenses there, and not on the
rock.

But the bottom line is there\'s an observation that where we see paint
for shotcrete, there\'s water, and not on the rock itself.

This is just, I don\'t expect you to memorize this, other than this is
temperature and relative humidity versus time for the different stations
that we have in that test area. This is when we close the first three
doors, and here\'s where we closed the last door, just that the
temperature gradients that we were seeing early on, here we\'re looking
at probably a degree or two temperature difference, whereas when the TBM
was on, we were more like three or four degrees. The temperature
gradient exists, but it\'s less, and also the relative humidity, as
you\'d expect, pretty much goes straight up towards 100 per cent as soon
as we close the doors.

So, this test is, again, a shut up, it\'s shut up, the doors closed
since just before Christmas.

Moving to the unsaturated zone below the repository horizon to the
Busted Butte test, we\'ve talked about the objectives of this test many
times, looking at heterogeneities on flow and transport, looking at
fracture/matrix interaction, colloid migration in the UZ, scaling of
laboratory sorption data to the field scale, and of course looking at
overall scaling issues.

A diagram of the injection face at Busted Butte showing the two planes
of injection holes, here in the Topopah Spring vitrophere unit, and here
in the Calico Hills unit, showing the overcores that we\'ve completed.
You\'ve seen this diagram before. The overcores that we\'ve completed on
some of the injection holes, trying to get a feel for how far the
reactive tracers have travelled. The concern is that it\'s broke through
to the collection plane, but we\'re trying here to get information on
the reactive tracer.

We also did a mineback that I also showed you last meeting. Here\'s the
Phase 2 block with the injection holes and the collection holes coming
in off of this face, showing the orientation of the mineback, drove it
this way, and then mined successive faces, stopped at basically each one
of these planes of injection holes, and took a set of auger samples.
Again, we imaged the face, because we were looking for the fluorescein
dye, and also took auger samples for quantitative analysis of where the
tracers had gone.

So, the next couple slides are just results of some of the analysis of
the rock samples that we took. Here, we\'re looking at the overcore of
Borehole 20. This was, again, in the Topopah Spring vitrophere unit.
It\'s a high injection rate hole, 50 milliliters per hour. What you\'re
looking at if you squint is distance from the actual injection hole
down. This is in centimeters, so 50 centimeters here, normalized
concentration of four different materials, Cobalt, Lithium, Nickel and
Fluorobenzoic acid.

The Lithium is relatively flat, because it broke through in the
collection pad, so the front is well below this depth in the system,
whereas we\'re still seeing evidence of sorption of the Cobalt and the
Nickel, and the Fluorobenzoic is acting conservative, as you would
expect.

These profiles are consistent with the KDs that we have for the Calico
Hills and for the Topopah Spring for Nickel and Cobalt. So, that\'s one
example of the sorts of data that we\'re collecting from the overcores.

The next slide will show here, we\'re taking a face\--go back to the
slide of the mineback. What this is is there was a face exposed right
here, right along the plane of Borehole 20. We did a set of hand augers
where we drilled hand augers into the face, took samples, and what
you\'re going to see is a series of plots that show the concentrations
of those same four elements as a function of distance from Borehole 20.

So, Borehole 20 would again be oriented like this. So, the face is right
at Borehole 20, so you\'ve got A, which would be taken from 0 to 10
centimeters. There\'s typos here. This should be B, 10 to 20
centimeters, and C, 20 to 30 centimeters. So, they\'re samples that were
a set of samples, and averaged over these intervals of the auger hole,
again showing a very similar relationship. The spike here right at the
injection hole is because that\'s where the injector was. You see the
decrease, you see the PFBA acting conservatively. There\'s a sense
absorption of the Lithium in this dataset, whereas the Cobalt and Nickel
are still acting as reactor tracers, consistent with the KDs for this
rock type.

So, this is the kind of data that we\'re getting out of this test. This
is ongoing data collection and analysis that\'s being used to model the
test results.

We\'re also looking at colloids at Busted Butte. I\'m going to talk
today mainly about some lab block experiments that we\'re doing with
colloid transport. We\'re looking at Lithium Bromide and colloid
imbibition into the matrix, and comparing it to our colloid transport
models that we use in the site scale model and, again, trying to get at
more controlled lab scale experiments to help us interpret the results
of the colloids in the field scale experiment at Busted Butte.

This is the results of one of those block experiments. Here, what you
see plotted is time versus cumulative mass balance. This is basically
colloids collected for the experimental data, which is shown in the
solid line, and three different simulations.

What\'s being varied here in the simulations is the coordination number.
The pore structure of the rock is being varied, as well as the size of
the colloids.

So, without getting into the gory details, you can see that in varying
the parameters on the pore structure, as well as the size of the
colloids, we can match the experiments with certain assumptions about
those two parameters. This kind of modeling and fitting is being used
again to then interpret the results from the field scale experiment.

Moving into the saturated zone, I won\'t dwell on this because of time,
but we\'re collecting site-scale data in cooperation with the Nye County
program in support of the saturated zone model.

I\'ll talk briefly about status of the alluvial testing complex. Again,
the cornerstone of that test is 19D here, south of Yucca Mountain.
We\'ve since drilled, Nye County has since drilled two new wells to the
north and to the east. This is just a status. I\'ve talked before about
the single hole hydraulic and tracer tests that we did in 19D.

Again, Nye County has now drilled two new boreholes. We now have a
triangular testing complex. The new boreholes are being used for
monitoring for the hydraulic testing and injection wells for the tracer
testing. And we\'ve done some scoping cross-hole hydraulic tests just in
December, spilled over into this month, and we\'re preparing to initiate
the cross-hole tracer testing.

So, we\'ve gone through the natural system. Let\'s talk a little bit
about engineered barrier, acknowledging that thermal properties
investigation supports the coupled process models, as well, which I
consider more of a natural barrier model. But, again, these
investigations are field laboratory based. They support the coupled
process models, the EBS models, and design, and we do have a
geostatistics initiative in place to try to evaluate the variability and
uncertainty in this important parameter.

I repeat this slide just because to remind you that the field tests that
I\'m going to talk about are located in the lower lith and the
cross-drift. They\'re located in this area right in here. There\'s three
different locations, all within this part of the lower lithophysal.

The layout of Tests 1 and 2 is in the backup. So, I\'m not going to go
through that.

We\'ve done different scales of experiments. The first test was a single
heater with a single instrumentation borehole drilled in like an \"X\"
fashion. Whereas, the second test was a larger test, three heaters and
three instrumentation boreholes to try to perturb a larger volume of
rock.

The first test is finished. The second test is in Stage 1 of heating,
when we\'ve got a third test that has a single heater with boreholes
above and below. That\'s to more look at any influence of convective
effects. That test equipment is being installed, and we\'re about to
start that test here this winter.

The results from the first test, you saw this diagram, at least a
preliminary nature of this diagram, in the last meeting. Thermal
conductivity and thermal diffusivity versus time for this two-hole test,
the first test. What they\'ve done here is they\'ve taken conduction
only model, and fit the temperature profile, and come out with thermal
conductivity and thermal diffusivity.

They\'ve also looked at the same results using NOFT to try to account
for the convective effects, and come up with a similar answer. But the
thermal conductivities are consistent with the kind of ranges that we
assumed in SSPA for the lower lith thermal conductivity values. Again,
these are field scale experiments, so we\'re trying to get the influence
of the lithophysal porosity as much as possible.

The next slide is a set of predictions and field data for the second
test, the larger test, the six hole test. The bottom line is that when
we go through and look at it with the conduction only model, we come up
with very similar thermal conductivities to what we got for the smaller
scale test, and consistent with what our assumptions are in the SSPA
range that we used.

We are doing a laboratory program where we\'re taking matrix samples,
analyzing conductivity, thermal properties in those samples. It\'s
obvious to you I know that the conductivity is a function of a lot of
different properties, the porosity and the saturation, the temperature
and temperature gradient, of course the lithophysal porosity. The field
scale experiments we\'re hoping will help us address this issue.

The status is we\'re looking at different techniques for measuring
thermal conductivity in the lab. I won\'t go into the details of the
different techniques, but the guarded heat flow meter technique was the
technique that would have been used on previous samples in the past in
the Project. There\'s some concerns about there being convective effects
influencing that technique, so we\'re testing independent techniques to
ensure that we\'ve got that question answered.

We\'ve got thermal conductivities within the range of 1 to 2. I don\'t
have\--this is very preliminary information. Hopefully, next meeting, I
can show you some plots that show how it varies with temperature
saturation. But the variability is what we would expect, given these
kinds of differences in rock properties.

These are going to go real fast. I\'ve got pictures in the backup. We
are undertaking investigation in the field, collecting samples, large
cores, as well as doing some slot tests to investigate rock properties.
Here, I\'m talking about mechanical properties. Again, the large
diameter coring is ongoing. The laboratory measurements are ongoing.
I\'ve got some pictures in the backup that show the kind of scale that
we\'re looking at in terms of samples.

Also, no results yet on the natural convection tests. Here, we\'ve got
two tests set up at Atlas at 25 per cent scale and 44 per cent scale,
where we\'re looking at convective effects within a mock drift with
electrical heaters. Here, we\'re looking at validating the natural
convection models and also evaluating the potential for cold traps.

There\'s pictures of the construction aspects of that in the backup.
But, again, no results. These tests were just turned on earlier this
month.

Moving into the waste package, and I switched\--go ahead to the next
one, John. The next one in your package has been moved back a couple.
So, I jumped ahead to Page 45. 44 got moved back a couple.

I\'m going to try to give you a picture of some of the things that are
going on in this area. I can\'t do it justice in the two minutes that I
have. But we continue, all the programs that you\'ve heard about in the
past, we continue to investigate at Livermore as well as at some of the
other subcontractors.

What about Alloy 22? We\'re doing some electrical chemical testing,
short-term testing, using various methods. The examples I\'m going to
show you are polarization resistance methods on prismatic samples,
freshly polished. The results I\'m going to show you are going to be
from simulated acidic water. As you all well know, we\'ve got several
different water compositions that we\'re looking at in the testing
program. The results that I\'m going to show you are going to be
corrosion rate as a function of temperature, and the bullet here just
reminds me to tell you that these experiments were repeated at each
temperature range.

The next diagram shows the results of these tests. These are Livermore
tests. Corrosion rate for Alloy 22 samples, again in deaerated simulated
acidic water, versus temperature, shown here. And then on this plot over
here, showing the activation energy for that corrosion rate, a
relatively low activation energy came out of the results of these
experiments. But this is getting at the effect of temperature on
corrosion rate. That\'s been discussed a lot in the context of the SSPA,
and it was also discussed a little bit earlier today. So, this work
continues.

What about the effect of environment. Here, these are open circuit
potential measurement, again, on Alloy 22. This is fresh Alloy 22,
corrosion potential in volts versus time, relatively long-term exposure,
nine months of exposure in different environments, here, acidic water,
simulated concentrated water, and dilute water.

The main point here, this is constant temperature showing the effect of
pH. The pH range up here is on the order of I believe 3 to 3 1/2,
whereas, the pH range for these waters down here is more on the order
of, I can\'t remember exactly, 9, 10, 11, relatively basic. So, it shows
the effect of pH, but also shows that we get up to this 300 millivolt
range, and it tends to flatten out. These are relatively long-term
experiments, not 10,000 years, but trying to get at these longer term
experiments to help us address the change in corrosion potential with
time.

The next plot, these data points are straight data points. They\'re not
real data, so you can put an \"X\" through those. There was a curve
there that shouldn\'t have been there. But what this is showing, this is
actually data from General Electric. This is showing the effects of
trace elements on open circuit potentials. This is very preliminary
data, but I wanted to put it in to point out that we are doing\--looking
at the effect of trace elements like lead on corrosion potential in the
different materials.

You can see the effect of lead at least in these preliminary results as
relatively minor on the corrosion potential.

What about passive film? We\'re looking at the stability of the passive
film layer, also what\'s the makeup of the passive film layer. The next
couple slides are going to focus on the makeup of the passive film
layer. Here, we\'ve taken samples, applied potentials, samples that were
exposed to 95 degrees C. basic saturated water, and applied potentials
to those samples, and then measured the films to see what the
concentrations of various key elements were in those films.

Talking to the folks at Livermore, this is Livermore data, some of these
values that are going up, they think they may not have yet reached
steady state, and that they will eventually flatten off. But this is
giving important information on what the makeup of the passive film
layer is, which then translates into our models for passive film
stability.

This is, again, very preliminary ongoing work, just to give you a feel
for the kinds of data we\'re collecting.

We\'ve also taken some of the samples and not exposed them to water.
We\'re actually just putting them in a furnace. We\'ve taken a mill
surface Alloy 22, taken the mill surface, put it in an oven at 400, 550
C., and looked what happened to the film. This is just a picture, a TEM
photo of that film, as well as a traverse using the EDS spectra probably
on the SEM, showing the concentrations of chromium and nickel. This is
base metal here, and then there\'s two different layers, a chromium rich
layer and a nickel rich layer. And on looking at the thermometer on how
that evolves with heating and air, here trying to look at the effects of
the dryout period when there\'s no water present.

Two more slides on waste form focused on colloids. This is data from
Argonne National Laboratory. Here, we\'re looking at the generation of
colloids from commercial spent nuclear fuel. These are just dynamic
light scattering measurements showing the size of the colloids coming
off of spent fuel as a function of time, and showing that the colloids
concentration decrease with time.

Also, they\'re taking those colloids and characterizing them in great
detail. This is a TEM image of one of those colloids with some very
preliminary results suggesting that the composition of that is made up
of iron, silica and maybe some uranium.

Talking to the Argonne folks, they have yet to characterize the phase.
They\'re still in the process with a lot of these colloids of looking at
just the elemental concentrations.

Finally, also, the glass waste form. Here, you\'re looking at clay
colloids that form from the alteration of the glass waste form, and this
is just an example of some tests that they\'re doing to look at the
colloid formation, size of colloids that are formed, and how they
agglomerate and eventually fall out of solution as a function of, in
this particular case, sodium chloride. These are the kinds of tests that
are going on at Argonne and PMML to address these issues.

Finally, a very quick, hopefully not too quick, tour through the testing
program. I tried to cover pieces of everything to give you a feel for
what we\'re doing. Again, in the ESF, cross-drift laboratories, we feel
this testing program is important. It continues to confirm our technical
basis for addressing uncertainties, and hopefully providing additional
confidence in our models.

So, take a breath. That\'s it.

CRAIG: Thank you, Mark. As always, that was a lot.

Richard has his hand up. Richard, Debra, Priscilla and Alberto. Richard?

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board.

On Page 8, you had one fluoride value at about 130 days, which was
non-zero. Is that a measurement error? That\'s the second triangle on
the bottom, it\'s really almost on zero.

PETERS: The measurement, I believe they\'re using\--I\'m not sure what
technique they\'re using, Dick, but it\'s probably on the order of a
tenth of a ppm, a couple tenths of a ppm.

PARIZEK: But nothing serious from the point of view of a pH problem?

PETERS: No.

PARIZEK: I mean, within acceptable\--

PETERS: Right. I mean, it\'s probably at the most like that.

PARIZEK: Then the question of when the TBM was turned off, do you have a
date on that?

PETERS: Yes, we lost power, I told you last meeting and I\'ll have to
test my memory, we lost power because of an electrical failure, let me
get my dates right, last spring. I can get you the exact month. I just
can\'t pull it off my head.

PARIZEK: It would be helpful to know the timing.

PETERS: Yes, I think it was like April, or so.

PARIZEK: And it\'s been off since that time?

PETERS: Yes. We did turn it on while the bulkheads were open briefly to
do a maintenance program, and then we turned it right back off.

PARIZEK: Okay. Another question. When you go in now and just open up
pre-ventilation, do you have the molds and all of the things growing
that you were worried about?

PETERS: Yes.

PARIZEK: So, you go in in protective suits?

PETERS: Yes, the same way you all went in all dressed up in green suits,
yes.

PARIZEK: And the molds, no one has discussed what they are, or
identified them, or done anything with them? The question is relevant
maybe from the environment that you create by opening the door, or from
just the humidity, and light that you had. It\'s probably introduced.
It\'s not in the rock? Or do you have things creeping out of the rock?
Sally Devlin\'s bugs.

PETERS: Well, first of all, we collected it when we saw like one of the
first entries, and it was analyzed and it\'s mainly penicillin, for
those who are interested in molds. It tends to grow on the railroad
ties, the wood ties, and where there was debris left behind. It doesn\'t
appear to grow on the rock.

PARIZEK: This is what the Canadian block experiments were showing, that
you actually had a reducing environment inside a piece of the Calico
Hills, I think?

PETERS: Yes, they had reducing conditions in the saturated experimented
ACL, and they were hypothesizing that that might be because of microbial
growths.

PARIZEK: Yes, and that\'s again just handling the block that introduces
it, or whether it\'s native to the rock formation is not yet known;
right?

PETERS: Right. All I can say is qualitatively when you look at it, it
tends to grow. Where it grows is on the materials that are introduced
into the tunnel.

PARIZEK: Now, on the tracer experiments with a drilled back or mined
back checks on it, how do the numbers of travel time agree, again, with
the Canadian experiments? They had both the non-saturated experiment as
well as the saturated experiment, and you have some other numbers which
you got in terms of the forced experiments by injecting fluids, and
seeing that they did break through or they didn\'t break through at a
given reference depth. Are there similar numbers involved?

PETERS: Yes, is the answer, I mean because the ACL experiments are
telling us the same thing. The experimental determined sorption
coefficients are consistent with what we\'re seeing in the block
experiment. So, I\'d say indirectly, yes. I\'m not sure if the
scientist, I can find out, but I\'m not sure if the scientist has done a
one, you know, compared it directly. But they\'re giving us the same
bottom line answer, that it\'s consistent with the lab data.

PARIZEK: I\'ll pass.

CRAIG: Okay. Debra?

KNOPMAN: Mark, two questions. One, while we\'re on this, I want to
understand a little bit more about the thought process. I mean, it seems
to me, as Russ described it, and you, it is a good news and potentially
bad news story as to what went on here, because for one, I guess I\'m
surprised that there wasn\'t in place already some check on materials
for testing purposes. And I\'d be curious to know if the manufacturer of
Viton had said don\'t use over 100 degrees C., for example. And if that
did happen, did someone just not read a label, or what? What was the
case?

PETERS: Okay, I\'ll take that one first. We\'ve got to go back to the
\'96, \'97 time frame when we put the stuff down whole. Let me back up.
We do have an analysis program as part of this test to look at the
introduced materials. Did we have one, did we do this analysis for
Viton? No. I go back to the \'96, \'97 time frame. If you read the
literature on this materials, it says stable to 200 C. And that\'s what
we looked at back then and said, okay, well this is going into
hydrologic boreholes that weren\'t originally intended to sample water
anyway, that we\'ve evolved into them using those pack rolls as that.

So, I mean, you\'ve got a valid criticism, but if you look at the
literature, it suggests that it was stable to that temperature range.
But we went back to look at the literature when this developed and it
also says that it can start to de-gas at lower temperatures. So, in one
way, as I look back, having been part of the original testing, I\'m
critical of myself, because we probably missed this one to some extent.

KNOPMAN: I mean, just closing the loop here has I think fairly strong
implications for performance confirmation.

PETERS: That\'s correct.

KNOPMAN: That virtually everything that\'s going in there, well,
depending on what thermal operating mode you\'re in, will have a big
effect on the equipment, the instrumentation, the longevity of the
instrumentation, the confounding factors, none of which I\'ve seen
addressed.

PETERS: Well, could I just say one thing, though? I would like to
underscore what Russ said, though. I think the success part of this is
the way we responded to it, because I mean it was discovered, and we
went out and very quickly addressed the issue. And I personally think
that should be congratulated.

KNOPMAN: I agree, and I\'ll congratulate you.

PETERS: Thank you. That wasn\'t why I said it, of course.

KNOPMAN: That\'s okay. You did respond well. I mean, I think that\'s
true.

Let me also just on this point, you\'re sampling superheated waters at
140 degrees C. To what extent was it a surprise that you had as much
superheated water to sample? After all, the whole premise of this high
temperature operating mode is that you\'re driving off your liquid
water. So, tell us a little bit about what you\'re finding, in fact, in
terms of presence of superheated liquid water.

PETERS: I think I might have confused you. It was steam.

KNOPMAN: It was all steam?

PETERS: Yes.

KNOPMAN: Okay.

PETERS: That\'s my fault because of the words. It was steam that was
condensed in the sample tube as we pumped.

KNOPMAN: Okay. Nevertheless, you still have water?

PETERS: There is steam, yeah, vapor, water vapor in the system. That was
expected. I mean, I\'m not sure what else to say.

KNOPMAN: Wouldn\'t you have expected by now that a lot of that would
have been gassed off, driven off?

PETERS: Bo can probably address that better than me. But there is a
significant amount of water vapor in the air mass, even above boiling. I
mean, I\'d go to the heated drift, and the relative humidity in the
heated drift is still, back in the heating phase, was still on the order
of 2 to 3 per cent, which suggests there was a lot of water vapor in the
air.

KNOPMAN: Okay. And, finally, just a clarification on Slide 46 when
you\'re talking about the electrochemical testing of Alloy 22, and you
talk about testing temperatures, and it stops at 90 degrees C., and I
don\'t understand why you\'re not testing above 90 degrees C.

PETERS: This particular data does. Right now in the program\--

KNOPMAN: Wait, I\'m sorry. I guess it was your 45.

PETERS: Oh, yeah, that\'s the GE data.

KNOPMAN: That second to the last bullet.

PETERS: Yeah, this particular program only went\--we\'ve only gone up to
90 C. We have ongoing a plan to go to 120, and then the next question
will be, well, what about even higher. That\'s being evaluated. That\'s
in the plan that\'s being evaluated within the context of all the
planning that you\'ve heard about this morning. So, we\'re not ignoring
the fact that we\'ve got to go to a higher temperature range, is I guess
the message.

CRAIG: Dan Bullen?

BULLEN: Pass.

CRAIG: Let the record show that we have had a first. Priscilla?

NELSON: Nelson, Board.

Other than the followup of what are you waiting for, let me ask you what
are you doing in the field project to be prepared to validate your
evolving ventilation and humidity models for the underground tunnels?

PETERS: We did the ventilation tests, the Phase 1 and 2 ventilation
tests, at the Atlas facility that are complete.

NELSON: But there\'s nothing underground or on site?

PETERS: Right. Right now, nothing underground. The program to address
that aspect is focused on the Atlas testing.

CRAIG: Alberto?

SAGÜÉS: The one just a second ago, right there, I want to emphasize a
couple of things you apparently are aware of. First of all, the
corrosion rates indicate that they are at about an order of magnitude,
or almost two orders of magnitude greater than the corrosion rates which
are in the long-term experiments, and there you have about 1 micrometer
per year, and in the long-term, you get about .05 micrometers per year,
or so, which indicates that those tests are done with either extremely
young specimens, very short time tests, and over there, they have
obtained an activation energy base of about a fraction of the activation
energy that was used for the SSPA study. And the introduction of
temperature and the corrosion rates have a tremendous impact on the very
long-term performance, and so on.

So, what I want to indicate, and I think you agree, you have a long,
long way to go yet before you get data that are going to be usable for
the kind of purposes that you need, namely, in order to get a credible
estimation of what would be the long-term temperature dependence of the
corrosion rate. Is that right?

PETERS: Well, you want me to comment on that?

SAGÜÉS: Yeah. The question is do you agree that this is just barely just
beginning to\--

PETERS: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don\'t know if I\'d say barely. I think
you\'ve heard it from a lot of the previous speakers that we\'ve
got\--we\'re going to have to have a continuing testing program,
particularly in this area, to address the issues. I mean, some of these
tests\--some of these we\'ve just started in the last year, some of
these short-term tests. So, yes, there\'s more to do. Are we going to do
it? It will be part of the prioritization to do the right thing. But
this is certainly a key part of the program.

I\'m not going to presuppose. You heard a lot of talk about license
application versus continuing measurements, you know. That\'s all going
to have to be factored in, with budget realities, et cetera. But, yes,
there\'s a long way to go in this area to be able to defend the waste
package long term, but we\'ve got testing now, and we\'ve got all the
monitoring period to continue this testing. It could be a very long
time. So, I\'m not personally worried about that. I think we\'ve got
time to continue to address that issue.

SAGÜÉS: Because this is indeed crucial.

PETERS: Yes, it is.

SAGÜÉS: To be able to\--between, let\'s say, high temperature versus a
low temperature operating mode, because that is at the center of that
prediction; right?

PETERS: Absolutely. But I\'ll bring something up that you didn\'t bring
up that I thought you were going to bring up. This activation energy is
different than the one that\--

SAGÜÉS: Yes.

PETERS: It\'s much smaller.

SAGÜÉS: Three to four times less.

PETERS: Yes, it\'s much less. So, that by itself tells you, okay, we\'ve
learned the temperature dependence is less than we assumed in SSPA if
you take this at face value.

SAGÜÉS: Well, in these tests, it is. But now the question is are test
tests the good ones, or are the smaller tests in Virginia the good ones,
you know, which means simply that\--

PETERS: Yes. Well, there\'s a matrix that we have to work through to get
to all those answers.

COHON: Cohon, Board.

You don\'t have to be a corrosion scientist, though, and I\'m not\--

PETERS: Me neither.

COHON: Right. But he is. \--to realize that having no data in the
temperature ranges that are likely to obtain for something like 1500 or
3000 years in your scenario is not a good thing. And, I mean, no data,
not a little data, no data.

PETERS: Above the 120 range.

COHON: Right.

PETERS: This is just one example, of course, in the test. We\'ve gone to
higher temperatures.

COHON: But where you\'ve got me is when I go above 120, which is, I
don\'t know, is it 2000 years? But, anyhow, hundreds of years.

PETERS: Yes, hundreds of years.

CRAIG: Okay. So, we\'re concluding then the observation that there will
be no surprises in this area?

PETERS: In waste packages.

CRAIG: In waste packages, because you can\'t afford to have any.

PETERS: Well, if I said that, I didn\'t mean it.

CRAIG: No, I said that. You definitely did not say that.

PETERS: I personally feel that the mountain, the mountain is a good
place.

CRAIG: Okay. Don Runnells, last comment?

RUNNELLS: Runnells, Board.

Mark, we see bits and pieces of information on colloids. It\'s hard for
me to put them together, and I know it\'s fairly early in the program of
studying the colloids. But at this point in time, can you summarize for
us what your knowledge is, what your feeling is about the potential
importance of colloids?

PETERS: First, let me summarize what I think the state of the program
is. I think in the generation of colloids from the waste form, I would
say it\'s a more mature program relative to some of the other areas.
They\'ve got a better handle on colloid formation from the waste forms.
Whereas, the transport aspects through the UZ and the SZ is less mature,
and the colloid model for the UZ is new, really just developed during
the SR time frame. So, I think we\'ve got a lot to learn. How well do we
understand it? That was really your question?

RUNNELLS: That was part of the question, sure.

PETERS: I mean, I think we\'ve got\--I\'d almost punt that to Bo,
because it\'s a hard question, plus he\'s the guy who\'s the UZ modeler,
who can speak to that. And then I\'d punt the other part to Al, because
they\'ve got to defend the UZ and SZ models and how the colloid aspects
are incorporated into their models. So, if I can, taking speaker
privilege, I might punt that to them.

RUNNELLS: On a scale from zero per cent to 100 per cent, where are you
in your knowledge base of colloids?

PETERS: We\'re not zero, and we\'re not 100. I want to say we\'re above
50. But in the UZ and SZ, we don\'t have\--we\'re just now developing
the field data to be able to even validate those models. I mean, C-wells
have colloid data. We\'re going to do more in the alluvial testing
complex. Catch me two years from now, and I think in SZ, I\'ll be much
higher confidence. In the UZ, Busted Butte is maybe going to give us
some information. But the UZ, I\'d say probably lower confidence than
the SZ.

CRAIG: Mark, thank you very, very much. It\'s been a good session, and
we now call this session to a close and move to the public comment
period.

COHON: Thank you very much, Paul. Thank you for chairing that session.

Seven people signed up to speak at this public comment period. I\'m
going to call your names, and when I\'m done calling your name, I\'m
going to ask you a question about your schedule. So, please listen up.

Dennis Bechtel, Andrew Onell or Oneil, Jacob Pazz, Sally Devlin, Grant
Hudlow, Bob Williams and Atef Elzeftani.

WILLIAMS: I thought I was signing up for 5:30.

COHON: Good. Thanks, Bob. That helps.

Of the people whose names I just called\--Grant is not here? It\'s
getting easier all the time. Well, let me still ask. Of the people whose
names I just called, are any of you not going to be here either this
afternoon, during this afternoon\'s public comment period, or
tomorrow\'s?

Okay, I\'m going to give you two preference. Are you mr. Bechtel?
Presumably no relation?

BECHTEL: No relation.

COHON: Okay. This is Dennis Bechtel. Please state your name again.

BECHTEL: Dennis Bechtel. Unfortunately, no relation.

First, I\'d like to commend the Board for holding meetings like this in
Nevada, and I\'d like to commend the Board for what I feel is very
important oversight to the citizens of Nevada and to citizens throughout
the country. And, also, I feel your reports are for technical, but
reports on very complex issues, are very readable, and as readable as a
lot of the topics can be, I guess. So I hope that will continue, and
I\'m sure it will continue.

COHON: Thank you.

BECHTEL: I was concerned in reading the letter report, you listed a lot
of strengths and weaknesses in the Program, and I think at this stage
where we\'re nearing site, potential site recommendation, that\'s of
concern to me. It\'s not just in the issue of national environment,
it\'s also in the issue, as the last questioning pointed out, in the
engineered barrier system. So, I think that gives me pause because
we\'re entering into a very important part of the program, and there
seems to be many questions still hanging out there.

I think the police makers are probably going to kind of key on the first
three pages of your letter, and maybe less on the background material,
and you, quite appropriately, point out weaknesses there. But I think
you sort of let DOE off the hook on a couple of areas that causes me
some concern. You indicate that there\'s really basically no scientific
or technical issues that would necessarily disqualify the site. But I
would point out that given the fact that there\'s so many maybe
inadequacies of the data, you could also say that there\'s really no
certainties about the site as well.

So, I think folks may glop onto that as maybe an unrealistic view of
maybe the suitability of the site. And I guess the other point is you
indicate that all sites are going to have problems. Well, that\'s true.
But, I mean, there\'s probably varying degrees of problems, you know,
and there could be better sites, perhaps even in Nevada.

So, I hope that if you get to the point where you\'re actually
testifying in front of Congress, that that is pointed out as well, you
know, if you feel that\'s an accurate statement.

The other thing, just in viewing the program today, there were a couple
of things that kind of struck me. One is the questions about, you know,
whether in fact you\'ve actually got, you know, the reports that you
actually need to make decisions. And that kind of blows my mind, in a
way. I don\'t know if that affects your decision. I suppose it could go
either way. If you had more information, you may be less uncertain about
things. But I\'m hoping you\'re able to get all the reports that you
need to be able to do the work you need to do.

COHON: Let me respond to that right now. Indeed, the Board has access to
all information it feels it needs. DOE is also forthcoming in providing
us reports, even in draft form. What Dr. Runnells was referring to
particularly was the work plans that they develop, which we also have
access to, but we generally don\'t see those as they\'re being formed,
but rather after the fact. And his point was we might have some useful
input even before they\'re completely formed, and that\'s not something
the Board has done in the past. But in terms of reports and results,
it\'s completely available to us.

BECHTEL: Okay. And I guess the other point that came up today was the
cultural evolution issue. I guess I would like to think, maybe naively,
that that was part of the program, you know, before, attention to detail
and all this other stuff, and it doesn\'t seem like something that
would, you know, necessarily we\'re going to salute and we\'re going to
get in with the NRC and suddenly we\'re going to, you know, change
courses. That\'s good to see, but hopefully that\'s throughout the
program.

The other part, other concerns I have are Dr. Bullen brought up the
issue of transportation, which I think, as you indicated, is very
important to folks in Nevada. And, you know, the fact that at one time,
there were actually members on the Board that actually looked at
transportation issues, and I would hope should this project proceed on,
that I could see a role for that, a technical role for the committee in
actually looking at that, because there\'s a lot of unresolved issues in
that part.

And, I guess lastly, I also am concerned about a lot of the material not
being available on the web right now. I\'m all for national security,
but I think it\'s important, particularly for the public who may be
residing far afield, that they really need to have this information to
be able to potentially make decisions.

And, finally, you know, the final EIS is not out yet, and of course
we\'re talking about a potential recommendation to the President, you
know, soon, or to Congress, and I think there\'s a lot of\--the public
devoted a lot of time to reviewing the draft document, and there\'s a
lot of important issues embedded in that document that have not been,
you know, we don\'t know how they\'re going to be resolved.

So, I would urge DOE to release that document as soon as possible,
because there\'s a number of concerned citizens, you know, throughout
the United States that would like to find out how they\'re going to
attend to those issues.

So, thank you.

COHON: Thank you, Mr. Bechtel.

Let me just point out there are indeed still members of the Board very
interested in transportation issues relating to nuclear waste, not only
interested, but have expertise in it. And we stay current and informed
on those issues, and we are quite prepared to get involved and take them
on. Thank you.

Now, Mr. Elzeftani, since you will be leaving\--where did you go? There
you are. Please, and if you\'d state your name again for the record,
since I\'m sure I didn\'t do a very good job in pronouncing it, it would
be appreciated.

ELZEFTANI: With this Aladdin and all these other things, probably the
American people started to get familiar with these crazy names. So, I
was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt more than 50 years ago. My name
is Atef Elzeftani, simple. Too many letters. Somebody called me Mr.
Alphabet, but that\'s fine. Technically speaking, I\'m a hydrogeologist
with\--finally, I got my Ph.D. from Alexandria in 1989, approved after
Nassir kicked me out from Egypt because I was talking about the civil
rights back then.

But, anyway, I got my second Ph.D. in physics from the University of
Florida back in 1974. I got involved with the Chester C, some of you
might have heard the name. He was the department chairman over at the
University of Illinois, and he got me involved into this nuclear waste
situation, because he was a member of the ACRS of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. Well, that\'s really the short story.

I always wanted to stay in a dry climate, so I left Illinois with my
wife. We came to Sin City, as they called it back then, which is Las
Vegas, Nevada. Now, as I was driving this morning from Las Vegas, it
dawned on me that, boy, Las Vegas about 25 years ago, it looked like
Pahrump Valley. I haven\'t been here for about maybe two or three years.
But some of you will drive, you will see the immense part of the valley
when you go back to Las Vegas, and you\'ll find out that houses\--now,
it\'s all over the place, pollution problems, air pollution, traffic,
and all these other things.

Now, when I moved out here, I really didn\'t, after I became a citizen
in 1974, I had no idea about the Native American, who used to live here
some time ago. Don\'t take me wrong, please. So, I was asked one time,
well, the Congress is considering the six sections for the Paiute tribe,
where should we put them. Back then, Howard Cannon and the other guys.
So, anyway, the Congress gave the Las Vegas Paiute tribe a piece of
land, which is on 95 as you drive from here to the Nevada Test Site.
That brings me to why I\'m here.

I was planning to come just to see what\'s going on, but the tribal
chairman said, well, get in your car and go over there to that meeting
and tell them the following. They had a tribal court. That\'s why I was
late. Anyway, so I\'m here on their behalf as a sovereign nation of the
United States.

Some of you may not know that, but our 650 or so federally recognized
tribes, Native American tribes, they have their own sovereignty more or
less equal to the state sovereignty, and the story is so long. So, their
unofficial position now is that Yucca Mountain is not good for the
tribe. And I was asked all these other questions by the seven members of
the tribal members about the technical part.

Now, to go back to the technical part, back when I worked for the NRC
and the Waste Management for about three or four years, 10 CFR 60, and
Dan Fehringer and all this group, we kept wrestling with the Nevada Test
Site, and the unsaturated zone. One thing I did realize as an
unsaturated zone, or call it unsaturated zone hydrogeologist, I said
fracture flow is going to be prominent.

Some of you members who are no longer here didn\'t believe that back
then when you guys got together by the Act of Congress. It took the DOE,
what, 10, 15 years to realize that there is such a thing called maybe a
fracture flow, and you need to consider it, not this .0001 millimeter of
recharge.

And then my other concern, and concern of the tribe, is you can\'t model
the site. Maybe you can build a permit, but you have to show them that
it\'s going to last for 5,000 years. Nobody knew until you really live
it and you see it, as I saw it 35 years ago.

Now, what I\'m saying is as the technical people as you are, there\'s
two things. Just about a week ago, it dawned on me that this little\--in
Alexandria, I grew up with it for 21 years before I left, and it dawned
on me when they were talking about the contest of silting, that this is
really the head of a clay. That\'s the literal translation of the word.
And here it is. I\'m 53 years old, born and raised in Alexandria, and it
finally dawned on me why they called that area that name.

Now, I\'m on the\--infinity, plus infinity is Albert Einstein. Kept
thinking the specific heat of the diamond for you ladies are lower than
everything else. Five, six years later, he proved that this is because
the quantum theory.

Now, we can argue about the technical things. The DOE has spent a
tremendous amount of money in the technical aspect, and I don\'t have
any problem with that. If I am the president of the United States, I
would say scrap it. Everybody got a good job. We\'ll finish it.

Now, here\'s one last thing. They are, in a sense, the council is
outraged with regard to the visit of the Department of Energy secretary
comes down here, goes through the tunnel. A day later, or two days
later, he calls the governor and says we\'re going to recommend the
site.

Now, we can argue about the technical issues for a long, long, long
time. But I feel that we will never be able to put our hands around it
100 per cent, or 90 per cent even. with the performance assessment and
modeling, and all the technical data that has been generated for that
time, and I\'m very familiar with it.

Now, the official position is, number one, we would like to see the
tribe, or the Native American tribe people, get on the mailing list for
this Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. That\'s number one.

Number two, somehow, somewhere, but I did fight with the NRC and the NRC
chairman came here and met the chairman of the tribe, and some of the
other commissioners, I\'d like to suggest on their behalf that either
some of you members of the committee or the chairman of the committee
stop by sometime for a private visit. We will lunch you and things like
that. But you need to get the word from the horse\'s mouth. These are
two imperative points I\'d like to make after all that story.

So, best wishes for you. I\'ve been delighted to see a lot of technical
things happening, and all kinds of things like that. I know we\'re
getting gray hair like me and losing hair, and all that. So, keep at it,
and hopefully we will reach another agreement.

One other point after\--also, the last point is transportation issues.
We\'ve seen the unimaginable. I mean, I personally had nightmares for a
month. I haven\'t lost anybody there, and I haven\'t lost anything, but
I woke up many, many times dreaming of what I saw. That\'s unbelievable.

Now, the scenario that it comes so close to us is what are we going to
do with the transportation. Glenn Seborg, when I met him for the first
time and the last time in 1986, said the Congress needs\--you know who
Glenn Seborg is, he\'s passed away now\--he said, when I asked him about
that question back in Berkeley, he said the Congress needs to change the
law, reprocessing and using, well, we call it waste, but it\'s not
waste, and I think if that goes into the political arena, then something
might change. We might be out of a job, all of us, but maybe that\'s an
opportunity.

Thank you very much, and I appreciate it. I\'m sorry if I\'m not going
to be here late afternoon. I appreciate it.

COHON: Thank you, Dr. Elzeftani. And I did not take that hair comment
personally.

Dr. Elzeftani, would you give the mailing information to one of the
Lindas sitting over there, so we keep the people on the mailing list?

Dr. Pazz and Mrs. Devlin, if you wouldn\'t mind, and if you\'ll still be
around, could we invite you to comment later? Thank you, Dr. Pazz. And,
Sally, thanks. I appreciate your accommodating our schedule.

We\'ll take a break now until 1:30. Have a nice lunch, and my thanks
again to all the speakers.

(Whereupon, the lunch recess was taken.)

[A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N]{.underline}

BULLEN: Thank you, Chairman Cohon. Since Jerry did such a very nice job
of outlining the entire meeting this morning, we can dispense with any
introductions of the next session and we\'ll just move right into the
presentation which is on regional saturated zone model update by Frank
D\'Agnese.

Frank?

D\'AGNESE: Thank you.

I was asked to give sort of an overview and an update on the regional
saturated zone modeling. When I went back to my files, I realized that
the last time I had done something like this was January of \'97. So, a
lot has happened since January of \'97. So, I have 20 minutes to review
five years.

Just to give you an update or, at least, a historical picture, this is
where we were five years ago. In 1997, we published a Water Resource
Investigation Report, 96-4300, which described the 3-layer,
steady-state, MODFLOWP based regional groundwater flow model of the
Death Valley region or the regional groundwater flow system on which
Yucca Mountain sits. We also published early in \'98 a report that
described these simulated effects of past and future climate changes on
that regional groundwater flow system. Around that same time, the Nevada
Test Site underground testing area\'s program or project also released a
15-layer, steady-state, MODFLOW model of roughly the same regional area.

This shows the boundaries of those two models; in black, the boundary of
the regional 3-layer model developed by the Yucca Mountain Project, and
then in orange, what is called the Nevada Test Site regional model
boundary.

So, if we go on to the next slide, please? As a result of these two
models being released roughly around the same time, these different
groups within DOE, the Yucca Mountain site characterization office and
then other groups within DOE Nevada Test Site, the underground testing
area\'s program, defense programs, and hydrology resources management
program, approached the USGS and asked the USGS if we would embark on a
study of synthesizing these databases, these geologic models, these 3D
geologic models, and these groundwater flow models for the purposes of
satisfying the needs of these four different DOE programs.

Go on to the next slide, please? The short-term goals conducted between
the years of \'99 and 2001 which have just been completed this past year
was combine the DOE models and the datasets, characterize 3D flow paths,
calibrate a steady-state model, estimate the flux magnitudes, determine
the potential effects of actual geologic structure to include explicitly
geologic structures into this regional model, and improve upon the
sensitivity and uncertainty analyses that were developed in the previous
two regional models. That has since been completed and we\'ll show you
where we are right now.

Long-term, fiscal years 2002 to 2004, develop a model that would
potentially evaluate things like pumping impacts, be appropriate for
providing a technical basis for water appropriations, be able to be used
for designing effective groundwater monitoring network, and ultimately
be used not only by DOE, but other stakeholders in the region within the
groundwater basin as a groundwater management tool for the Death Valley
groundwater basin.

Go on to the next slide, please? At the time, we were concerned with
what we called recent program reviews and findings and this is five
years old now, but I just want to remind you what types of things we
included or were asked to include. Information from the saturated zone
expert elicitation which was conducted in the \'97-\'98 time frame,
external peer reviews that were conducted on the UGTA program,
comparison of the two models, concerns by the NWTRB on data south of
Yucca Mountain, the Nye County early warning system that was coming on
line, underground testing areas, corrective action unit studies that
were being conducted. So, to have an investigation that synthesizes the
existing data, but also includes this data as it\'s coming on line and
we\'ve done that.

Next slide, please? So, what the USGS offered to DOE was that this
effort would have five components; an integrated modeling database, live
interactive database, a comprehensive geologic interpretation which
would update the geologic conceptual model through the 1990s, a 3D
hydrogeologic framework model synthesizing the two existing geologic
models and improving upon that with this more comprehensive geologic
interpretation, a regional hydrologic conceptual model. The issue here
is to reduce the uncertainty that exists in the various components like
groundwater discharge, groundwater recharge, those types of things. And
then, ultimately, a calibrated flow model. Each one of these components,
we suggested, needs to be independently documented, clear QA, have
clearly assessed levels of uncertainty, and also describe alternative
likely hypotheses for conceptual models.

Next slide, please? And then, also take into consideration other
stakeholders in the basin in the region like Department of Defense, Nye
County, Fish & Wildlife, Park Service, that sort of thing.

Next slide, please? So, there are really five major activities that are
based on those five major components. In Work Package 1, the regional
database, here, we\'re integrating data, not just point data, well
information, water levels, lithologic logs, geophysical logs, but also
spatial GIS data so we can conduct analyses, share that data and ideas,
and also use that as inputs to the models. A comprehensive geologic
interpretation, this is synthesize geologic maps, tectonic maps,
cross-sections, and geophysics. These have since been published. This
cross-sections, the geophysics, the geologic maps, and tectonic maps are
about to be published. An improved 3D hydrogeologic framework model,
first, the synthesis of the two existing geologic models from the
underground testing areas and the Yucca Mountain Project and then
ultimately a synthesis of this new, improved geologic interpretation
into that framework model. Reduced uncertainty on evapotranspiration,
recharge, water use, and hydraulic properties, and then ultimately a
steady-state groundwater flow model, and down the line a transient
groundwater flow model.

Next slide, please? This is the boundaries now of what we call the Death
Valley regional flow system model. It includes all of the areas that
were modeled by the Yucca Mountain Project 3-layer model and the
15-layer underground testing area\'s model and it also includes the west
side of Death Valley. So, it includes the entire, what is considered,
the groundwater basin of the Death Valley region.

Next slide, please? So, to update you on the short-term goals that have
been achieved, we have delivered a site saturated zone model with
updates to the site saturated zone modeling group. We had updates to
them mid-year fiscal year last year, late in fiscal year 2001, and again
early this year. This model includes a synthesize of all the regional
hydrogeologic data, point data, that exists in the basin to this point.
It includes a hard-merge, what we call a hard-merge, of the geologic
model from the Yucca Mountain Project and the underground testing areas
geologic models. It has significantly more hydrogeologic units, true
hydrogeologic or hydrostratigraphic units, and it also includes faults,
hydrogeologic structures explicitly in not only the framework model, but
the flow model. We have what we would consider an improved or quantified
uncertainty in the discharge and water levels that was independently
documented, particularly the discharge, in another report. And, the
model is not just three layers now, it\'s 15 layers, 15 flow model
layers.

Next slide, please? Some of the important things here with this updated
steady-state model is a significantly more quantified sensitivity
analysis/uncertainty analysis. And, this is just an example of the type
of output that we would get, what we call parameters of composite scaled
sensitivities. This is a measure of the relative sensitivity of defined
parameters relative to other parameters. So, right here, a parameter by
the name of K211HZONE8 is significantly more sensitive than some of
these other parameters here farther down the line. So, it\'s a measure
of which parameters are important based on the observations that are
being used to constrain our groundwater flow model. The constraints
would be water level observations, hydraulic heads, and groundwater
discharge or flows.

Next slide? Also, we have a dimensionless scaled sensitivity. This tell
us for a given parameter\--we\'ll just call this the red parameter for
now. We can tell which observations contribute more information to the
estimated parameter value of a given parameter. So, we can actually say,
well, if we want to reduce uncertainty in an estimated parameter value,
perhaps then what we should do is find these three or four or five
observations and reduce the uncertainty in those measured observations
and that would further constrain our model and give us a better estimate
of those values. So, it\'s a better way of determining which parameters
are controlling our predictions.

Next slide? This is the last slide. Long-term, our goals are to
incorporate this new comprehensive geologic interpretation. In addition
to the regional hydrogeologic units, there are the local hydrogeologic
units that are consistent with the site saturated zone model. This would
add even more hydrogeologic units to our regional framework and flow
model. We would have improved hydrogeologic database. This would include
all of the recent data coming out of Nye County, as well as the
underground testing areas program being conducted on the Nevada Test
Site. This next version of the model would be a combined steady-state
and transient simulation again with uncertainty and sensitivity
analyses. And, ultimately, the final report would have all the available
data available along with the framework and the flow model available
through the Internet.

Thank you.

BULLEN: Thank you, Frank. Actually, the best laid plans of staff lay out
an agenda that basically says that we have discussion on this in about a
half hour or so or maybe almost an hour. But, since you got done early,
what I\'ll do is take Chairman\'s prerogative here and ask if could have
a few questions now and then I\'ll cut it off at the time frame and
we\'ll go on to the next presentation.

Do I have questions from the Board? Don Runnells to start with? And, I
want to remind the Board Members to speak into their microphones so that
we can get it transcribed and everybody can hear us. So, Dr. Runnells,
it\'s all yours.

RUNNELLS: Runnells, Board. Frank, on the way down here, I was reading
the final report of the International Peer Review Committee on TSPA.
They are very critical of the USGS saturated zone modeling effort. Can
you comment on that? I know Debra pointed out to me that their review is
based largely on the 1996 reports, but incorporating that into your
answer, do you feel that you have addressed the criticism, the specific
criticisms, that the peer review panel have on the USGS SZ model?

D\'AGNESE: Yeah. I think I can address that. And, yes, that panel review
was of the 1997 report, and therefore, the 1996 model. I think that the
criticisms that the panel have there are very similar to the same sorts
of criticisms or comments we got out of the saturated zone expert
elicitation that was done many years back. They\'re also many of the
same sorts of criticisms that we, ourselves, documented in the report,
in the 1997 report.

I was also reading the comments as my colleague was driving to Pahrump.
So, I would kind of group the comments from that panel into four
different types of criticisms. One would be comments that were sort of
misinterpreted in the report. In other words, we actually noted those as
limitations in the 1997 report and perhaps the panel just didn\'t really
catch on to that information or we didn\'t make it clear enough in the
report that we acknowledge those as limitations in the \'97 report.

There were criticisms in the International review that have already been
addressed now in the short-term goals. One example is just more detail
in the hydrogeologic layers, what they called under-parameterized. The
technology has changed significantly in 10 years and we went from 20
defined or 25 defined parameters and nine estimated parameters to
something like 200 defined and 35 or 45 estimated parameters in these
current models; so, significantly improved. So, those are addressed.

The third category that I would have describing the International Peer
Review is criticisms that are not addressed yet, but they\'re slated to
be addressed in the upcoming model. I\'ve written down\--an example is
including this new comprehensive geologic interpretation. They called
for including a lot of the available geophysical data which we agreed
and we said that in the \'97 report and we\'re getting that in now. And,
also, one of the recommendations was that you should consider recharge
in the femoral streams. That is now being brought into the model as we
speak. So, that would be the third kind.

The fourth kind would be those types of details that we\'ve also
recognized as limitations to previous models. We\'ve discussed that with
DOE and other stakeholders. We recognize that they\'re needed. But,
because of time and fiscal constraints, they have not yet been included
and they\'re not currently planned to be incorporated into this current
version.

So, that\'s kind of how I would break those down.

RUNNELLS: Okay, thank you. Just a quick followup on it. Thanks for your
answer. That clarifies a lot for me. I guess, I\'m puzzled as to why the
International Peer Review Panel in a report dated last month was
reviewing 1996 models. Why wasn\'t there better communication between
someone, USGS and DOE and DOE and the peer review panel, so that they
would be reviewing things that are more current than 1996? The cover
letter is this month. It\'s January of 2002.

D\'AGNESE: Yeah. Yeah. All of the components leading up to the
short-term goals that\'s being delivered as a result of the 2001, the
final report, I\'ve got it on CD with me, but that final report has not
yet received USGS director\'s approval. So, that\'s why that hasn\'t
been. As to why there couldn\'t have been a little more communication
with the International Panel on the products that are coming out now and
some of the more recent publications that are synthesizing this data, I
don\'t think I\'d be able to answer that.

BULLEN: Jeff Wong and then Debra Knopman?

WONG: Jeff Wong, Board. I just have two clarifying questions. So, none
of this latest thinking has been incorporated into the models that are
used currently to support DSR?

D\'AGNESE: That\'s correct. What was used by the regional input to SR
was from the \'97. As to how this latest stuff is being incorporated
into the site model, I\'d let Al Edderbbarh and George Zyvoloski talk
about in the next presentation.

WONG: Do you think that any of this new thinking would change
conclusions about performance?

D\'AGNESE: I guess, I don\'t want to pass the buck to George and Al, but
they\'ve been using some of these latest results. So, they may be able
to tell you how this is changing their results.

WONG: Okay. The last question I have is on Slide 12. You said that these
are the parameters that are more sensitive and I don\'t\--they\'re more
sensitive to what or are these the parameters that are the most
sensitive in terms of changing the result of your model?

D\'AGNESE: This is just an example slide. So, I\'m not going to say that
these are specifically the ones that are in the final model. What we\'re
describing here, it\'s a relative sense. What we do is we go through and
we calculate for every given parameter the contribution of a given
observation to help constrain the estimated parameter value. So, for
example, this one far on the left, that particular parameter and the
value that\'s estimated for that parameter, what that\'s saying is
there\'s a lot of observations, whether they be heads or flows in the
groundwater flow model that are constraining that as opposed to this.
So, for example, this is HFB of Death Valley. That\'s the Death Valley
Fault. And, what we\'re seeing is that there\'s not very much water
level constraints or groundwater discharge constraints that are helping
constrain the hydraulic conductivity of that particular valley. So,
it\'s relative. What that tells us while we\'re calibrating is we\'re
probably never\--or, at least, given the current dataset, we don\'t have
enough information to tell us much about that. Perhaps, it would be best
to come up with a best estimate.

As opposed to these on this far end, we have a lot of information in our
dataset that constrains the parameter values that we\'re going to get
at. What that translates to is when we\'re making a prediction, we can
also\--we could do a similar thing. We make a prediction like potential
advective transport from the facility. The question is which parameters
are controlling that particular prediction and then how much information
do we have about those particular parameters. So, if we have a parameter
that is really important to our advective transport prediction, but
it\'s somewhere down on this end, that\'s not very good. We want to know
more about that parameter as opposed to predictions that are constrained
by parameters that we have a lot of information about. So, it tells us
then, well, what do we do? Do we go out and get more information, that
sort of thing.

WONG: Thank you.

BULLEN: Debra Knopman and then Richard Parizek?

KNOPMAN: Frank, just to clarify, you haven\'t shown us any results. Is
that because it\'s all in the next presentation or you\'re not\--how
come we\'re not seeing any outputs?

D\'AGNESE: What it came down to was a time constraint. I was trying to
give an overview of what we\'ve done in the last five years. We have
that information. Again, the report is close to release, that sort of
thing.

KNOPMAN: Okay.

D\'AGNESE: If you have specific questions, we can go through it.

KNOPMAN: Yeah. Well, let me just ask a specific question. You\'ve got
now a much more parameterized, more parameter intensive model, which
means you need a lot more data to support the parameter estimates. Do
you have off the top of your head a sense of how many data points you,
in fact, have that you\'re using to estimate the model parameters?

D\'AGNESE: Off the top of my head, I might have to point to my colleague
in the back of the room, the number of flow observations. What we\'ve
done now is we\'ve actually quantified groundwater discharge from every
natural groundwater discharge site within the Death Valley region. So,
we have a measurement and we have a coefficient of variation on how well
we think we understand how much is discharging for every discharge point
except for the Death Valley salt pan and we were able to use some recent
estimates. So, that\'s rare that you would have a groundwater flow model
where you\'ve actually measured just about every discharge point and
you\'re using that to constrain the model. As far as water level
observations or heads, hydraulic heads, it\'s not so much that we\'ve
increased the number of values used, but we have actually done a much
more methodical diagnosis of the quality of those measurements and
quantified, you know, the target heads and the uncertainty that those
are measured. As far as the number of heads that we now have within the
region that we\'re using target heads, steady-state\--

SPEAKER: 670 heads and about 50\--

D\'AGNESE: Right. So, that\'s 670 hydraulic heads and those are sort of
average because we\'re looking at long-term averages. If we were looking
at number of measurements, thousands, tens of thousands, 20,000,
something like that, actual measurements within the region over the
record.

KNOPMAN: And, total number of parameters now in the model?

D\'AGNESE: We have\--

SPEAKER: 223.

D\'AGNESE: 223 defined parameters and those that were estimated using
nonlinear aggression, 30 something\--34 or 35 estimated parameters.

BULLEN: Richard Parizek?

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board. Frank, how did you handle faults? Can you maybe
elaborate on specifically how the faults are being treated in the model?

D\'AGNESE: Right, right. In the geologic model, in the three-dimensional
geologic model, the faults are included essentially to create the tops
of hydrogeologic units. So, there\'s an offset. There\'s a discontinuity
in a unit and then it\'s offset. And, that offset is delineated by a
particular fault. But, clearly, when we put that into a groundwater flow
model, what we\'re trying to do is not just show the offset, but also
that fault has a width and it has properties. And so, what we\'ve done
is we\'ve used a package within the MODFLOW package called the
horizontal flow barrier package where you specify the location of a
fault in between a model cell. You specify the width; so, some idea of
what the width is. And, in many cases, we extended that fault through
the entire section of the flow model. That\'s where we come up with
these HFB or horizontal flow barrier parameters. We then started out by
giving them some kind of a conductance value, relatively no impact or
barrier to flow and then changing them to extremely high barriers to
flow. Then, also, we went in there and actually calculated a sensitivity
to determine whether or not these things are actually significantly
affecting the results of the model or not really affecting the results
of the model.

PARIZEK: So, a lot of the hydraulic properties of the fault zones are
arrived at indirectly, more or less\--

D\'AGNESE: Absolutely.

PARIZEK: \--through really calibration process?

D\'AGNESE: That\'s exactly\--

PARIZEK: And, not any new field data specifically on these faults.

D\'AGNESE: That\'s right.

PARIZEK: I guess from a transport point of view and a site-scale model,
it becomes a bit of new need, I mean, to talk about the role of the
faults and their\--

D\'AGNESE: Right. And, actually\--

PARIZEK: \--properties.

D\'AGNESE: Again, I\'m not going to put words in my colleagues\' mouths,
but I\'m sure they\'re going to have some kind of a discussion about how
they\'re handling these discontinuities, as well.

PARIZEK: And, you show a time frame for the non-steady model updates as
2004. That\'s about the LA time frame. The odds are those findings
won\'t be available in time for LA space, very likely, in view of the
time it takes to get this out, get a peer review, and accepted
internally. So, it\'s very possible that a transient model that has
maybe improved predicted capability may not be used?

D\'AGNESE: That\'s correct. That\'s correct.

PARIZEK: So, the cutoff for new data that would go into your model for
2004. So, if Nye County continues drilling, when do you stop putting
data in?

D\'AGNESE: Well, the nice thing about it was we\'ve gotten the process
for moving the data to the geologic model to the flow model so much
improved that even with this latest model, we were able to continue to
add water level observations, those types of things, into the model up
until just about to the very end of the modeling process. So, if we
continue in that vein, we should be able to continue to update our
database, our framework, and our flow model almost through to the end of
the modeling process. At some point, obviously, in late 2003, 2004,
we\'d have to cut it off because we\'d have to start to move the report
through the review process.

PARIZEK: Your inventory of water withdrawals included in the model in
terms of, say, pumpage in Amargosa Farms, here in Pahrump, and
elsewhere?

D\'AGNESE: That was a pretty massive undertaking that\'s gone on and
that\'s just being completed this fiscal year. So, it\'s a complete
inventory of water use pumping within the Death Valley region over the
entire historical record. That will be included as information that is
input into the transient model.

PARIZEK: Okay. So, like here at Pahrump, if you pump water, you can take
it out of the flow system, but if it goes back as sewage, therefore
you\'ve got to put something back. Do you put anything back?

D\'AGNESE: We\'re\--

PARIZEK: \--say, in the\--

D\'AGNESE: We\'re working out the details of how we want to handle those
type of complexities right now.

PARIZEK: Okay.

BULLEN: This is Chairman\'s prerogative again. I know Leon has a
followup question and so does Debra, but what I\'d like to do, Frank, is
ask you to take a seat and we\'ll get Al and George up here to make
their presentation and then we have 25 minutes for more questions and
we\'ll continue at that time. I apologize to Leon and to Richard and to
Debra, but we\'ll try and stay on schedule because our Chairman set such
a great example this morning, both Paul and Chairman Cohon.

Our next presentation is site-scale saturated zone model update and
integration of new regional and site-scale models by Al Edderbbarh and
George Zyvoloski. I think it\'s a tag team, is that correct, or are you
first, Al, or are you going to do it all?

EDDERBBARH: Well, I\'m going to do it all and George is going to keep me
honest.

BULLEN: He\'s going to keep you honest. Okay, great. Thanks, Al.

EDDERBBARH: Good afternoon.

What I\'m going to share with you this afternoon is the evolution or
development in the site-scale model. As Frank showed us before, the
site-scale model is an area of the regional model and it\'s integrated
somewhat with the regional model through flux, boundary conditions, and
also through recharge and, hopefully, through the hydrogeology and the
hydro framework model. The work that I\'m presenting here is the efforts
of a team of scientists from BSC, Los Alamos National Lab, Sandia
National Lab, and the USGS, aside from the regional team which is
providing the regional model.

This afternoon, I will talk about the new data and analyses that we have
incorporated into the site-scale model since we last presented to you
the status or the conditions of the site-scale model. Then, I will talk
about the updates of the model and I\'m going to concentrate mainly on
the flow model and I\'m also going to talk about the integration between
the regional and site-scale saturated zone model. I will conclude with
multiple line of evidence that we have been conducting aside from TSPA
and also aside from the mechanics of building the site-scale model,
calibrating the site-scale model, and running the analyses.

Next slide, please? As you know, the main area of the new data that we
have incorporated into the site-scale model is the data that was
collected in cooperation with Nye County. We will be talking about that
a lot and also data from the ATC and the ATC testing, both the hydraulic
and the tracer testing. And, also, data that was obtained by USGS and by
Nye County, mainly aero-magnetic data and other geological mapping data.
And, this slide here shows some of the existing and planned wells from
Nye County and it also shows some areal plane for the cross-sections
that have been developed using lithology data and\--sorry about that.

Next slide, please. This is one of the Nye County geologic
cross-sections that was developed in Denver by the USGS and 22S is
already drilled and we have information from it that we use to develop
this cross-section here. 20D is in the plans. So, once we put 20D in
place and we get the lithology data from it, we will be able to see how
we faired in this conceptualization. And, this cross-section here,
particularly, is very important because it goes north to south along the
inferred flow paths from the potential repository to the accessible
environment. It\'s also important because it\'s helping us reduce the
uncertainty in the transition zone, that transition where the water
table goes from being in the volcanic tuff to being in the alluvium.
And, it\'s very important from a transport point of view because the
conceptual model for transporting the alluvium is different from that in
the volcanic tuffs and also because the alluvium has more potential for
suction, and therefore, delaying the transport of radionuclide into the
accessible environment.

Next slide, please? Again, this map was obtained from the Nye County
work site. This is their program. It shows the existing wells and also
the planned wells. We have been working very effectively with Nye
County, giving them feedback on what kind of information we\'re getting
from the models in terms of where well point could get more buck for the
money. This area here, if you recall from the expert elicitation panel,
was called the Data Hole and I think we presented it before you like
three or four years ago and the question was the Data Hole. And, now,
thanks to the efforts and cooperation with Nye County, the USGS, and
DOE, this Data Hole has been filled.

Next slide, please? Again, I think you have seen this before, but
basically the flow model that we are using is a 3-D model that extends
30 kilometers east to west, 45 kilometers north to south, and is 2750
meters thick, and the grid resolution contains 19 hydrogeologic units. I
mean, these are the different units that are characterized in the model.
Now, the layers are more than that because sometimes we have more than
one model layer in one stratigraphic unit and the model layers are very
thin at the top of the model, 10 meters at the top and they are as wide
as 500 meters down at the bottom of the model. We use water level
measurement in wells for calibration purpose. We also use hydrochemistry
data to guide the calibration efforts and to kind of support the flow
path generated by the model. And, we also use a very important feature
of the site which is an upward gradient from the lime carbonates into
the surficial aquifers which are of our concerns in terms of transports.
That\'s a very important feature because that upward gradient tends to
keep flow paths generated or emanating from Yucca Mountain at the water
table surface. We also use a range of measured permeabilities both from
cross-holes like the C-well testing and now the alluvial testing complex
and also from single wells all over the sites.

Next slide, please? Okay. For the numerical model, as we have discussed
before, the boundary conditions are specified heads and these heads are
extracted from the regional potentiometric surface that\'s used in the
regional model because it has a lot more data and it has a lot more
control of, you know, flows and recharge and what have you. Then, we use
the specified flux on the top of the model and we obtain recharge from
three sources again. The UZ site-scale model for the footprint of the
repository and recharge from the regional model everywhere else, with
the exception of Fortymile Wash because Fortymile Wash, as one of the
Board Members pointed out earlier, Fortymile Wash has some ephemeral
recharge, and since it is along the flow paths, we wanted to capture
that. So, a special study was done to estimate the recharge from
Fortymile Wash and it was used as direct input into the model. Now, as
far as the water budget, the regional fluxes are used as calibration
targets meaning that we tell our automated inversion calibration
routines we want the fluxes to match that, just like we are asking it
for\--to match the water levels. So, it\'s a calibration target, it\'s
not the direct input; rather, parameters that guide the calibration
exercise. We used steady-state model. There is no change in the storage,
and so far, we have been very lucky in that we have been able to
preserve mass balance and the mass balance error is very negligible.

Next slide, please? Since the TSPA/SR, we have embarked on a series of
sensitivity analyses to evaluate other conceptual models; i.e. the
conceptual models of the large hydraulic gradient in TSPA/SR. We used
the water level north of Yucca Mountain as a large hydraulic gradient,
large hydraulic head. In another conceptual model that\'s documented in
the recent revision of the water level AMR, we are presenting a
different\--an affirmative conceptualization that\'s also likely to
occur and it is those water levels are perched waters. We also removed
the east-west barrier and replaced it with some thermal alteration rock
scenario and the result of the sensitivity analyses are summarized in
this flow path comparison. On your left here in red is what we used in
TSPA/SR, and on the right here in blue is the newer model that we have
used in the expected case analysis that reflect other conceptualizations
including the large hydraulic gradient, including Solitario Canyon,
including anisotropy, and what have you. And, what we need to conclude
from those two flow path figures is that in the blue here, the flow
paths are longer meaning transport time will be longer, and also since
the blue path lines go to the east and back to the south, the flow paths
linked in the alluvium is much longer than what was used in the TSPA/SR.
So, so far, all our analyses and studies are kind of confidence building
multiple lines of evidence telling us that what we have used in TSPA/SR
is conservative.

Next slide, please? This slide did show us the different region and what
kind of anisotropy we\'re using. In terms of horizontal to vertical,
we\'re using a 1 to 10 ratio. In the areal plane we\'re using a 5 to 1.
I think, Dick, you asked before about the faults. A lot of the faults
are mapped explicitly in the site-scale model. They are mapped in the
hydrogeologic framework model. We have hydraulic conductivities that are
much higher than what\'s surrounding them. Even within a fault, the
hydraulic conductivity along the fault is like five times and sometimes
20 times larger than across the fault.

Next slide, please? Again, the new data that we were able to use in the
calibration validation activities are a new hydrogeology from the Nye
County data, from aero-magnetic surveys, from geological mapping, water
level data from Nye County wells, and we also have been calibrating to
study the impact on the grid size on calibration and those are ongoing
studies.

Next slide, please? The integration of the site and regional models.
Now, as Frank presented, the regional model has evolved a lot since the
1997 model which was used for the SR and so did the site-scale model.
So, both site and regional models continue to evolve and the most recent
regional model flow is in review, and as Frank had presented, it differs
quite a bit from the one we used in SR and that\'s why the International
Peer Review Team reviewed the 1997 model because it takes a long time to
carry the whole process. At the time when we were building our
site-scale model, the only thing available to us was the 1997 model. So,
it took time, you know, to develop the site-scale model, to calibrate
it, generate flow field, feed it to TSPA, do a TSPA analyses, and do the
documentation. This is the whole process.

Next slide, please? The plans to integrate the two models as we have
them right now is to use the same hydrostratigraphic framework model.
Before, we had two parallel efforts; one to feed the site-scale model
with the hydrogeologic framework model and the other one was to feed the
regional model. Right now, that effort is combined to one and we\'ll be
able to just extract the site-scale hydro framework model from the
regional scale model. That will insure a certain degree of consistency
in terms of hydrogeology used for both models. Both models will use the
same zonation within the site-scale model to subdivide
hydrostratigraphic unit for parameter estimation. Now, grant you, the
site-scale model has a better resolution. So, we\'ll have more
subdivision within the site-scale model than you will have in the
regional model. We will use the same numeric grids that will coincide;
i.e. the regional model grid is 1500 by 1500, the site-scale model is
500 by 500 meters and may be smaller. And, what we have here is that
within a regional model grid, we will have nine site grid that coincides
with the boundary. So, we don\'t have overlapping between grids. We will
use the same depth of extent, whether that\'s going to be 2000 meters or
2750 meters. And, we will use consistent hydraulic properties. The
regional model used permeability for calibration because we don\'t take
into account the temperature issue we do in the site scale model.
That\'s why we use the hydraulic conductivity. The regional model used
hydraulic conductivity and we used permeability and we will make sure
that the two are consistent. And, we will be using consistent boundary
fluxes from the regional model.

Next slide, please? Now, I go on to the multiple lines of evidence. When
I was preparing this presentation here, I was a little bit influenced by
the International Peer Review Team comments. One of the comments that
they came up with is the differences between single-hole permeability
data and cross-hole permeability data and I will talk to that. And, I
also wanted presented here some groundwater carbon age analyses that we
have done to support a UZ/SZ transport time analysis that was done
independent of SR and independent of TSPA.

Next slide, please? The issue here with the evaluation of single and
cross-hole permeability data is that single hole permeability data
indicated that the permeability of any material decreases with depth and
that\'s consistent with intuition as you have more burden as you go down
with depth. However, in contrast to that, the result from the C-well
cross-hole testing indicated that to the contrary of what we observed
with single permeability data, the permeability increases with depth.
So, that was a point that was identified by the International Review
Team that reviewed the TSPA.

Next slide, please? So, the answer to that is the cross-hole test
permeability of the C-well increases with the proximity of test location
to Midway Valley Fault. I mean, that contradiction was able to point us
out to a very important feature of the site, the importance of faults in
terms of hydraulics and transport. Right now, we are proceeding with a
high-resolution numerical simulation of the C-well cross-hole tests to
determine the permeability of the faulted and the unfaulted rocks. So,
we\'ll be able, you know, to gain that understanding in terms of what
contribution the faults and what contribution the rock do in terms of
the hydraulic properties and transport properties.

Next slide, please? This slide just shows the combined UZ/SZ air and
water permeability data. And, as you see here, the logarithm of the
permeability here decreases with depth.

Next slide, please? This shows the single-hole test, the cross-hole
test, and also the model calibration points. And, George is taking this
into consideration. George is the nuts and bolts of the flow modeling.
So, he is taking this insight here into consideration.

Next slide, please? Now, I will talk about the use of Carbon-14 dating
to corroborate results from an analysis that we completed to estimate
transport time in the UZ and the SZ from the potential repository
horizon all the way to the accessible environment independent of TSPA.
The result of that analysis\--and that analysis is documented in the
Twiller (phonetic), the White Paper that was completed a few months ago.
And, it\'s also documented in the UZ Expected Case White Paper which is
available now. The result of that analysis is corrected groundwater C-14
ages are 11,000 to 17,000 years. The uncorrected ages are about 12,000
to 18,000 years. And, this corrected groundwater carbon age are
consistent with the combined UZ/SZ unretarded advective transport, if
you make one more correction and there is a correction from the ground
surface to the potential repository horizon.

Next slide, please? We were asked in the middle of the presentation to
put a slide or two on the data and analysis that we incorporated into
the SZ Expected Case White Paper, and which some of it was also
documented in the Twiller White Paper. For the Expected Case White
Paper, SZ White Paper, used the most recent stratigraphy and
hydrochemistry from the Nye County wells. We also used the most
up-to-date data from the hydraulic testing that was completed at the
ATC, and at the time of completing the White Paper, only single-hole
testing was completed. So, we incorporated hydraulic and tracer testing
data from the ATC into our understanding that went into the SZ Expected
Case White Paper. We also took the benefit of what we learned from the
calibration of the different conceptualizations of the large hydraulic
gradient into that White Paper and we also did analyses for the new
compliance boundary which is only 18 kilometers as opposed to the 20
kilometers that was done in the TSPA/SR.

Next slide, please? Bo later on is going to talk about the UZ part of
it. But, what we have here in this figure is a figure that\'s documented
in the SZ Expected Case White Paper and the figure here shows the
transport time breakthrough curves for the UZ and SZ separate. This is
the SZ in black, this is the UZ, and in red is the combination of the UZ
and SZ.

Next slide, please? In summary, we believe that a scientific model of
the saturated zone flow and transport at Yucca Mountain has been
developed. That model was calibrated to hydrogeologic data and
hydrochemical data, wide level data. Some testing of transport
conceptual model has been completed; that is, the C-well data have
provided us with insight on the conceptual transport in the volcanic
tuffs. The ATC is giving us insights on the transport in the alluvium.
Nye County data are being incorporated as it becomes available and what
data didn\'t make it into the model will be used for validation of the
model. And, data collected since completion of model supporting TSPA for
site recommendation are consistent with the bases used for this model.
And, we call your attention to the two flow paths that we showed, the
one we used for TSPA/SR and the one that reflect the new data and new
analyses.

Next slide, please? As I said before, we have been using the model to
guide data collection activities. We have been suggesting to Nye County
locations where we can get more out of the holes and they have been very
cooperative in that aspect. Data are designed to reduce uncertainties,
relax conservative assumptions, and further validate the conceptual
models and the numerical models and the results of the models which are
fed to TSPA.

Efforts, as Frank has mentioned earlier on and as I did a few slides
ago, efforts continue to improve the consistencies between the
site-scale and the regional scale models. And, some of these efforts
have used unified hydrostratigraphic hydro framework models and also to
have consistency in terms of vertical extent and in terms of gridding.

That\'s all I have. I know that Mark Peters earlier this morning had
reflected the question on colloid to me. With your permission, I can
answer that or I can just wait for other questions.

BULLEN: Dr. Edderbbarh, why don\'t you go right ahead and answer the
colloid question now and then we\'ll take questions from the panel. Go
ahead?

EDDERBBARH: Can you remind me of the question? I think the question was
in terms of colloid and the\--go ahead, please? I better let you phrase
your own question.

RUNNELLS: Runnells, Board. I probably can\'t remember it. Do you want me
to\--

BULLEN: Do you want me to give you a little time, Don? I have a couple
of comments to make and I\'ll let you think about that.

RUNNELLS: Okay. Well, the last part of the question was on a scale from
zero to 100 percent. How much do you think we know about
colloid\--transport?

EDDERBBARH: I guess, I shouldn\'t have brought it up. But, anyway, I can
answer for the SZ. The current model that we have use reversible and
reversible kinetics in terms of colloidal transport. The uncertainty in
the model is very broad right now. But, for the volcanic tuffs, we have
data from the C-well testing that helped us constrain the range. For the
alluvium, so far in TSPA/SR, we went with theoretical conceptualization
and now we have data from the ATC that\'s helping us verify the
conceptualization and also helping us constrain that range of
uncertainty. We also have been using real data from the NTS because they
have the same process and they have real data that we are using.

BULLEN: Thank you, Dr. Edderbbarh. Just to show you that we
non-hydrologists actually pay attention to your presentations, I wanted
to point out that the last time you spoke to us, you had a great 3D
visualization with the particle tracker that was a FEHM model for
TSPA/SR. I was looking forward to that and I guess you need more budget
money so you can do that for us next time.

EDDERBBARH: That\'s right. That\'s correct.

BULLEN: What I\'d like to do now is ask Frank to come back up to the
podium, if that\'s okay. And, I would like to go back to Leon and then
Debra Knopman and then we\'ll follow on with questions. So, it\'s going
to be a couple of questions for Frank, and then if you\'ll just stay
there, Dr. Edderbbarh, that would be great.

EDDERBBARH: I will stay here.

BULLEN: So, Leon, did you have a question, Leon Reiter, from Staff?

REITER: Leon Reiter, Staff. Al, I\'m having trouble understanding the
Carbon-14 argument. I looked at your chart in the back here and these
represent samples that you took in the saturated zone, is that correct?

EDDERBBARH: Well, yeah. And, Zell, please, help me out here if I say
anything wrong. I think the samples were taken in the saturated zone
samples and also UZ samples.

REITER: Okay. Is the last one Nye County Well 2-D? Is that one of the
Nye County wells?

EDDERBBARH: Right. That\'s 2-D.

REITER: Well, just maybe a quick question. It seems to be kind of odd
that the Nye County which looks to be the furthest wells, the youngest
water, another question is that if we\'re looking at saturated zone, if
I remember correctly, a lot of recharge is occurring up in Tiva Mountain
area which is a lot longer flow path and the geology, the unsaturated
part of the geology, may be different than that in Yucca Mountain. I\'m
just wondering how you get all these things together and calculate what
this means for the travel time from the repository to the accessible
environment?

EDDERBBARH: Let me add something that I failed to mention. Is that we
don\'t just use the Carbon-14 samples or analysis. We also look into the
uranium-238, 234, and other constituents to determine the signature of
Yucca Mountain. So, that\'s what we are tracking. So, that\'s probably
why you see that 2-D has younger water than upstream because we\'re
tracking the flow that may have originated from under Yucca Mountain
using the uranium ratio and using other constituents.

Zell, do you want to add to that? Zell, do you want to add to this?

PETERMAN: This is Zell Peterman, USGS. The raw numbers, the raw C-14
analyses were generated by the USGS, and then these are corrections,
model corrections, I would guess. I haven\'t seen this particular
version, but probably using FREAK-C (phonetic) or something like that.

EDDERBBARH: That\'s right. That\'s right.

PETERMAN: So, I don\'t know what more I can add. We also have a program
to\--these are all based upon dissolved inorganic carbon. We have
another effort directed at separating the organic carbon and doing
direct dating on that. That\'s being done at the Desert Research
Institute by Dr. Jim Thomas and we have just a few analyses, so far, and
they don\'t differ all that much from the uncorrected or corrected
values. So, if I were to make a guess, I would say, you know, they\'re
all going to come in about the same within a few thousand years. With
regard to the younger age for EWDP 2D, you know, that is in or close to
Fortymile Wash, I believe, and there is younger recharge in there. So,
we\'re probably seeing mixed ages. I guess I can\'t say much more than
that.

BULLEN: Thank you, Zell.

PETERMAN: Okay.

BULLEN: Debra Knopman and then Priscilla Nelson?

KNOPMAN: Knopman, Board. This is actually for both Frank and Al and it
has to do with the characterization of uncertainty in your model
results. Just looking at Slide 20 just for a takeoff point, this slide
doesn\'t tell us anything about uncertainty, of course. It tells us
something about the spread, the dispersion characteristics within both
the unsaturated zone and the saturated zone.

D\'AGNESE: That\'s correct.

KNOPMAN: What can you tell us about how uncertainty would affect both
the location and the spread in those breakthrough curves? Starting with
Frank\'s model because he\'s feeding uncertainty into your site-scale
model, the question is how much are you feeding in there from your
values and, Al, how does that propagate through your model?

D\'AGNESE: This is my first time of actually seeing that curve. So, I
don\'t know if I could comment on it. Let me just talk about three
different things that we calculate uncertainty for in the regional
model. What we\'re concerned with is the location, the extent, and the
hydraulic conductivity or hydraulic values of these hydrogeologic units
in which this water moves through and then these materials move through.
Inherent in the method that we use, the inverse (inaudible) regression
method that we use inherent in MODFLOW 2000, we are specifically
characterizing the uncertainty in the value, the estimated parameter
value. I showed that slide that showed the really sensitive parameter
values. We have a very sensitive parameter. The hydraulic conductivity,
for example, that\'s estimated for that parameter. If it\'s highly
sensitive then the range of possible values are very small. If we have a
very insensitive parameter, the hydraulic conductivity that could
potentially be estimated, the range is extremely large. So, that would
affect then what gets passed on to\--that affects the flow, the flux,
the potential range of flows that Al and his group would extract and use
as a constraint in their site model. So, I would pass that onto Al.

The other thing, though, that we have a difficult time characterizing is
the uncertainty and the location and extent of these hydrogeologic units
and then we have to do a manual change, evaluation of conceptual models,
one after the other.

KNOPMAN: Well, give us some ballpark estimates of how your predicted
head values change at some\--you can pick a location or locations within
your model as a result of the parameter uncertainty. Never mind model
uncertainty; let\'s just talk about parameter uncertainty.

D\'AGNESE: If we\'re concerned with a prediction\--and my understanding
is that since we\'re discussing Yucca Mountain, the prediction that
we\'re concerned with is the flux from the regional model into the
domain of the site model. Luckily, we\'ve done a lot of characterization
in the area of a site saturated zone flow and transport model. So, as a
result, the regional model is well constrained in that area. We have a
lot of head data in the Amargosa Valley, relatively the Nevada Test
Site, Yucca Mountain and constrains well those parameters that control
flow into the site saturated zone model. The most sensitive parameters
in the regional model are the parameters which also control the
prediction which we pass to Al. I don\'t have the exact numbers, but
that is available.

KNOPMAN: I\'d like to know what range then within the flux, how
much\--how that\'s bounded or constrained, Al?

EDDERBBARH: Let me just talk a little bit about the saturated zone part
of this breakthrough curve and how we arrived at it. From the TSPA/SR
sensitivity analyses which were conducted, the saturated zone specific
discharge was one of the most sensitive parameters in TSPA/SR. For
TSPA/SR, we had the range on it that was elicited from an expert panel
and it was 10 times and .1. That was a very broad range. Then, we went
back to the drawing board and used the new data, new analyses, and
looked more into the role of faults and looked into analyzing the
permeabilities from the hydraulic testing. We looked at the fluxes from
the regional model and we were able to reduce that range to one-third
and multiplied by 3 for the SSPA. That\'s what we presented in the SSPA.
These are the ranges\--uncertainties that we are dealing with right now.

Now, the specific discharge here is the main driver here. And, this
breakthrough curves also incorporate in it matrix diffusion. But, for
matrix diffusion, we use the\--what they call the envelope, the upper
limit of the envelope after\--I mean, we used 20 meters spacing. If you
make it 50 or 100, you still have the same breakthrough. But, if you
advance it, you make it 10, your performance improves quite a bit.

BULLEN: Priscilla Nelson and then Richard?

NELSON: Let me just ask two questions. One is I would have thought the
issue about single and cross-hole permeability differences might be a
reflection of anisotropy or scale effects rather than proximity to a
fault. I mean, having to be in proximity to a fault. Would there not be
an anisotropy effect and a scale effect in between the two kinds of
tests?

EDDERBBARH: Well, you\'re right because the single-hole test only
queries or questions, you know, a very small radius of influence as
opposed to cross-hole testing which will bring the scale effect. But, I
think the issue that the International Peer Review Team brought up is
conventional wisdom used in the scientific community that permeability
will decrease with depth because of the overburden. And, I think, it
makes sense if results from the single well tests, the permeability
decrease with depth\--

NELSON: That\'s moderated by the lithology\--

EDDERBBARH: That\'s right.

NELSON: \--properties\--

EDDERBBARH: That\'s right, yes.

NELSON: So, it\'s just a gross rule of thumb. Okay. Let me ask you about
two other things. You said you used the hydrochemical data to advise you
on flow paths. It seems like it could also tell you some things about
mixing and dilution. And, we\'ve also heard in the past from Linda
Lehman about temperature and temperature measurements. And, it seems
that that is an independent set of measurements that could be used to
test your model. Do you have plans to use any of these other alternative
ways to really test what the regional, for example, model is telling you
and then forming the site-scale model?

EDDERBBARH: Yeah, we are using temperature data to validate in the
validation exercises. We will not be using it in terms of calibration or
construction of the model, but we are using it for validation purposes.

NELSON: Nelson, Board. In what time frame will you be doing that
validation study?

EDDERBBARH: The validation is for the LA. That\'s what we\'re planning
for is to validate our current model in time to support LA, license
application.

BULLEN: Richard Parizek?

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board. For either of the speakers, do you have any
independent velocity data to use for calibration purposes? You have
calibration targets, but are there any velocity data anywhere? If you go
to the test site or elsewhere where somebody may have tracer experiments
that can run long enough you can find arrival time or from any weapon
tests?

EDDERBBARH: Actually, we\'re documenting that in the in situ AMR and
Bill Reimis (phonetic) from Los Alamos has conducted tracer testing data
and he was able to back up velocity values that we\'re going to be
using. He\'s documenting that in the in situ AMR and we\'re going to be
using that in the validation process.

And, also, to answer your question about anisotropy, we have taken a
fresh look at the C-well data in the KTI agreement and came up with an
analysis that was done at Sandia for anisotropy, you know, from this
data and that\'s also documented in the in situ AMR and the results from
that will be used to guide us in this validations exercise in terms of
validating the results of why multiple well testing permeability
increases with depth as opposed to the single one which decreases with
depth.

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board. In terms of flow interval spacing, I would
think this figure would be driven, in part, by flow interval spacing
assumptions. Is there any new work underway to deal with that as a
better defined value?

EDDERBBARH: Our efforts right now is to improve\--well, I mean, I
shouldn\'t say that. As I said before, we\'re at the upper limit of the
envelope. We\'re using the maximum spacing which is 21 meters. If you
increase it to 50 or 100, the breakthrough curve stays the same. And, we
derived those spacing from old flow meter surveys that had very poor
resolutions, and moreover, the 20 meter spacing is biased by data from
older wells that had questionable stability. I mean, if we use just the
C-well data which was obtained more recently, that mean will shrink and
performance will improve. But, I think the objective of our work right
now is just to show that what we have documented in TSPA/SR was
conservative, not\--I mean, if we find something that was not
conservative, we had to go back and use that, but right now, I think
part of the confidence building is we use 20 meters spacing in SR and
then we come to illustrate that it\'s 10. That\'s good because it\'s
going to improve performance. So, we have nothing else to do, you know,
except show that as a multiple line of evidence.

PARIZEK: The Board did ask for independent lines of evidence beyond
total system performance assessment type argument and you gave us the
Carbon-14 example as independent of the model simulations. And, so long
as we can believe the Carbon-14 data and Zell would like us to feel good
about that because you\'re always struggling with these corrections you
have to make, that\'s a powerful argument, is it not, that you have
Carbon-14 ages that are not out of line with what you\'re model was
forecasting?

EDDERBBARH: That\'s correct.

PARIZEK: But, isn\'t it also true that any new Nye wells that are
drilled, you immediately can throw the data in your model and prove your
model, frankly, do the same. But, when you drill a new site and do some
new testing, that\'s also independent testing of your model?

EDDERBBARH: It is.

PARIZEK: And, you could look at it that way from any new holes that go
in to see how far off you might have been in terms of what you assumed
about that part of the flow domain.

EDDERBBARH: That\'s very correct. And, basically, before we had the ATC,
the conceptualization for transport in the alluvium was thought to be
somewhat of a dual medium with less matrix diffusion than in the
volcanic tuffs. It turned out to be a single continuum. So, that\'s
validation, you know, of the conceptualization that we incorporated into
the model.

PARIZEK: And, one more point. On Page 8, that\'s your two alternative
flow paths that you showed or, at least, the plume that you might get
from Yucca Mountain example, you\'re showing again a southeasterly and
southerly direction of flow. There was also some chemical data, I think,
from one or two wells that sort of support the need for flow that way.
Can you refresh our memory as to where those points came from?

EDDERBBARH: Maybe Zell can answer that because I think it was pointed to
us by Jay Paces. That when we were talking about the more direct flow
north to south, I remember Jay Paces from USGS say that cannot be
collaborated with the hydrochemistry data. The hydrochemistry data
indicated real strong component of flow west to east.

Zell?

PETERMAN: This is Zell Peterman, USGS. The problem with the blue flow
path is there aren\'t any wells until you get clear over to the middle
of Jackass Flat to the water table. So, there\'s no data there to verify
that excursion east of Fortymile Wash from a hydrochemical standpoint.
Now, if you\'ll overall look at the hydrochemistry, you generally see a
broad plume of low chloride water coming more or less straight south
from Yucca Mountain. You see the same thing if you look at sodium or
sulfate or anything that\'s conservative or semi-conservative. But, the
resolution of the hydrochemistry is not equivalent to what you\'re
seeing up there on those slides. I mean, the well spacing just isn\'t
there. Now, with increasing number of Nye County wells, that\'s going to
improve along Highway 95, no doubt. But, that\'s kind of where we are at
the moment.

PARIZEK: Zell or anyone else, I thought there was a well that suggested
that that bend toward Busted Butte, I guess, needs to be there because
of a well that had kind of a unique chemical signature to it just about
where the bend occurs, somewhere right up in there. I can\'t find the
data and I just knew that I heard\--

EDDERBBARH: \--and J-13 and J-11\--

PETERMAN: I don\'t recall that. You know, J-12, J-13, JF-3, they\'re all
very similar in composition. It must be maybe one of the WT wells, I\'m
not sure. It\'s not coming to my memory. Oh, okay. There\'s another
dataset that Al mentioned and that\'s the uranium isotopes, the
U-234/238 ratio and what those show is a very strong anomaly of elevated
ratios, more or less, right over Yucca Mountain and they do change then
towards Fortymile Wash. Now, J-13 has that higher ratio, whereas J-12
doesn\'t. The problem is J-13 has been a supply well for, what, 25 years
or so and has had a lot of water pumped out and it could be pulling
water in laterally. So, it\'s hard to know whether that\'s a good
indicator of the natural system.

PARIZEK: Just looking for another line of evidence to support that
interpretation is you\'ve got it different ways, but I thought there
was, at least, some\--

EDDERBBARH: Yeah, I think, Dr. Parizek, what you saw is the uranium data
that we had documented in the Twiller paper.

BULLEN: Bullen, Board. I\'m going to try and keep us on schedule. Is
that okay, Zell?

PETERMAN: That\'s fine.

BULLEN: And, I\'ll let you guys carry this on off line.

I do have one question that I want to ask before Dr. Edderbbarh leaves.
This is a question from the audience, maybe more in the line of
clarification of your calculations. The question is what is the nature
of the flow and the boundary condition between the tuff and the
carbonate aquifer? The question is basically asking is there upwelling
or is there down flow? If you could just tell us in your calculations
what is that nature?

EDDERBBARH: Well, the water level data evidence shows an upward flow and
that\'s produced\--I mean, that upward flow is produced in the
site-scale model. So, basically, there is an upward flow from the
carbonate into the overlaying alluvium and tuffs.

BULLEN: Okay. Thank you very much. I want to thank both of you for
putting up with our questions. You\'ll see that the questions always
expand to match the time.

Our next presenter must have made somebody mad because this is the
shortest presentation I\'ve ever seen by Bo Bodvarsson here. But, Bo is
going to give us a 15 minute presentation on unsaturated zone flow and
transport model update. So, we\'re focusing down and now we\'re to the
UZ.

Bo?

BODVARSSON: Good afternoon. I\'m here to talk about update on the UZ
flow and transport and coupled processes model. When they told me to
give this brief talk, I put together a list of topics that David then
wrote with me and chose a bunch of other topics that I don\'t know a
heck of a lot about. So, I\'m going to try anyway. It was all his fault.

I want to talk about the role of process modeling really quickly, some
of the issues we considered in this presentation, how we are dealing
with these issues, and then concluding remarks.

As all of you probably know, there are many purposes for process
modeling. It\'s to understand processes, for test design, data analysis
and site characterization, to make predictions over the long-term, do
sensitivity analysis, and then, of course, if the model is valuable, we
abstract it and put it in a total system performance assessment. You
have site-scale models and you have drift-scale models and we have
smaller scale laboratory models.

Next one, please? The issues I\'m going to consider in this talk are
based on consideration of data. I\'m going to talk a little bit about
the moisture condensation in the ECRB. This is very important for our
model. I\'m going to talk about model validation issues with regard to
radon and how we use that to validate properties, some issues about the
seepage testing that is going on in the lower lithophysal, matrix
diffusion in Alcove 8/Niche 3. Then, I\'ll go into radionuclide
transport issues, DCPT/FEHM issue, and transport below the drifts. Then,
I\'m going to briefly mention coupled processes issues, the drift-scale
test, and THC effects on fracture sealing.

So, to start, ECRB moisture condensation, this is\--am I in your way or
are you okay? Okay. This is, of course, a fascinating topic for all of
us. This is a very important test that is very close to the heart of the
NRC regulator. It\'s very important for the project and is, therefore,
very important for us to understand why are we getting water in the
ECRB? What does it mean in terms of the test because we must eventually
decide when we should stop that test and use perhaps the tunnel for
testing purposes, as well as understand processes. Is it seepage, is it
condensation, can we expect this to happen in emplacement drifts?
That\'s all very important.

We have collected some information that Mark Peters mentioned. It\'s
very important information and most important for us in the UZ are
temperature changes in boreholes and within the drifts because that
gives us indications about how much the rock took heat from the
ventilation. Also, very important, the relative humidity increases in
the drift. And, the third, almost most important thing, is the degree of
dryout of the drifts, the moisture tension as a function of distance
from the drifts. All of these factors are clues that must help us
explain what is causing the condensation.

Our current theory and my favorite theory is the following. It\'s
condensation, it\'s not seepage for the following reasons. The canisters
we have measured, so far, indicate very, very low chlorides and low, low
concentrations of silica, but there are more testing ongoing with regard
to the chemistry. And, as you know, the water that\'s formed here on the
paint indicate that it is not sucked through the rock, as Priscilla
mentioned in one of her questions.

The hypothesis for the reasons for this is the following. We need a
temperature gradient and we need flow from a hot region to cold region.
That causes condensation. Every single borehole I\'ve seen from
geothermal system\--I have worked a lot in geothermal systems\--has
internal flows in the boreholes. Why does it have internal flows?
Because you have rocks of finite permeability. You stick a hole of
infinite permeability in it. The density of the fluids in the hole are
different from the density in the fluid outside the hole. Therefore, you
are always going to get flow from one area to another area within the
borehole. You see this clearly in temperature measurements of geothermal
wells.

I think the same thing is going on in the ECRB. You have a medium where
the gas phase is a dominant pressure phase. You intercept that medium
with an infinite permeability drift. There are pressure variation
laterally simply because there are density differences because there are
temperature differences. We then take out and mine this drift, we
ventilate it, and the temperature of ventilation is a few degrees above
the ambient temperature at that location. You, therefore, create higher
temperatures where you ventilate the most and lower temperature further
away. It\'s further complicated by the tunnel boring machine where we
have still increasing temperature there. So, you have a high temperature
to low to a high temperature here. Then, we close off these bulkheads.
What happens? You get infinite flow in the drift just like you would
from a borehole. You have air coming in in one location and going out at
another location. Air carries water with it and when it cools down, the
water condenses. So, I think this is our current theory and this is what
we are using to model this phenomena.

We have already matched the ventilation effects on the moisture tension
which is shown here. These are model results versus actual data. We are
in the process of matching the temperature history with time and then
that, of course, I hope we can show condensation of water in appropriate
places in the ECRB.

Now, why is this important? This is important for several other reasons.
If we are able to explain it with this explanation, number one, we
understand the process, number two, we can then go back and say how
likely is this to happen when we actually put the emplacement drifts in
because we know the temperatures in the system and we know then how much
water we expect to accumulate over hundreds of thousands of years if the
model is correct and the hypothesis is correct. Sorry it took so long, a
long-winded explanation.

Next slide? Another one which I think has been very successful is radon
data and pressure data from the tunnel. We measure radon concentration
because we want to be safe. Mark Tinan has been sending me e-mail daily
for about five years to look at this dataset\--no, I\'m kidding. He has
encouraged me to look at this dataset and I have suddenly been
interested in it and decided to look at it. This is a flow of radon in
the main drift over a kilometer or so, one kilometer to one and a half
kilometers. The barometric pressure in the drift is the same as the
barometric pressure on the surface because, of course, the high
permeability of the drifts. But, the barometric pressure in the rock is
much less because of attenuation in rock. This causes pumping effects
because the signal pressure in the drift will variate a lot more than in
the rock. So, sometimes you have radon coming in, sometimes you have
radon coming out, depending on the ventilation rate, and depending on
the air pressures. This is an ideal dataset to validate large-scale
permeabilities over kilometers.

So, what we did was we calibrated for 10 days and you can see the air
pressure in the model just right on top of the dataset, very good match,
and match of radon is also pretty reasonably good, I think, given the
quality of the data and quality of the assumptions we use. Then, we
predict in the next 10 days and you can see the predictions are also
quite good. This gives us quite a confidence in the parameter values
using an optimization function which is part of fracture porosity versus
permeability. You see on your scale, we determined the permeability
extremely accurately as 11.1, 11.2 versus\--this is a log scale. So,
it\'s basically 10 to the minus 11 meters squared 10 darcies which is
really similar to what we measure from large-scale pneumatics. A good
validation, a large-scale validation of permeability.

The porosity is much less constrained. You see the minimum band here
even though this is the minimum here. The scale is much larger, and
therefore, we are not able to constrain the fractue porosity, as well.
But, with appropriate tests which could be done at a very low cost, we
might be able to do this better, but again this is a very reasonable
large-scale validation test, I think.

Next one? Seepage/evaporation analysis, a lot of concern has been with
evaporation processes, how much does it affect seepage, how much does it
affect seepage threshold, how much does it affect the whole phenomena of
seepage? We are doing systematic testing, as well as testing in Niche 5.
We do a very detailed evaluation of the moisture front that it comes
through in the sealing on the niches. We sketch out the fracture systems
and we do a time series analysis of evaporation processes occurring
there, as well as we put pans when we do the test to look at the global
evaporation phenomena. The conclusions we have so far from this study is
that evaporation does not account for the difference, at all, and this
validates the threshold concept we have talked about for a long time.
It\'s significance or the suggestion to do this was a very good
suggestion. Our lower lithophysal tuff has better seepage
characteristics than the middle nonlithophysal and I said that before
because of the small fracture characteristics.

Next one? Alcove 8/Niche 3, Mark mentioned this dataset before. So, I\'m
not going to spend a lot of time on this. What I want to emphasize is
that this is a very important test for two reasons. It allows for the 10
meter to 20 meter scale to validate our seepage models and it also helps
us now finally to get very, very consistent data on matrix diffusion.
That the bigger molecules go through much faster because of the
filtration of going into the fine matrix. That\'s why this is much
quicker than the lower sized molecule and conservative molecules.

Next one? This is another one David asked for. We had mentioned this
before, I think, the difference in transport models. It\'s our belief
that the current dual-porosity FEHM model is conservative with respect
to transport in the unsaturated zone, and that if we use a
dual-permeability model, then you should get considerably more
performance out of this. What we show here is a transport model T2R3D
and here is the conservative model used in PA. So, we can get more
performance, we think, by using a different formulation in our approach.

Next slide, please, and we\'re almost done. However, this again shows
the conservatism here in the PA. We have breakthrough curves from the
repository to the water table of something like 10 years which is very
conservative. Whereas, it could be like Al showed with the travel path
going over thousands of years. The other thing I wanted to show was the
results I recently saw from TSPA. This is SSPA results and it kind of is
nice because it\'s hard for me\--I almost never see anything that makes
a difference in the natural system when you have a waste package. You
have such a great waste package that lasts hundreds of thousands of
years. So, it\'s sometimes nice to see something that makes an impact
and I think this does based on these results.

The approach they took in TSPA to mimic this dry area under the drifts
was basically just to put the radionuclides into the matrix flux and not
into the fractures. Now, it basically says if there\'s no seepage into
the drifts, there is no water to carry any radionuclides, and therefore,
it should be a diffuse mechanism going down through the rocks underneath
it. It doesn\'t take into account the dry area, but it gives you
significant performance, as you see here, surprisingly large
performance. If you take just the delta from TSPA/SR, you get about
10,000 years gain out of this thing, but if you look at the mean 95
percentile, the medium and the 5 percent which is way out of the curve,
according to the TSPA, there could be significant performance assessment
just by putting stuff in the matrix if we can verify it without having
to verify the shadow concept. So this, to me, is kind of interesting.

Next one? Finally, on to coupled processes and again the drift-scale
test was turned off, as all of you heard, and the drift-scale test team
consisting of members from various labs made predictions about the
cooling phase that is going to give us more information about coupled
processes. It will be very interesting for us now to follow and see how
well our models that have been calibrated for four years against heating
can reflect the cooling of that specific test.

The final one is the one on thermal hydrological-chemical issues. This
was something we spent quite a lot of time on also in the SSPA and
recent reports. We looked at high and low temperature case with the THC
models and we found based on the various rock assemblages, we found no
extreme values of pH or salinity, certainly not anything that resembled
the fluoride and the pH resulting from the fluoride that was observed.
We think that based on a lot of modeling studies\--and this has been
extensively communicated with the Board that there\'s a low probability
of seepage within the thermal period for various reasons, as mentioned
in the report. And, low temperature has less thermal-hydrological
uncertainties and higher probability of seepage. And, the issue, we have
talked many times in the Board, the sealing based on laboratory
experiments, is still somewhat of an issue.

Next one? So, to conclude, the approach used in all areas, not only UZ,
but in SZ, waste packages, and everywhere is to have a very close
relationship between model prediction, model verification, test designs,
and then predictions over tens of thousands of years. And, that has been
critical to our success. We have identified a possible hypotheses for
the water that we believe is condensing in the ECRB and we are hoping to
verify this with the model that is currently under development. The
radon data has proved very nice in validating the large-scale
permeability over kilometers, as well as some indication of fracture
porosity. We looked at seepage with respect to evaporation and we think
matrix diffusion is important from the testing and the modeling and this
can help us delay transport through the UZ. And, finally, we will
continue to evaluate coupled processes with the drift-scale tests.

And, that concludes my talk.

BULLEN: Thank you, Dr. Bodvarsson. You just kept us right on schedule,
too. I think you went 45 seconds too long.

BODVARSSON: I didn\'t want to disappoint you, 15 minutes.

BULLEN: Okay. Questions from the Board? Dr. Nelson followed by Jerry
Cohon?

NELSON: Just a quick one, Bo. Nelson, Board. In all of your discussions
about the near-field environment and how it\'s working, what guidance
would you give the project about the need to avoid any section of
excavated tunnel from a place of waste package placement because of the
presence of fractures, other than something like a capable fault? Do you
understand the question?

BODVARSSON: Yeah, yeah, I understand the question.

NELSON: Is there a reason to avoid putting packages somewhere or is
there no reason, at all, to avoid putting packages?

BODVARSSON: That\'s a very good question. I think that the data we have
to answer that question are the following. We have the Southwest
Research Institute data that actually have very big blocks and they have
big fractures and they actually got seepage into the boreholes. That\'s
the extreme. Then, we have other numerical studies we have done, as well
as the drift-scale test studies. I think there is every indication that
in the lower lithophysal when you have the small fractures present with
large surface areas with the rock matrix that the capillary pressure
effect will help equilibrate any pulses that want to go through. I\'m
more concerned with the middle nonlithophysal where you have larger,
sparser fractures and faults. So, I would say, in addition to very
large-scale faults, that you might have huge permeabilities that may
focus flow. That perhaps with some heavily fractured areas in the middle
nonlithophysal, you might well look at that in terms of candidates for
what you\'re talking about.

NELSON: Nelson, Board. In the lith, you would see no reason to modify
emplacement on the basis of any observations made during the excavation?

BODVARSSON: No, not from my thinking process over the last few seconds.

BULLEN: Jerry Cohon?

COHON: Can we go to Slide 10, please? I didn\'t understand what is
different in terms of the inputs in this run compared to the base case.

BODVARSSON: Yeah. In TSPA, we developed three-dimensional flow fields.
That\'s done with the large-scale 3D flow model. That has everywhere in
the system of flow in the fractures and a flow in the matrix,
everywhere. Okay? It used to be that we ignored the fact that we had a
drift and that\--the fact that we had a drift and we have\--

COHON: Okay. So, this one includes the idea of the drift shadow?

BODVARSSON: No, not the\--let me just finish two more sentences.

COHON: Oh, okay. Sorry.

BODVARSSON: So, what we used to do then was just to simply throw the
radionuclides straight from the drift into the fracture flowing fracture
system which, of course, is occurring outside here.

COHON: Okay.

BODVARSSON: But, now, what we do, we don\'t take credit for the fact
this is actually drier, but we take credit for the fact\--this is very
important\--is that if there is no seepage here into this drift,
there\'s no water in the drift, therefore the waste sitting at the
bottom here must think by itself where can I go and the fracture
saturations are so small, less than 5 percent, general, but the matrix
saturation is 80 to 90 percent, diffusion is a process that follows
water and since there\'s lots more water in the matrix, the
radionuclides have to go into the matrix. You see what I\'m saying?

COHON: Okay, yeah. So, it\'s all predicated though on the correctness of
the seepage representation?

BODVARSSON: That\'s exactly right, absolutely.

COHON: Okay. Which leads me to what I\'m sure is a simple minded
question, but going back to your condensation argument, your argument
for condensation that\'s being observed\--

BODVARSSON: Yeah.

COHON: If I followed you and I may not have, it sounded like you were
saying whatever moisture we\'re seeing is actually coming out of the
rock. It\'s being transported by air out of the rock?

BODVARSSON: Yeah.

COHON: Okay. Now, just by conservation of mass, what implications does
that have for drift shadow, for threshold\-- if you\'re going to argue
that\--

BODVARSSON: Absolutely, I understand exactly what you\'re saying.

COHON: Okay.

BODVARSSON: If you generate water within the drifts, you\'re not going
to have any more drift shadow. That\'s what you\'re saying, right?

COHON: Yeah.

BODVARSSON: Well, that\'s exactly a good point. The answer is this. When
we ventilate, we disturb the system, we create temperature gradients
that are substantial, up to 3 or 5 degrees in that area, and that
artificially made temperature gradient causes the condensation based on
this hypothesis. Okay? Now, in the real system, ambient temperatures,
you have much less changes in temperatures than we have from the
ventilation system, and therefore, you may expect much less
condensation, if any, but we need to verify that with the model
calculations.

COHON: Yeah. No, it\'s not that I\'m worried about condensation. It\'s
if you\'re going to make that kind of process argument, physical process
argument, for why there is condensation, what does it have to say about
the defensibility of the drift shadow? That\'s my point.

BODVARSSON: Yeah. And, my answer was\--

COHON: And, I think you\'ve got some work to reconcile these things,
don\'t you?

BODVARSSON: Yeah. And, my answer was that we introduce artificially the
water\--

COHON: No, I got that, okay.

BODVARSSON: And, maybe when you have emplacement drift, you\'re not
going to introduce that artificially and maybe it will be little or low
condensation, and therefore, the concepts are still reconciled. But, you
must verify that, obviously.

COHON: Okay, thanks.

BULLEN: Debra Knopman?

KNOPMAN: Knopman, Board. This question actually follows up on Jerry\'s.
This barometric pumping mechanism that you think is a possible
explanation, plausible explanation, for the condensation, let\'s see if
we can take it one more step. You tell me if this is right or not. We
stop ventilation, we seal up the repository, we have drip shields in
there, we have lots of differential heating as you go along a drift. So,
you\'ve got an incredible amount of air instability as this barometric
pumping is going on up and down the drift in lots of different ways
bringing in, drawing in quite a bit of moisture in the process that\'s
going to probably condense somewhere in the drift, but we don\'t know
where. So, you\'re bringing\--that mechanism seems to me to be now your
vehicle for bringing more moisture into the sealed drifts that could
get\--then, it starts bringing into question what you\'ve got in terms
of condensation under your drip shields. You can have different
temperatures between the waste package and the drip shield. I don\'t
know about the temperature differential and the gradients with your
invert material. I don\'t know what\'s going on there. What do you
think?

BODVARSSON: Well, I think I explained myself very poorly. So, that\'s my
first thing. The radon is due to barometric pumping. The condensation
based on this hypothesis\--and I\'m just saying this is a
hypothesis\--is not based on pumping. It\'s simply based on the fact
that we artificially created a temperature gradient from an inlet during
the ventilation process because the average temperature of ventilation
is higher. So, I had a temperature gradient like that. Okay? Say, 5
degrees\--3 degrees, 5 degrees. Temperature gradients and infinite
permeability create different pressures in different areas. Those
different pressures may create air coming from the rock continuously,
not barometric, although it\'s affected by barometric pulses. But,
generally, it might be continuous for quite a while and then go out and
condense over here because it loses the temperature right there.

With respect to what is called the cold trap or differential waste
packages, my hypothesis with that is that that\--I haven\'t looked at
this in deatail, but that will probably not occur except very late in
the cooling cycle. And, let me tell you why. In the drifts, you have
much higher temperatures. Therefore, air pressures have to be higher
than in the rock because of pb equal to nrt (phonetic), the old good
law. And, if the air pressures are higher there, if I have a hot
canister here, I have a pressure, cold one here, I have pressure,
infinite permeability pressures equilibrate so that the cold and hot
won\'t matter. The air pressure will still be much higher than the rock.
Therefore, the air flow will always be into the rock or out laterally.
So, you may have condensation laterally and not within this cold trap
areas. It\'s just my thinking.

However, at the end of the cooling cycle when you\'re almost close to
ambient, therefore the pressure difference don\'t dominate any more. The
temperature difference dominate and then you might have it.

BULLEN: Bullen, Board. Thank you very much, Bo.

BODVARSSON: Thanks.

BULLEN: Let me just state for the record that the next time Bo gets 20
minutes. Okay? So, he can take that much.

Our final presentation before the break is an update on recent Nye
County well testing activities by Dave Cox from Questa Engineering.
Dave?

COX: This again is one of these presentations that\'s a compendium of
information generated by a whole lot of people. Other folks I want to
recognize include Dale Hammermeister, of course, the on-site rep for Nye
County, Jamie Walker and Ray Nadowny (phonetic) who both have been
involved in the testing and data acquisition for these tests, and Scott
Stinson who assisted with actually running some of the tests on the
interpretation.

Next slide? We have three different wells that we want to present
information on today in three different areas, in particular; the 7S,
7SC area, the 3D and 3S area, and then over in the ATC.

Next slide? These tests were done within the last year. 7SC and 7S test
were in March, the 3S, 3D were in April, and then IM1, IM2 were tested
in October.

Next slide? So, first, let\'s talk about 7SC. We ran a pump/spinner test
in four zones opened in that well. Most of the flow came from the upper
two zones which had a higher head than the other zones. So, in this
case, we actually had higher heads in the shallower zones than lower,
one of the rare cases in the Nye County wells where that\'s happened.
The 48-hour pump test, here, you have some results close to 2,000 square
feet per day for transmissivity and about 2.2 darcy. The permeability
near the well was damaged because of grouting that had to be put in to
hold the well. And so, the way we got the analysis here is we get the
permeability outside the damaged region from the interference over to
Well 7S there. So, that came on the interference response and again we
hit the same transmissivity, but that\'s how we know that the
permeability was reduced by about a factor of 40 times right near Well
7SC.

Next slide, please? You can see here the stair steps here and here and
there\'s actually a couple of little breaks. These are caused by
movement of lost circulation material in and out of the well like that.
And so, they\'re kind of plugging off parts of the screen during the
test. So, on this particular case, what we did was we matched the
recovery period to tell us permeability.

Next slide? And, you can see here that you have several things showing
up here. This is a log/log plot like I\'ve shown a few other times
before and I\'m not sure whether to this group, but at Devil\'s Hole and
places like that. They\'re commonly used in petroleum industry. What we
do is we plot the log of the change in head versus log recovery time or
log of producing time. The early time unit slope is giving us a wellbore
storage or near wellbore effect. In an ideal case where we have
homogeneous properties, this derivative curve which is the grain curve
here will come up, reach a peak, start down, and then stabilize. That
stabilized portion on the derivative is where we would normally draw a
straight line on a semi-log plot. So, that would be the Cooper type of
analysis on that. Here, instead of getting stabilization now, it keeps
heading down and that\'s because we\'re being fed by more water coming
in from outside this damaged region. We also have this bump right here
in the derivative corresponding to the bump in the head change there and
that\'s where the head and well finally drop below the head of that
third zone. And so, we\'re seeing the effects of different head levels
in the different zones there. So, a very complex test analysis. The
bottom line is the very steep derivative coming way down like that is an
indication of that near wellbore grouting that interfered with the
ability of the formation to produce water.

Next slide? Now, if we move to 3S, April, we tested that.

Next slide? We had a 24-hour pump test there at 41 gpm. So, again, a
relatively low rate. Once again, we\'re getting impaired permeability
because of the grouting. During previous operations this test, but after
an earlier test on 3D, the well began to flow air out one of the shallow
holes. So, they had to grout it off to maintain integrity of the
wellbores. So, that ended up actually causing a damaged region that
extended around both the 3S well and the 3D well. So, because of that
then, we have a larger damaged region. We had an original test in 1999
on 3D that indicated about 14 darcy. Now, we\'re down at about .17
darcy. So, obviously, grout helps to plug off permeability, as we all
know. That was not the intent, but operationally it had to be done. So,
we now have the interference response where we modeled this recognizing
that we have the inner region that\'s damaged and an outer region that
still has normal formation properties.

Next slide? So, on this one, this is the 3S response. Here, with
basically a single aquifer unit being open during the test and with this
support from outside, we see the derivative turning and heading all the
way down like that. This is a classic indication of pressure support. We
can\'t tell whether it\'s coming laterally or vertically. Leaky aquifer
has a very similar type response, but in this case with a combination of
the well history with the other information, we know that we\'re seeing
this from outside laterally.

Next slide, please? Now, let\'s move to the ATC testing in October of
last year. The ATC well layout, we have 19D which is sort of the
cornerstone of the ATC, 19IM1 is about 20 meters north, and 19IM2 is
about 20 meters east of IM1.

Next slide? The completed intervals, we have the alluvial intervals up
at the top in 19D, then a couple of tuff zones, and tertiary sediments
on the bottom. The IM1 and IM2 are basically completed in Zones 1
through 5, very similar to the 19D. Zone 4 here is the one that\'s
likely going to be used for the tracer test.

Next slide? So, we originally had back two years ago, we had some
testing on 19D prior to the drilling of IM1 and IM2. So, we had those
tests which indicated the permeability of about 2 darcy. Now, we have
these two monitor wells that have been put in and we were in pump tests
in those while we were measuring the heads in the offset wells. So, we
also have the interference effects.

Next slide? The spinner and pump/spinner tests indicated that Zone 1 and
2 contributed very little. They\'re the shallowest zones. Zone 3
provided most of the flow, but it\'s a very thick interval which makes
it harder to do tracer testing. So, that\'s why most of the effort has
been focused on Zone 4. Zone 5 is in the tuff and there was a fracture
in the tuff that contributed most of the flow at about 955 feet. And,
Zone 6 and 7 did not contribute much. So, that pump test on 19D, what we
found, a total of about 4,000 square feet per day, transmissivity 2.3
darcies, average permeability over the whole open screened interval in
Screens 1 through 5.

Now, the other thing that\'s interesting here is we could see multiple
flow barriers at a distance from the well indicating we have some kind
of a channel approximately 1400 feet wide. Now, that distance is not
well-defined or well-determined because we know we have multiple layers
here and we\'re getting some effect from that and we don\'t know the
effect of compressibility or storage of each of those layers
independently yet. So, because of that, think of that as 1,000 feet plus
or minus, 1400 feet plus or minus.

Next slide? So, what we see here again on this derivative type analysis
on log/log plot, here, the derivative comes up and we reach
stabilization. So, that\'s telling us the permeability away from the
well being about 2 darcy or 2.3 darcy. This increase in the derivative
after that point in time is a sign of these boundaries or flow barriers
at some distance from the well. We\'re seeing a couple of them out
there. If they\'re only a single boundary, what would happen is this
would come up and stabilize about a factor of 2 higher than what it is
for the flat period there. So, the fact that we\'re seeing continued
increase over a substantial period of time says we\'re seeing flow being
channelized here between barriers.

Next slide? Well, in IM1 and IM2, we did separate tests of each of
those. So, we\'re pumping IM1, monitoring IM2 in 19D. Likewise, we then
came back and pumped IM2 while we were monitoring IM1 and 19D.
Preliminary results, 2.1 and 2.3 darcy; so, same permeability, same
transmissivity. As well, we do see the effects of the barriers there.
Now, the interference response, there\'s definite interference response.
There\'s indication of anisotropy there. We just haven\'t had time to
complete the analysis of that yet. But, we are looking\--the key one
there is 19D because it\'s at a different angle from IM2 than it is from
IM1. 19P, the response there is very muted and it looks like there\'s a
flow barrier between that. It\'s only a very shallow hole in the rest of
the productive interval there.

Next slide? So, here, we have the same type of derivative plot for the
IM1 test. Again, you can see the effect of these flow barriers out here.
A good stabilized derivative time giving us good value of permeability
at about 2.1 darcy.

Next slide? Here is the IM2 test results. Once again, derivative
climbing indicating flow is being channeled here.

Next slide? So, in summary, these test results indicate permeability of
about 2 darcy or more around 7S and 3S, but low permeability immediately
around the well because of the grouting operations or because of loss
circulation material. 19IM1 and 19IM2 testing basically have confirmed
what we\'ve known already from the 19D testing. We do see definite
indications of multiple flow barriers and we see definitive interference
between the different wells here. So, all these are very positive
factors that indicate that the ATC here should be suitable for tracer
testing.

Next slide? We\'ve learned a lot of lessons. First, well testing again
has demonstrated its usefulness at characterizing the system and
evaluating the artifacts introduced during drilling and completion.
We\'ve changed our drilling procedures to put shallow wells a little
further away from deep wells so we don\'t run into these problems again.

Next slide? We did get much better completions on IM1 and IM2 than we
had in 19D. So, we saw no evidence of the progressive plugging. We used
larger screen openings, got better gravel packs reduced the need for
LCM, and it looks like we got much better zonal isolation in IM1 and
IM2. Now, the skin factors that we saw there, if anyone noticed those
written down in the type curve analysis, those apparently relate
primarily to the multiple layers being present, not to additional
damage. It\'s rather an artifact of multiple layers and we saw no signs
of screen plugging.

Next slide? Okay. Now, I will give you a quick update on activities for
Nye County coming up here. So, you can see here the red wells are the
Phase 1 drill holes, Phase 2 are the light blue, Phase 3 are wells
completed up through January here, and then we have additional wells to
be completed in the next couple of months.

Next slide? We\'ll move on here and go to progress. So, we\'ve had the
four exploratory boreholes, four multiple screen monitor wells that are
now completed, and the three piezometers.

Next slide? We have obtained core during the drilling and completion of
these alluvial wells. We\'ve got core from the alluvial pathway there
now where it looks like the transport will go from Yucca Mountain. It\'s
suitable for both hydraulic and geochemistry testing and about half the
core was provided or made available to DOE and the Yucca Mountain
Project. Location here, we\'ve got it at 10P and 22PA.

Next slide? So, this is just a slide showing you what the core looks
like. You know, we have pulled it out. We\'ve got core barrels and so
on.

Next slide? Work to be done. Right now, we\'re planning on cleaning out
and testing existing holes. 2DB is a well that Nye County drilled a
little while back. We\'ve got several hundred feet of fill in. So, we
want to clean that out and then pack off which is says \"pacer off\",
but it\'s really pack off and test the paleozoic section down there and
collect aquifer tests and water chemistry data. If we have enough time
and money, we may try and test the shallower tertiary sediments there,
too. The Felderhoff is an old oil field test. It was plugged many years
ago. The idea here, if we have sufficient time and money, would be to
draw out the plugs and try and complete it, screen off the paleozoics
from 2300 to 2500 feet. This is going to be a fairly difficult one. I\'m
not sure whether we\'ll get to that this year or not.

Next slide? Okay. The other work to be completed, 22PB, 23P, and air in
3D to clean that out and get a deeper completion on that which will also
give us some samples and information on hydraulic gradient and water
chemistry there.

Next slide? Future phases, the DOE Cooperative Agreement and Funding is
being arranged and you\'ll have to direct any questions on that to Dale.
I can\'t answer those. And, the plans for the next five years are being
developed. These will be presented at the May TRB meeting.

Thank you.

BULLEN: Thank you, Dave.

Questions from the Board? Dr. Nelson?

NELSON: Nelson, Board. Are you taking thermal data, as well?

COX: Yes, we are, but we\--the thermal data is actually showing us some
things, too, in terms of where the flow is going between different zones
and such, but we haven\'t really had time to analyze all that.

BULLEN: Other questions from the Board?

(No response.)

BULLEN: Questions from Staff?

(No response.)

BULLEN: Wow.

COX: Okay. We have one more thing to say here.

BULLEN: Go ahead, Dave? That\'s fine.

COX: We do have copies of the 19D report, well test report, and the
3S/3D test report in the back there. We didn\'t bring copies for
everyone, but for those folks who are interested, it\'s highly
technical, but it goes into much more detail on this type curve analysis
and so on.

BULLEN: Right. Thank you. We have a couple more questions before you go.
You know, we always expand to meet the time.

COX: That\'s fine.

BULLEN: Dr. Knopman, Board?

KNOPMAN: Yeah, I just can\'t stand the vacuum here. Knopman, Board.
Dave, could you just sort of step back from everything you showed us,
the detail, and give us a sense of what you think you\'re learning that
you didn\'t know before the drilling program began and what you think
the implications are in terms of characterizing the saturated zone and
transport in it?

COX: Okay. Now, you recognize that these are kind of personal
observations in response to a question off the cuff here. So, don\'t
consider this an official Nye County position.

KNOPMAN: Don\'t consider my question an official Board concern.

COX: Thank you. Well, I felt I had to make that disclaimer. But, I think
the key thing to me looking at things, one is that in most of these
cases we are seeing heads that are higher in the deeper zones. So,
we\'re seeing flow coming up for the most part. In the case of 7S there,
what we\'re seeing, it\'s not really perched water, but it\'s water
that\'s coming or has split into about three different zones and then a
spilling at different points. So, it\'s water that\'s being kind of held
up and that\'s why we have the upper zone having higher head. But, all
the other wells, we\'re seeing higher heads in the deeper zones. So, I
think that\'s key.

The second one is that for the most part we\'re seeing\--on the other
tests on other wells, we saw kind of 10 to 100 darcy. These, we\'re
seeing things that are quite a bit tighter down into the average range
of, say, two to 10 darcy. But, even then, averages are misleading. If we
look at individual zones, we\'re probably talking\--you know, some of
them are tighter, but there are still a lot of things in the, say, 5 to
20 darcy range. So, relatively good permeability which says flow will
happen fairly quickly.

In terms of the fractures, there are a lot of things that are highly
influenced by fractures; as, for example, the fracture there in Screen 5
on 19D. So, we\'re seeing a lot of fracture flow. And then, finally,
we\'re seeing a lot more barriers than I expected laterally. And, these
barriers have to tend to channel flow and to basically speed things up.
So, in a case like this where we\'re talking a zone that\'s 1,000 to
1500 feet wide, if you look at one of these maps, you know, that\'s a
very narrow piece. What is says is flow has to channel through those and
be deflected into it, or if it runs up against it, it\'s going to be
deflected on the outside of that. So, these barriers that are there that
extend, at least, thousands of feet from the well, I think, are an
overprint and whether that\'s depositional or post-depositional, I
don\'t know. But, it\'s an overprint on there that has to affect flow
paths substantially.

BULLEN: Bullen, Board. As a followup to that, I guess, I want to ask the
rhetorical question, are there surprises? Are these surprises in what
you\'d expect the flow field to look like or do you think that these are
just the natural variabilities that you run into in nature and you\'d
expect to see this kind of behavior?

COX: Well, I\'d have to say for me based on my past experience it is
surprising, the degree of heterogeneity and the number of barriers that
we\'re seeing. I don\'t normally see that. But, on the other hand, I
normally work on oil fields and, you know, we have a whole lot more
wells and so on. We do see barriers, but not nearly as often as we\'re
seeing here.

BULLEN: Okay. Thank you, Dave.

Any other questions from the Board? Dr. Runnells?

RUNNELLS: Runnells, Board. Just a quickie. You\'ve talked just about the
hydrologic testing. Are you also doing geophysics, doing chemistry?

COX: Well, there has\--I\'ll have to defer that to Dale. Dale?

RUNNELLS: With all the tests they have, I wondered about the ones that
you just described.

BULLEN: With him taking so long to walk around, see, that way, we\'ll
use up the rest of the time that\--his walking will expand to fill the
time available here.

HAMMERMEISTER: Yeah, this is Dale Hammermeister, Nye County. Yes, we do
geophysics on boreholes and we also do water quality data. We have not
published any reports and we\'re working on the analysis. However, Dave
has published several reports on his aquifer tests.

RUNNELLS: Runnells, Board. Are you measuring oxidation reduction
potentials in these new recent wells?

HAMMERMEISTER: Nye County isn\'t, but I believe Los Alamos or the USGS
are measuring oxidation reduction potentials. They can answer that
question.

EDDERBBARH: That\'s correct.

HAMMERMEISTER: At the same time that we sample wells, the USGS in Los
Alamos and actually UNLV also sample the wells.

SPEAKER: That was Al that commented. The USGS in Los Alamos are
measuring oxidation reduction potentials. Can you tell us if they\'re
reducing or oxidizing?

(Pause.)

EDDERBBARH: I don\'t think I have an absolute answer on that because it
varies with that\--I mean, the samples, whether it\'s\--you know, I
mean, some samples oxidizing and, you know, other depths of reducing and
also with location. Aaron Meier is the scientist who does the data
collection and measurements. If you want, we can get you, you know,
complete pictures on all the wells. We can maybe communicate that to the
Board if you are interested.

BULLEN: Thank you. That was Al Edderbbarh.

Well, I\'m going to take the Chairman\'s prerogative now and give you
three whole extra minutes instead of just one extra minute today. I want
to warn you that you have to be back here at 4:00 o\'clock because the
next session Chairman is even meaner than I am. So, we\'ll reconvene at
4:00 o\'clock.

I want to thank all the speakers for the presentations the first part of
this afternoon. Thank you.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

COHON: If you will take your seats and take your conversations outside,
if you\'re going to continue them. Thank you.

This last session of the day which focuses on a series of reviews done
by external organizations will be chaired by Board Member Jeffrey Wong.
Jeffrey?

WONG: Thank you, Dr. Cohon.

Okay. Again, as Jerry said, this last session is on external reviews,
and the very famous board member whose initials are D. B. wanted me to
be more poetic than himself in introducing the session, so I\'ll say
that there are many contributors to the crucible scientific debate, and
hopefully, from this crucible, the best understood performance estimate
will flow. And with\--you like that, Jerry?

And with that we have four speakers and our first speaker will be Dr.
Bill Alley who is with the USGS in Ruston, Virginia, where he is the
Chief of the Office of Groundwater. Dr. Alley?

ALLEY: Thank you. It\'s not often that one gets to give a presentation
on a letter. But I feel a little better because I was talking to
somebody during the break and they said that they had survived giving a
presentation on a memo. So if they can do that, then I can do this.

Basically what I\'d like to do, there\'s copies of the letter at the
back of the room, for you that are interested. What we did is, we\--the
U. S. Geological Survey has played an active role in studying nuclear
waste disposal for a long time now. We\'ve been investigating the Yucca
Mountain Nevada Test Site region, if you will, geology and hydrology
since the 1950s. And actually, on a number of occasions over that period
of time we have commented on various aspects of nuclear waste disposal.

Perhaps the most recent comments were made at the time of the viability
assessment which in 1999 we published Circular ll84 that summarized the
comments of a review team that we put together. We put together a team
of people who are subject matter experts, external to the projects
within USGS at the time. So recently as part of the federal register and
as part of the sight recommendation decision, we were asked to give our
point of view once again.

I should emphasize that the point of view that I\'m presenting is based
on essentially forming over a relatively short period of time a team of
experts both external to the Yucca Mountain project as well as those who
were doing it on a day to day basis to try to elicit our overall opinion
of the current state of affairs relative to site suitability. I should
also state that any comments that we have relative to that are solely
within the bounds of our expertise and our science and limited to our
science issues, and we are, as an agency, obviously neutral on all other
issues that are outside the bounds.

The USGS views Yucca Mountain as a potential repository from a
scientific point of view as opposed to an engineering point of view, if
you will. It\'s an immense undertaking. Many times today I\'ve heard the
words \"first of a kind\". And it needs to be implemented in a staged
manner with recognition of the uncertainties and the limits of
production.

I\'ll review the Secretary of Energy\'s decision to recommend a site as
one step in this continuing step-wise decision making process, and so
our information in perspective in the letter that we provided was solely
related to this particular step. Just to summarize some of our general
conclusions at this point, are, one, is that geologic disposition is the
only long-term approach to high level waste at the present time.

Second of all, on balance, again, at the present time, the site
attributes are positive and we do not see any fatal flaw, if you will,
relative to the earth science issues related to Yucca Mountain as a site
for nuclear waste disposal.

Thirdly, that we view and have long held that retrievability is an
important aspect of geologic disposition, and most importantly is one
that\'s achievable at Yucca Mountain by the nature of the fact that you
have this very thick unsaturated zone in an arid climate.

And finally, and I\'ll mention these later on. There are several aspects
of the site characteristics that suggest some key design considerations.
A number of these you\'ve heard about today in the course of the
discussions. Just a few statements about some of the positive attributes
are assets of the site, the air, climate, low rate of infiltration.
Again, the thick unsaturated zone, the lack of economic mineral or
energy deposits, the ease of excavating stable tunnels, the natural path
of ventilation to the mountain, and the presence of zeolites and
other\--particularly zeolites, retard the movement of certain
radionuclides.

There are also characteristics, as you well know, that potentially may
degrade repository performance, and that consequently deserve scrutiny.
If the President designates Yucca Mountain these attributes may and
often will require additional study and monitoring, and I\'ll mention
four of them right here, the four key ones that we talked about. One is
that during the pre-closure period critical surface facilities must be
designed using state of the art engineering practice to accommodate the
potential for earthquakes. Whereas, the engineering design is outside
the scope of USGS studies, USGS has confidence in the probablistic
earthquake has an analysis upon which designs will be based.

The second is that the potential for future volcanic activity has been
extensively studied because of the presence of nearby volcanic features
that are much younger than Yucca Mountain. The U. S. concurs with expert
panels that the probability of repository piercing eruption, including
surface eruption is on the order of 1.6 times 10 to the minus eighth per
year, or on the odds that\'s something like 16 in a billion.

Thirdly, and one which has been a focus of much discussion today, is
that there is a deep potable aquifer beneath the site which is an
important resource, very valuable resource for the region, both from a
human and natural environment perspective. We believe that the arid, the
site characteristics of an arid climate coupled with the hydrologic
characteristics of the unsaturated zone as has been studied extensively,
will help result in limited contact to the water waste. Clearly, this is
a matter that should continue to be evaluated.

And fourthly, future climate changes are errantly uncertain and can
result in either positive or negative effects on potential, on the
proposed repository. Their plausible limits on future climate are based
on records of climate change over the past million years. If one looks
at those, one essentially has an expected range that could be
significant cooler periods with double today\'s precipitation. It\'s
likely that the climate at Yucca Mountain in the next 1000 years will be
intermediate between the two extremes. It\'s probably semi-arid at
times. Clearly if one looks at the science, climate change today it has
evolved. It has even evolved since we wrote this letter in late last
year, So it\'s another area that requires continued scrutiny in terms of
the effects of possible climate change.

We recognize that it is desirable to continue to improve knowledge of
the site to reduce uncertainty, apply newer science concepts and support
refinements in repository design.

With respect to the design considerations we believe that the
temperature of the rock should be kept below the boiling point at all
locations to reduce the impacts on the natural assets of the repository
system and also importantly to reduce uncertainties in predicting the
repository system behavior. And we\'ve heard a lot about that today.

Second, the forced and natural ventilation should be used to cool and
dry the surrounding rock and thus improve repository performance, again
minimizing seepage into the drifts. And seepage in some fraction of
infiltration and percolation through the mountain is a key to the value
of the natural system in containing the waste, and ventilation can have
a major effect on seepage.

And third, again to emphasize the period of retrievability, and
monitoring as necessary to preserve options of future generations.
Certainly, the limitations of quantitator prediction over such long time
periods need to be recognized and reenforces its need for retrievability
and monitoring.

It also, as we\'ve heard today on a couple of occasions in fact,
emphasizes the importance of multiple lines of evidence, in addition to
the TSP analysis. In particular, the two that we point to are studies of
both natural and human analogues, the preservation of packrat middens
for tens of thousands of years, the preservation of ice age painting in
caves, and other types of evidence. It\'s important to illustrate the
potential for essentially the design and operator repository under
ground at Yucca Mountain.

And secondly, to point out the importance of geochemical studies of
calcite and opal (phonetic) at Yucca Mountain, which have shown
unequivocal evidence that the water table has been below the repository
level for millions of years. And that the effects of past climactic
shifts were greatly attenuated at the proposed repository depth.

Again, basically our comments are based on our long history of working
at the mountain. We feel that the strength of our comments is our
foundation on our long history of scientific work in the area and
ability to stand back and take a broad science-based overview of the
earth science aspects, and the preponderance of evidence to date. We
recognize that the weakness of our review is that we have not undertaken
a detailed review of all current documents and obviously that\'s
something left to others to do and is an overwhelming task.

So in conclusion, I think we, on balance, feel that at this particular
step in the process, in a stage-wise process, we feel that the
characteristics of the site are such that one should continue forward.
We recognize that there is still continuing work to be done, and that it
is, in essence, a first of a kind, a large scale scientific experiment.
And so it does not ever come to a completion. Completion is a point
where you can say, oh, thank goodness. We did all the work, now we can
go home and everything will be fine. So I think that\'s a general
summary of what\'s contained in the letter. Again, there are copies in
the back of the room and I\'d be happy to take any questions you might
have.

WONG: Okay, thank you. Questions from the Board? Dr. Parizek?

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board. Some have said that the

U. S. Geological Survey is really the godfather or the grandfather of
the Yucca Mountain project. I don\'t know, you know, if you would agree
with that, but I mean this survey made early recommendations about that
area. And you know, as a parent, you like to see the best in your
children, you know, they may be miserable, nasty and anxious, but you
don\'t want to pay too much attention to that because you really want to
see good things about the site. To what extent do you see good things
about the site that may be clouding the bad things about the site? I
mean can you\--you gave us a list of the pros and cons, but could you
kind of clarify these in, you know, in hindsight, after some years of
working in the desert. And also the test site, because obviously you\'ve
made observations over the years, about the test site, or groups have,
and you\'re bringing that experience into play and so on. So we just
want to carry this further because some of what you\'ve said is not
really rigorous mathematical TSPA analysis numbers of something, right?
Which people have to deal with. You\'re sort of giving opinions, a sort
of professional opinion, a sort of\--the whole organization of U. S.
Geological Survey\'s feeling about it, right? So that\'s sort of harder
thing to quantify, you know, in terms of testimony before governmental
parties and so on. So that\'s your opinion, somebody else has another
opinion. But it\'s more than just kind of a casual opinion. It\'s based
on years of integrative experience of many people. Isn\'t it? Or\--

ALLEY: Yes. I would say\--

PARIZEK: Like naughty children and you don\'t want to see anything bad
about it.

ALLEY: It is true that the USGS was heavily involved in the initial
selection of the site and many of the opinions that we have presented in
our letter are long-standing opinions over a couple decades or more in
some cases. The retrieveability, the monitoring, and so forth.

A couple points: One is we tried to bring as many people to the table as
we could to hear from all sides within the U. S. Geological Survey, and
I can assure you it\'s not a uniform body of thought internally. In
fact, we have plenty of what some people would call renegade scientists
located within the survey. In fact, I worry a little bit about hearing
what I hear things like a more disciplined approach to science. I worry
about not letting those renegade scientists come in and have their
opinions, which sometimes play out to be quite correct.

So we recognize that we have long-standing opinions here. We pride
ourselves\--we have two assets for the organization. We are not involved
in managing anything. We couldn\'t manage anything, really. So we
realize we have nothing to fall back on. So in that sense the only
things we have are the talents and capabilities of our people and our
own unbiasness. So we pride ourselves in our unbiased character. So we
continually ask ourselves questions. I continually ask the group
questions, do we really still support the low temperature designs just
because we are obstinate and that was our idea in the first place, and
we\'re not really willing to give up on that idea, or have we just\--are
we sticking to our guns and we just haven\'t seen the evidence that we
feel a better design is possible through high temperature as a result.
And the honest answer I got back from people strongly feel within the
survey is that, no, we feel like, you know, we continually are open to
the idea, but we just, you know, we still believe in the repository
design that it should be the low temperature. So there is no such thing
as a completely unbiased\--when you have some stake in it, a scientific
stake in it, but I think I can say that the perspectives we have are
pretty close to that, as close as we can make it to an unbiased
statement, and not getting too attached to any particular children.

WONG: Dr. Reiter?

REITER: Leon Reiter, Staff. You mentioned some of the history and
documents. I notice that in your letter you mentioned Circular 903. I
guess which is one of the central documents in the unsaturated zone. And
I want to, there was a quote in there, I want to know whether you still
hold to. And the quote is as follows: \"It is difficult to conceive of
any geologic surprises that could present serious problems with the
unsaturated zone.\" And I wonder if you people still believe that or if
you follow the maxim of Wendall Worth (phonetic) who said that one is
most comprehended site before one begins detailed investigation. ALLEY:
Yeah, I would say that we would not stand behind that statement at this
point in time. I don\'t know what year that was written, but obviously
we\'ve learned a lot more about the unsaturated zone and a lot more
about the transport of contaminates within the unsaturated zone, and so
I would say there are plenty of surprises.

WONG: Dr. Knopman.

KNOPMAN: Knopman, Board. Bill, you started off by saying that the USGS
expertise is in earth science and that you try to confine yourself to
that. Yet, throughout the letter in the supporting document there is
reference to and discussion about, and judgements on, engineering
design.

ALLEY: Um-hum.

KNOPMAN: And I find that interesting. It seems to me, and you can tell
me if this is a fair or unfair characterization that what you\'ve
recognized as you were putting this letter together is that design and
characterization of the natural system are very closely intertwined. And
therefore you almost couldn\'t avoid talking about design matters even
though it\'s outside of the expertise and outside of the study that has
been conducted by the survey.

ALLEY: Right. Let me take the three design aspects and sort of
illustrate that. The first one is a cool repository, and there, one
could argue, I mean there\'s plenty of arguments relative to what might
happen to the canisters and the engineering structures and the chemistry
thereof. But there are many earth science aspects that one has to think
about in terms of the temperature of the repository, just in terms of
the effect of high temperature on the rock. The expansion from
temperature on the rock, the multi-phase aspects of the chemistry, the
complicated chemistry, geochemistry, that one has at higher
temperatures. Possible dehydration of minerals, and the question of
where does the water go after whatever period of time it is and it
finally cools down and starts to condense. Those are all earth science
issues, but they interplay with that design aspect.

Relative to the retrievability and monitoring, I think that\'s very much
recognizing uncertainty in our earth science. One can just simply argue
for that purely on the uncertainty that one has about the geologic
aspects of the repository, so again that\'s an earth science engineering
design aspect, if you will.

And the third aspect, which is the ventilation, again, is very much
related to seepage into the tunnels and the\--again a fundamental earth
science aspect, perhaps the most fundamental earth science aspect. So we
only commented on the design aspects as they relate to earth science
issues.

KNOPMAN: So in saying that you find Yucca Mountain a suitable site,
which the letter does say, it\'s a conditional statement? It\'s
conditioned on your view of design?

ALLEY: Yes, I would say so. It would be very important. I think that
further understanding the conceptual framework for movement of moisture
through the unsaturated zone, the whole issue of past pathways is still
out there and being discussed in a relationship of faults to rapid
movement through the mountain.

And then there are some areas which I think could build confidence in
terms of the mountain that really haven\'t been probably taken as much
advantage of as possible. I think that characterizing the unsaturated
zone from the repository to the water table is an area where we could
build more confidence and reduce uncertainty relative to essentially
what happens when the waste\--inevitably some of it will leak out of the
bottom and move downward, and there really is not that much known about
what is going to happen in that zone. So I would say, you know, again
thinking towards monitoring, trying to further the conceptualization of
the unsaturated zone, and looking at the data sets that we already have
and making sure we don\'t too hastily abandon those, when all that
infrastructure and knowledge is built into them.

MR. WONG: Dr. Bullen?

BULLEN: Bullen, Board. Sort of along the lines of what Dr. Parizek said,
but you have, or your organization has the history of a long\--the
benefit of a long history with the site, and you have, you know,
developed essentially a number of points that you think are attributes.
Specifically I\'m interested in are there any data sets\--as we go
through the transition to, or the potential transition to a more
licensing focus, and you know, you talked about the people who think
outside the box they may be a little bit repressed in this, is there any
data or critical data sets that you think might be important to pursue,
and how would you rank them? I mean right now the Board has always
strongly stated that we wanted to see the continuation of a good
scientific program to support the long-term performance. What types of
data sets, what type of information would you like to see continue to be
developed from the USGS perspective?

ALLEY: Okay. First of all, I think it\'s important to understand that
the importance of long-term data, so in other words many of the data
sets that are being carried out today, it\'s important not to abandon
those and move over here, because they\'ve developed the knowledge that
you can build on. So I think a very strong look at what the current data
sets are and which of those should be continued, clearly that builds a
case for a lot of thought being given now towards what is referred to as
performance confirmation, or how does one monitor the site.

WONG: Dr. Craig.

CRAIG: Paul Craig, Board. There have been a number of concerns raised
that the mountain would not do the necessary job of isolation in the
absence of the canister. In fact we heard such a statement this morning
from Steve Frishman. And then just before the break we saw some of these
breakthrough curves that showed that a significant portion of the water
would pass through both the UZ and the UZ at times less than 10,000
years, the regulatory time. And a significant fraction in 20
percent\--20 percent or so, at times, much less. Is it the\--less than
10,000 years. Is it the position of the Geological Survey that the
mountain without the engineered canisters could provide the necessary
isolation?

ALLEY: I think we haven\'t done the analysis to really come to that
conclusion because there are so many\--I guess you run the TSPA as a
first cut at that without the canisters, but we haven\'t carried out
that kind of analysis. CRAIG: I\'m trying to understand the basis for
your confidence\--

ALLEY: Right.

CRAIG: \--that the system will perform, which I think was the essential
element in your letter.

ALLEY: Right. I think our view is that the system will, that probably
the natural system, the natural barrier is a good natural barrier.
Playing that all out relative to the standards that have been set
forward in terms of dosage and things like that is a very complicated
detailed analysis that we have not gone through. And so we can\'t really
make a blanket statement that we feel that the mountain will perform
exactly as the regulations say it will.

CRAIG: In that case I guess I want to say I\'m confused about what the
basis is for the positive statement that\'s in the letter.

ALLEY: I think that the basis for the positive statement in the letter
is that we view this as a step in a step-wise process. We see the
mountain as a good natural barrier. And we see that there is continuing
work that has to be done to monitor the performance of the mountain, and
it\'s a stage-wise\--there\'s no absolutes here. I think it\'s the basis
of our letter and we\'re looking at this as a step-wise process, and if
one looks at the current, where we are in time, right now, we would say
that the\--it seems like\--and there\'s no fatal flaws that we can
discern relative to the mountain performing as a repository.

WONG: Okay, do we have any further questions from the Board? Board
staff? Okay, seeing none, thank you. Thank you, Bill.

Our next speaker is Dr. John W. Bartlett. Dr. Bartlett will give a
presentation on the Clark County Review of the TSPA. He is with S. Cohen
& Associates, and from 1990 to 1993 he was the Director of the DOE\'s
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

BARTLETT: I got religion this morning so I took off my back-east suit
and tie. Thank you.

The prior discussion gives me an opportunity for some historical
perspective. It happens that I was involved in preparing the first
program plan, the first office in the Atomic Energy Commission that
recognized disposal, The Division of Waste Management and
Transportation, 1972. The Division sent us down to the Nevada Test Site
to talk to the USGS about the potential for using the NCS. Very quickly,
the USGS sniffed and said, \"Well, we have 900 years of experience in
characterizing this site, and for another 900 we\'ll let you know about
the feasibility.\" And then they offered us the call there to the
mountain. And that was the initial point of operation.

Also, not long after, there was a meeting held where representatives of
the program, in essence, for the first time, really met with the geology
community. And we said we would like you to predict things like
frequency of seismic activity, different levels. And they said, you want
what? At the time the idea of plate tectonics was just coming into broad
acceptance. So things have come a long way, and actually over sort of a
long time, but they\--we\'re not in focus are we. We\'ll get it down a
little bit. Sorry about this.

(Pause.)

Thank you. Well, things have come a long way, as you can tell when you
think about some of that perspective. This, as it says, was an
independent review, PSSE and it\'s supporting documents done for Clark
County. And the key operative word here is independent. Clark County was
scrupulous in letting us do our thing. So scrupulous in fact that when I
talked about this at the ACNW meeting in November, Englebrecht observed
that he\'d never ever seen the slides. So it was totally independent at
the time. And was totally.

The objective of this effort is taken here, this is right from the
statement of work. Basically, the effort was to get substantively into
what was done with regard to TSPA in particular, just the TSPA aspects
of the performance of TSPA. For the PSSE specifically, and the documents
that supported it.

The scope of our efforts was measured in feet of documents, and this
does total about six feet when you pile them all up. And anybody who
would like to take them out of my closet is welcome to do so. Little
phrase here, AMRs and PMRs that were available. Thanks to the generosity
of the libraries at TRB, I had access to virtually all of them. So we
did review all of these documents to come up with the findings I\'m
going to tell you about today. And that\'s a lot of pages. For example,
the TSPA for the SR and the supporting model and assumptions documents,
just those three total about 5,000 pages.

Let me talk first about the characteristics of the documents and the
relationship between the documents and the TSPA efforts, as it was
reflected within those documents. I assert that there was substantive
technical information that\'s concerned with the TSPA efforts. It\'s all
there, pretty much. But it\'s limited in one document in particular and
very difficult to trace throughout that suite of documents. This is what
we found as we went through this effort. There was no single document
that really pulled together the substantive content of the TSPA effort.
And secondly, relationships between the models and the assumptions and
the data that were used in the TSPA effort were not clearly evident
throughout the documents as they were reported.

Thirdly, with respect to the characterization of the documents, it was
hard to find information completely concerning a given topic in a given
document. And I can illustrate this by the fact that when we did a
review of the viability assessment, one of the things that I looked
particularly closely at was the cladding performance, specifically
because it is an expensive body of data, and you could, if there was
enough information in the document, make a comparison between evidence
that was available and the assertions and methods that were used in the
documentation and thereby make a reasonable effort of conservatism,
whether it was there or not, or whatever. With the VA you could do it.
Everything you needed was in the VA, in a couple of supporting
documents. And I could come up with an assessment of conservatism that I
had some confidence in, comparing the data to the documentation.

In the case of these documents I found I couldn\'t do it. Kept getting
referred from one document to another to another, and ultimately the
substance proved to me, as far as I could determine, actually in the
AMRs and PMRs, and specifically in the AMRs, right at the bottom of the
chain, and so you had to trace through this to try and get an audit on
any specific topic. And so I generalized that by saying that what
happened, or appears to have happened, is that the traceability and
continuity of information concerning TSPA was converted in this
documentation to more what I called information accounting. As far as I
could tell, referencing one thing to another, they never missed. The
referencing, cross-referencing was always correct, but the ability to
trace the information relevant to a topic was bound to be very
difficult.

Now, there was a previous trade press report on this and the headlines
said, \"Documents are a mess.\" As if I said that. No, I didn\'t say
that. The documents are written beautifully. But for purposes of trying
to trace through this suite of documents on the TSPA topics, we found it
to be very, very difficult. Somebody did a beautiful job of preparing
the documents themselves, and I congratulate them.

Now, the findings with respect to the TSPA analyses. We found that many
assumptions were extreme and seemed not to be related to data or realism
in many cases. And it was very hard to trace the basis for the
assumptions. They were just not there. And there was no rationale in
many cases. This was particularly true of the TSPA-SR support documents.
If they just stated what were the alternatives, why was this one
selected, what effect does this have, etcetera, could not\--I could not
trace that throughout the documentations. And these assumptions, as I
say, are apparently highly conservative, were non-conservative, but you
really can\'t get a handle on them, which was the objective of this
effort.

And I sort of ran over it, but the TSPA-SR, which is what many people
have reviewed, such as the International Group, is quite different from
the TSPA that supports the site suitability evaluation. The results are
very different, methodologies are different, but the basis for the
differences I had a very hard time finding, and in fact couldn\'t except
for some major factors. Two things were apparent: The TSPA in support of
the site suitability evaluation, preliminary, had assumptions
concerning, or used a temperature-dependent corrosion model, and
radically changed the assumptions concerning the solubility of
neptunium. Two really key factors. Also an assumption that there were
well failures that gave early package failures. Beyond that it was very,
very difficult to find the basis for difference between the TSPA-SR and
the TSPA supporting the PSSE.

As a result we found that the documentation doesn\'t provide a sound
foundation for, particularly, the

S-TSPA, which is, according to the documentation, the basis for the
preliminary site recommendation. Not the TSPA-SR. So it\'s the S-TSPA
that you really have to understand to understand the basis for where the
program stood at the time. And by the way\--

BULLEN: John, just a quick question here. Bullen, Board. We\'re not
familiar with the S-TSPA. Is that the suitability TSPA you\'re referring
to?

BARTLETT: Yes. PSSE, Supplemental\--

BULLEN: Oh, supplemental TSPA?

BARTLETT: Yes, yes.

BULLEN; Yes. Okay, so that\'s SSPA. Okay.

BARTLETT: That\'s Volume II\--

BULLEN: Of the PSSE file.

BARTLETT: Of the TSSA.

BULLEN: SSPA?

BARTLETT: Right, there\'s going to be a quiz in the morning.

BULLEN: Okay, I had seen it as STSPA, so\--okay.

BARTLETT: Yeah. It sort of runs on.

BULLEN: Right.

BARTLETT: So this is the shorthand. But yes, the documentation, the
supplemental that specifically supports the PSSE. And as I said, that\'s
very different from the TSPA-SR. And as a result you wind up in a
situation where it\'s very hard to find the foundation except what you
found in fact was that there seemed to be a lot of extreme assumptions
within that foundation.

The result of this in our findings is that, as it says here, you get the
impression that the projections of performance are much more an artifact
of the assumptions than they are realistic representation of the
repository itself. You could have come up with any result depending on
what assumptions you made. And they did not seem to be closely related
to the specific technical information that was available. It would have
been closer, I think, if the basis had been related to what EPA calls
reasonable expectation. Very simply, take your best shot at what you do
know and see how that comes out. But that didn\'t seem to be the basis
for these.

The TSPAs did not use a specific repository design as their basis. And
so the variations on the high temperature performance and the low
temperature performance were presented in such a way that you could not
interpret them realistically as a basis for comparison of those two
conditions. And so we couldn\'t get a solid foundation for the suite of
results, and again a foundation for the supplemental TSPA.

And of course, as we all know, as the repository design stands right
now, the performance during he regulatory compliance period depends
essentially solely on the Alloy 22 where the current data bases, by many
people\'s thinking, very small and fragile, and the ultimate long-term
performance is genuinely unknowable. Now, you can make some good
projections or estimates of whether or not that film is going to stay
stable, but becomes a probablistic assessment. But it is ultimately
unknowable. And of course DOE\'s analyses found, and we all know, that
most of the performance factors are temperature dependent, but the
performance was found not to be temperature dependent.

There may be a reason for that in that the temperatures spike is
relatively a short duration. And this gets to this next point, that the
analyses imply within this framework of assumptions and the like, that
either the high temperature has no apparent effect and the temperature
dependence has no apparent effect that\'s lasting, or they have no
persistent effects throughout the operation and the life time of the
repository. But you can\'t tell from the analyses, as we were able to
interpret the contents.

We\'re all familiar with the use of one-off analyses and the Board\'s
suggestions of one-on analyses. I have a suggestion relative to that.
Way back in 1988 the site characterization plan\--a lot of you may still
have been in school at the time\--the basis for expectations of
performance of repository at Yucca Mountain was that the mountain would
be fantastic and the NRC\'s requirements for waste package life time
were 300 to 1000 years. And I remember in a senate hearing giving
perspective on that by saying that if you had placed the package during
the battle of Hastings, it would still be intact. It\'s some idea what a
thousand years was at the time.

Well, if you went back at this point and used the 1000-year package,
which is a simple stainless package just to get the thing in a hole in
the floor, and what we know about the mountain today, how would that
come out? Going back to the basis of the SCP. I don\'t know. It\'s an
interesting interpretation of this whole question of natural versus
engineer barriers, and what the role and capacity of the natural
barriers is.

Well, again, hot and cold repositories have not been evaluated in
detail, and they pose of course different problems. If you have a hot
one you may have significant coupled effects. They may be short in
duration. They may be not lasting in duration. But they should be
characterized, and that\'s a big unknown, as we all know. If you have a
cold repository you may have to have a big footprint. You may have to
know more about a larger piece of the geology in order to have a
realistic assessment. Those kinds of details we didn\'t find in our
reviews.

And then I think the last goes without saying. At the time that this was
done there had not been comprehensive reviews. The IAEA/NEA team was
under way. The waste package people were doing their thing\--still
don\'t have their final report, but there had not been this kind of
comprehensive review which the elements of these analyses suggests
should be done in order to have confidence that they represent the
repository system, or at least you understand what was done with them to
represent repository system.

So that\'s a brief summary of our effort, and there is a comprehensive
report available if Clark County is willing to distribute it. I\'d be
glad to answer any questions.

WONG: Thank you, Dr. Bartlett. Questions from the

Board? Dr. Parizek.

PARIZEK: Parizek, Board. You\'ve given us a good look at the problems,
and a lot of us who have reviewed these documents and all\--

BARTLETT: It\'s not all new, obviously.

PARIZEK: Well, I mean struggling through the whole process, but your
bottom line or the bottom line of your review may not be too clear, and
I was\--can you conclude from all of that that the site is not suitable,
the geology is not suitable, the canister is not suitable, or is
suitable? Or you\'re suspending judgement, just showing the trouble you
had, trying to arrive at a conclusion?

BARTLETT: I would have to suspend judgement based on this information as
it was presented. Trying to do a detailed technical audit, so to speak,
of the technical work that was done to provide a TSPA as a basis for a
finding. The suite of documents with a lot more manpower than we had
available could yield that information, but it would take a lot more. It
is not very clear and crystalline in the information provided directly
as a basis for the preliminary site suitability evaluation. The results
are clear. Where they came from, how they came out of that enormous
effort, we had just had a terrible time working out from this suite of
documents.

PARIZEK: So your recommendation could be what then? To clean it up?

BARTLETT: Yes. Yes. To essentially do the kind of review that the
IAEA/NEA did. But on the supplemental, or whatever it turns out to be,
the actual TSPA methodology and assumptions that are used to support a
recommendation should it be forthcoming to the President.

PARIZEK: And then a summary document, perhaps that integrates all of
this\--

BARTLETT: Yes.

PARIZEK: \--is growing faster than you can\--

BARTLETT: I think it\'s all there. You just can\'t find it very readily.
As I said, I traced through this business with cladding performance
because I had done it before. And I went to five different documents and
I still couldn\'t pull it together the same way that I was able to do
with the VA.

PARIZEK: Yeah. One last question. The number of people involved in the
process, I mean to give an idea of the level of effort, I mean one
person would die trying to do several\--

BARTLETT: With the equivalent of one man-year, roughly.

PARIZEK: Yeah. I mean but a team of people from your- BARTLETT: Several
people, yes, reviewing the various elements with relatively expert
knowledge.

WONG: Dr. Bullen?

BULLEN: Bullen, Board. Actually, you touched upon a couple of issues
that the Board has mentioned previously. The first of which is
traceability and the ability to take a look at the documentation and
figure out where the data are that are drawn upon and the assumptions
made. And secondly, that the issue of transparency or the ability of the
project as a whole to not only sell it to the technical review board and
to sell it to Congress or just sell it to the President. But to
basically put together a presentation that\'s lucid and understandable
by the general public. And I think I remember five years ago saying that
my, at that time 13-year-old daughter, should be able to read this and
understand it. Now, I guess the question that I have, in your overview
document would it be helpful if a simple explanation of the
uncertainties and the bounds of performance were presented, and
comparing that performance with the regulatory standard and laying it
out in a simple term? Do you think that would be sufficient, or what are
your suggestions I guess would be the\--for the type of presentation
that would be understandable not only to the technical reader, but to
the general public, because I think that\'s kind of the bend that
you\'re looking for.

BARTLETT: Well, I think they are very different. And I would underline
the fact that the documents are beautifully written in terms of what
they present. The top level documents, these public, or semi-public
documents, are clearly descriptive of what was done. What is not there
is why it was done, and the traceability to the technical foundation for
it. Ultimately the information is in that suite of documents is under
the AMRs. That\'s really where it is. 2000 of the\--somehow you\'ve got
to distill all this information if it\'s acceptable to Justice Fry
(phonetic). Here is what we did in an attempt, in general terms, to say
why. It would be different, and I don\'t think any of that, frankly,
would be suitable to the Board. It\'s just missing that kind of detail.
The kind of detail\--we were trying to (inaudible) as a surrogate of the
Board and found them very difficult.

BULLEN: Welcome to the club.

WONG: Dr. Craig?

CRAIG: Yeah. I actually heard you raise two types of questions. One is
the one that we\'ve been talking about for the last couple of questions,
which has to do with the basic posture is the information is probably
there, but it\'s very hard to get at. And that certainly is a problem. I
think no one, I don\'t see how anybody could legitimately argue with
that assertion. But there was another assertion that you made, and I
wrote it down almost as a quotation. Many assumptions are extreme and
are not related to data or to realism, and they are not explained or
justified. That suggests that important ideas are not in fact in the
documents, no matter how much re-writing you do. I\'d like to hear
your\--that type of issue.

BARTLETT: That\'s, I think an astute observation. I cannot find why
there were assumptions about\--why there were assumptions concerning
some of the factors, the performance factors. I couldn\'t find, you
know, one man-year\'s effort of review. They could very well be done in
the underlying technical documents which actually were unavailable for
public review. And certainly, there is nothing on the web site now in
that arena. But it wasn\'t those kinds of the bases of assumptions, some
of the really critical ones. For example, in the supplemental TSPA
there\'s just a brand new approach to cladding performance in comparison
with the VA. Where that came from I simply couldn\'t find. There\'s
assumptions\--it was very simple in the VA. 1.25 percent is going to
fail, bingo. That in itself had no basis in reality when you look at the
fact that the data bank says

.1 percent have historically failed. So here you have from .1 to 1.25
with no basis back in the VA and now one you can\'t find in the suite of
documents that have come forth since the VA.

WONG: Dr. Sagüés?

SAGüéS: Thank you. You make a statement here in this summary of the
principal findings and thus in the first transparency that the TSPA
results for the unitary compliance period depends solely on Alloy 22
performance. Now, I think the project has made the argument that if you
work with severe, with distress packages like with 300 centimeter square
holes and so on, the performance still

is\--I mean it\'s degraded compared with what would happen if the
packages were not distressed, but it\'s not so severely degraded that it
would begin to get very close to not to be in compliance. So when you
say it depends solely on Alloy 22 performance during that period is that
(inaudible) or do you really mean\--

BARTLETT: No. It\'s very nearly solely. In January, 1999, the month
after the VA was published, at one of your meetings, DOE presented a bar
chart version of the contributions of the principal performance features
of the repository. And it was done sort of a perspective, and it was a
log chart, so it\'s very hard to be precise. But you could estimate
that, in essence, that chart showed that there were 903 elements of
performance. 900 of them were the Alloy 22. And you could estimate that
the UZ had .02, and the SC had .05, or something like that. But it was
very, very small. And since then the design has evolved even more
because now the Alloy 22 is on the outside. So if you use whatever the
basis was then to extrapolate from 903 to whatever it is now, or the
same sort of thing, you would find basically, especially under the
TSPA-SR, that Alloy 22 is it. And the current strategy is to rely on
that.

Now, that was modified in the supplemental. As I said with our limited
manpower I could not trace the basis for the modification except to say
there\'s going to be weld failures, or truss corrosion cracking or
something.

SAGüéS: Okay, so but this statement didn\'t refer, maybe a little bit
earlier to the TSPA/VA\--

BARTLETT: Yes.

SAGÜéS: And one last thing. You say that in the same bullet here that
depends solely on Alloy 22 performance for which the current database is
small and fragile, and the long-term performance is unknowable. Now,
unknowable is a very strong term. What do you mean by unknowable? That
it could never be known, it is impossible\--completely impossible to
predict, but of course, you know, if we\'re talking about forecasting
tens of thousands of years\--

BARTLETT: Well, that\'s exactly the point. I think you\'ve made the
point yourself many times in these meetings about whether or not you can
expect the film to be stable. The waste package task force or that
expert group found three things that could go wrong. And they simply
say, we don\'t know whether they will or not from either\--any one of
them or whatever. And I think that is not for the 10,000 years, that\'s
not an inaccurate statement. It\'s unknowable. You can say with a very
high probability, perhaps, if you\'ve got a better database, that it\'s
very likely that in fact it will perform as expected. But for 10,000
years?

SAGüéS: Sure. That goes to just about anything in the repository, right?

BARTLETT: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

SAGüéS: Yeah, but that\'s something that I guess the project has never
questioned?

BARTLETT: No. One of the things for example, I noticed way back when
there\'s\--I mentioned tectonics. In that 10,000 year time frame, or
what is it? I forget which time frame, but the thing, the entire
repository, the entire structure will translate about a mile on the
surface of the earth. And so are there differential translations in
terms of depth and effects on formations? I mean these kinds of things I
put in the category of unknowable. And relevant\--you can attach
probabilities, but unknowable.

COHON: Could I just follow up one?

WONG: Go ahead, Dr. Cohon.

COHON: Just to follow up on both aspects of Alberto\'s question,
starting with the latter, which is really I think a semantic issue. I
don\'t think anybody disagrees with you, but\--well, maybe. Of course,
none of this is knowable in advance. But it\'s all knowable in
retrospect. I mean it\'s knowable.

BARTLETT: Yeah, it is knowable. It\'s an issue of when you know it.

COHON: Right. Okay. On the first part, which I think is more important,
your observation about the total reliance on the waste package, I think
looking at it from the context of the supplemental TSPA, I think that
maybe a more complete statement\--it doesn\'t really challenge what
you\'re saying, but a more complete statement would be the DOE estimates
of performance for the waste package are so robust that it doesn\'t
matter what else happens.

BARTLETT: That\'s one way of putting it.

COHON: However, I mean in the USCS discussion we had earlier, shows
that, you know, if you put this stuff in with no package whatsoever,
there would still be some delay in the waste appearing at the accessible
environment, whether it would be in compliance\--

BARTLETT: Compliance is another question. That\'s right.

COHON: Right. So compliance very much seems to be dependent on Alloy 22,
but it\'s not the only\--

BARTLETT: Yeah. DOE has built a marvelous margin to compliance with the
present concept. I would estimate it\'s only a factor of a million. In
reality\--but your letter has a wonderful sentence in it about
compliance ain\'t necessarily understanding what the system is doing.
And yeah, it\'s a fantastic machine for compliance. No question about
it.

WONG: Any further questions from the Board?

Thank you very much, Mr. Bartlett.

Our next speaker will be Dr. John Garrick who currently is the Chairman
of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, or former Chairman of the
Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, and their findings in terms of
review of the PA. And I might add that I commend Dr. Garrick because he
is still wearing his tie.

GARRICK: And I\'ll explain why. I packed the damn thing and I\'m
stubborn. And besides which, it\'s a better thing to hang the mike on.
Thank you. Thank you very much.

I\'m pleased to be here, but the only other time I\'ve presented
anything to the Board was shortly after it was formed and it was not in
the context of being on the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. I was
an independent, and I was brought in to talk about the subject of human
intrusion. And I\'m glad that that\'s not on the agenda today.

I\'d like to acknowledge\--I want to recognize Dr. Andy Campbell. We
have an agreement. I\'ll make the presentation, he\'ll answer the
questions. So I feel pretty relaxed.

What I would like to do is talk to you a little bit about what the
committee did here. And I think I\'m probably the second person that\'s
here because of a letter. We wrote a letter that was reasonably critical
of the TSPA-SR. You\'ve heard a great deal about the TSPA-SR and what\'s
right and wrong about it. And I\'ll try not to just repeat what has been
said. But this was in the context of a much broader question that we
were trying to address. And that was the question of the adequacy of the
NRC\'s issue resolution process.

This is the process by which the NRC will make a decision as to whether
or not sufficient information exists to enable them to docket a license
application for Yucca Mountain. So that was the principal assignment
that the committee took on. And the committee is a very small committee.
There are only four of us. And so we adopted a vertical slice strategy.
And the vertical slice that was assigned to me had to do with the
TSPA-SR and the NRC\'s activities associated with performance
assessment.

In the process we also, in order to assess our given opinion or our
judgement about the capability of the NRC to reach a conclusion relative
to sufficiency, we had to look at the DOE documents. And of course,
that\'s a major, major, major task. As a result of our vertical slice
effort we issued a number of reports. In fact there\'s a couple more
that will be added that are added to this. And one I see circulating
around here today on conservatism that just came out a week or so ago.
But we issued a report on high level waste chemistry issues. One of the
vertical slices was on that. We issued a letter on the issue resolution
process itself. That was a fairly global challenge. And in a sense
contained the performance assessment component. But because of its
rather importance in the whole decision making process, we chose to
issue a separate letter on the total system performance assessment site
recommendation, and I was the lead member for that activity.

The conclusions that we came up with with respect to the resolution
process are consistent with the NRC staff\'s sufficiency comments. That
is to say we focused on some rather narrow issues, and even though they
had some rather critical aspects to them, we did not find ourselves out
of position with the Commission staff with respect to what they were
saying about the progress that had been made in establishing
sufficiency.

We focused on ways to improve the TSPA before the license application.
The strategy that we attempted to take on the vertical slice was to see
if we couldn\'t pretty much start with what we thought were the
principal drivers of the risk and peel the onion back from that on the
basis that, while there is still some debate going on, that there may be
other radionuclides making a greater contribution than the three or four
that have been identified, radionuclides such as maybe chlorine or maybe
protactinium or one or two others, cesium perhaps. But if we can take
the position that we\'re reasonably confident that the risk of this
repository is going to be principally driven by neptunium, tecnicium,
iodine, then we\'re\--and colloids of plutonium, then it seemed to us
that one of the things that would provide focus to the vertical slice
would be to concentrate on those radionuclides and back our way into the
analysis.

And the other thing that was very important in this was that our
committee has been challenging the NRC and the NCR staff for many years
to move more aggressively with respect to the risk informed regulatory
practice. There is a great deal of talk, it\'s now time in the judgement
of the committee to see how well we are able to walk that talk. And so
given the assignment was mine, it\'s quite understandable that I would
put a lot of attention on just how risk oriented, risk analysis oriented
was a performance assessment.

We\'ve heard a great deal about these other issues of transparency,
traceability, and defensibility of the results, and I\'ll come back to
those a little bit.

Now, one thing I should say is that the committee has been a very strong
proponent of the use of probablistic performance assessment. Our total
system performance assessment. But we have some conditions under which
we are great believers in this. Now, my own personal thing, and I will
not speak in behalf of the committee in that regard, is based on a much
broader view of the development and application of risk assessment than
with respect to the waste field. I\'ve led a team that did the early
large scope risk assessments on about half of the nuclear power plants
in the U. S. and about 20 to 25 foreign reactors, and I think that, as
much as anything else, had contributed to my optimism about the utility
of this particular tool. I think the main thing that I liked about it,
not being trained to be a risk analyst in the first place, I was trained
in physics and nuclear engineering. I was in criticality and neutron
transport to begin with. But what attracted me to this was a number of
things. And a lot of those things have been confirmed by that experience
base. But one of the things I liked most about it, it deals with the
question of \"so what\". One activity you find if you serve on panels
and committees and review boards is that it is very difficult to keep
things organized, focused and converging. The risk assessment helps that
process. But it requires some things. One of the things it requires is
agreement on what the performance measures are.

What is it that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Environmental
Protection Agency, the agencies that are involved in this, what is it
that they want to bank on to characterize the risk of their facility?
Now, in this case it\'s pretty much prescribed to radiation standard and
it\'s the likelihood of being able to comply with that standard in
basically three areas. The overall risk associated with the repository,
a stylized human intrusion assessment, and the ground water standard.

The other thing that we have to have for a risk assessment to have
credibility, and much has been made of this already, is that the
analyses models must be realistic and reasonable within the limits of
the evidence. And the DOE themselves in the TSPA-SR make this assertion.
So they are very much aware of the fact that the protocol, if you wish,
for risk assessment is not that you build a probability density function
around the bounding value or that you build a probability function
around the conservative assumption and then propagate that and say
you\'ve calculated the risk, but rather to, as somebody said earlier, I
guess it was John, give it your best shot. We want to know what the
experts really think the risk is. And the reason we want that is we want
a calibration. We want the best people that know how to do that to do it
first and then give us a reference line against which the regulators,
the public, or anybody else can be as conservative as they want to be.
But at least now they\'ve got something to be conservative against.

Results including uncertainties are quantified. Quantification is a big
part of my interest in this discipline and what the committee has been
talking about. I\'ve been impressed with the use of the word evidence
that I\'ve seen in the NWTRB documents. We have used this word many
times for a long time, and we like to characterize analysis as
having\--as there being two types: Evidence-based and assumption-based.
And you much prefer an evidence-based analysis.

Now, here is what we found out during our vertical-slice. First, in the
over-arching conclusion is that it\'s not a risk assessment. It\'s
basically a compliance assessment. It is focused very much on the
standards, but it\'s not telling us what the risk is. The modeling as we
were able to determine in our rather abbreviated investigation of
these\--this massive amount of material, the assumptions were quite
inconsistent. There were some assumptions that were clearly very
conservative, some assumptions that were pretty realistic and some
assumptions where there\'s chances they were non-conservative. And so it
was a mix of conservative and non-conservative elements and that\'s a
violation, if you wish, of why a quantitative risk assessment was
invented. And there are many examples. For example, in working this out
and consulting my colleagues in the area of coupled processed for
example, we were able to find that these processes at the process level
were treated quite independently, but somehow during the abstraction
process they were combined. And we didn\'t know and couldn\'t quite
figure out just how that combination took place.

With respect to the source term, we had lots of questions about the
assumptions having to do with the in-package condition being a water
saturated condition for all of the packages. And the impact that would
have on the mobilization of the waste, when there is no evidence that
would really support that kind of an assumption. The diffusivity
transport model, it too contained a great number of assumptions and
conditions that gave us some concern with respect to the realistic and
reasonable approach. Such as the assumptions having to do with the
liquid film and the assumptions having to do with the coefficients, the
diffusion coefficients.

There were a number of other things. This business of clad failure. The
unzipping of fuel cladding. Obviously, the team was not very basion, or
I don\'t think they would have made the assumption they made about the
fuel cladding unzipping, because there\'s thousands and thousands of
assembly years of experience in storing this fuel. And so here was a
case where an assumption replaced evidence that actually existed. And
then the whole business that we\'ve heard quite a bit about, and I could
go on, on solubilities. In some cases the analysis was driven by
solubilities that were assumed to be constant and then you would find
reference in the document that the reason there was no uncertainty with
the solubility is because it was assumed to be constant. Well, that\'s
not risk assessment. So these are the kinds of things that we worried
about. So we thought that the analysis was, for the most part very
assumption-based. Some of the assumptions were very difficult to, in
themselves, be rationalized with respect to their supporting evidence.

And this most important thing of the margin of safety not revealed,
therefore was denied the reader. And then I think that while everything
else I said here was clearly a committee kind of finding, I had been
hounding on this issue for 10 years of a simplified model. And I think
that when you talk about a situation where you have some 250 to 300
radionuclides of the fission product for variety, and several dozen
radionuclides of the actontinite variety, and the analysis is pretty
convincing that only a very few drive the risk, it seems to me that
right off you have a wonderful opportunity for building some very nice
physics-based, simplified models. And I think if they did that, the kind
of things that John Bartlett talked about would be overcome. So what was
our conclusion? Well, conclusion is very simple. It\'s a very handsome
piece of work in the context of looking at it from a point of view of
being in compliance with a 10,000-year compliance period. But it does
not answer the question, what is the risk? And I\'ve heard a lot about
people, including this Board, not wanting to rely only on the risk
assessment as a basis for making a decision. Well, clearly, you can\'t
rely only on a risk assessment. Decision making is based on three broad
categories of attributes: Costs, risks and benefits. The risk is one of
them. But on the other hand, if you are talking about risk and you are
asking that additional analysis be done outside the risk assessment and
that analysis turns out to influence the risk, then by definition it has
to be part of the risk assessment. And this is an area where there seems
to be a tremendous amount of confusion and miscommunication. I think the
model complexity inhibits confidence in the results. We\'ve said that.
And I think the linkage between the assumption set and supporting
evidence lacks the transparency that we are all looking for. So those
were our fundamental conclusions. Now, what I didn\'t present today was
what we had to say about the NRC and their approach in the TPA world.
But I assumed that the main interest here was DOE. So what\'s out
recommendations? Well, of course, what you haven\'t done, we recommend
be done. And most important is to implement the basic tenet of risk
assessment. Realistic and reasonable results, scientific basis for
quantifying margins of safety.

Now, the risk assessment business is going through a period of maturing
and trying to find its way, but one of the ways it is finding is that
when we talk about a risk assessment, particularly a quantitative risk
assessment, we are talking about realism. And we are talking about
reasonableness and we are talking about quantifying the uncertainties.
I\'ve always had the feeling that if there is one thing we should know,
it\'s what we don\'t know. And it\'s sometimes very difficult for us to
admit to that. But we need to do that. And especially on projects that
have as much public impact as this one does.

We recommend that we improve the traceability between the evidence and
the risk-informed results. We did the same thing that John Bartlett did.
We tried to at each way in this backward thread that we were taking,
find out what the assumptions were that were providing the boundary
conditions for the analysis, and what the supporting evidence for that
were as well.

I do still think that the abstraction of a simplified basic physics
model would serve the project immensely. And the only reason I say this
is not, again, out of an abstract thought about what we\'d like to have,
but it has been an enormous benefit in the reactor field. In the reactor
field we have something we call very often a dominant sequence model.
And these dominant sequence models now have been computerized and have
been put in monitors in the plant and so that they now have a kind of a
first order or zero order of proximation of what the condition of the
plant is in terms of risk when a particular system is taken off line.
It\'s something to think about. And of course, in my interpretation of
what a risk assessment is, it\'s a structured set of scenarios. And
if\--now in the case of the facilities you end up with millions of
scenarios, but it also turns out that a relatively and manageable few
scenarios tend to dominate the risk. And if you somehow characterize
those in the form of a model it\'s amazing what people will do with that
model and what opportunities exist for communicating what this whole
business, what otherwise looks like to be a very complex exercise is all
about. So what\'s the follow up here? Well, we haven\'t done a review of
the supplemental science and performance analysis. This is what I guess
John Bartlett was calling the S-TSPA. But we have read it and we\'ve
looked at it and we have found that what we see there, we like, in large
measure. And even without\--before we wrote our letter, it was clear
that this was well along the way and that the DOE had recognized some of
the shortcomings of their TSPA and were working on it.

There\'s other documents. There is the updated letter report that we\'ve
heard about today. And most of the documents are giving us added
confidence that the criticisms of our September 18th letter are being
addressed.

So with that I think I will stop and ask for questions.

WONG: Questions from the Board. Dr. Cohon?

COHON: I\'d like to ask you a question that I will admit up front I
would refuse to answer.

GARRICK: Okay. I get a lot of those.

COHON: Maybe I\'ll get lucky. Based on your assessment of TSPA and the
tactical basis that DOE has assembled, do you think they were ready to
make a site recommendation?

GARRICK: You\'re right.

COHON: Well, you can refuse to answer it, too.

GARRICK: No, I don\'t refuse to answer it.

COHON: Good.

GARRICK: I think that what I\'m talking about primarily is I\'m
measuring the TSPA as\--in terms of what I see as a prescription for a
rational risk assessment, assessment of the risks. And whether or not
when they, if they did everything that the committee wanted them to do,
how that would change things with respect to the site recommendation. I
suspect in fact it may not change them qualitatively but quantitatively.
But I think that some aspects of it would be changed dramatically, and
that is the confidence that people have in the risk assessment. So I
think the only finding that we feel is important right now is whether or
not we have seen enough\--and I\'m not NRC. We\'re an independent
advisory body. But let me characterize it that way\--whether or not we
think we can have enough information to file, to enable us to file a
license application and we\'re reasonably optimistic about that.

WONG: Dr. Knopman?

KNOPMAN: Knopman, Board. Here is another one, John, you don\'t have to
answer. The NRC staff has developed its own TSPA as we understand it.

GARRICK: Right.

KNOPMAN: Would you venture into some characterization of how much closer
they come to a risk informed realistic assessment as compared to DOE\'s?

GARRICK: Well, I think the short answer to that is that we\'ve been
pounding on them for a couple, three years and I think Tim McCartin is
here in the room, and he probably is worried to death about what I\'m
going to say, but I think they clearly understand what we are talking
about and the activities that they are engaged in and as they update the
TPA, are certainly in the direction that we\'ve been advising them on,
so I\'m encouraged by it. One thing you have to appreciate is that their
approach to the TPA has to be different. Their approach is not so much
to do with independent performance assessment, although that\'s part of
it. Their approach is more to develop a model that will allow them to
verify and review, and they\'ve recognized that. And I think that as a
result of that they are able to take some efficiencies that they
wouldn\'t otherwise take if they were really trying to develop a
competitive TSPA.

WONG: Dr. Bullen?

BULLEN: Bullen, Board. Actually, in continuing the line of embarrassing
questions, I thought maybe I would ask you that, given that it\'s not a
risk-informed TSPA, do you feel that it\'s an adequate compliance-based
TSPA, and is that not necessary or sufficient for a site recommendation
that we meet compliance so why should we not go forward?

GARRICK: Well, when I had a face-off with the Chairman of the NRC on
this same subject, that\'s kind of the question he posed as well. And in
the context of the regulations I think it\'s a reasonable compliance
performance assessment at this stage. I think even there there\'s
shortcomings. But at the same time, we have taken the opportunity to
push the NRC a little bit on the basis that they are committed. They are
committed to risk-informed regulatory practice. And where it\'s\--we
have not always been pleased with the progress, and we\'ve not always
been pleased with the staff\'s actions in that regard. And so this was
an opportunity for us to communicate against something very specific as
to what we mean by that.

WONG: Dr. Sagüés?

SAGÜÉS: It\'s getting to be late day\--

GARRICK: Yes, it is.

SAGüéS: \--but I enjoy very much the approach that you took for your
presentation and then I was looking at your CV here and a little bit of
your background.

GARRICK: Do you see a proper match-up there?

SAGüéS: Yeah. In about say 500 years or a thousand years or maybe 3000
years, there is not going to be an NRC, and there\'s not going to be a
lot of the institutions that we are living with right now, and at the
whole overview, the questions that you hear, the approach to the reports
is heavily, heavily regulations oriented, and is heavily oriented
towards the overall culture that exists around the regulatory agencies
that are supposed to grant the permit, etcetera. Now, none of that is
going to make any\--is going to have any immediate relevance in the far
future for which this repository is being contemplated. Now, do you
think that maybe the overall approach is too much regulations oriented,
too much institution oriented? Shouldn\'t it be viewed as an issue of
public health or something like that instead of this, this very
highly-focused view that we\'re using right now?

GARRICK: Well, I consider myself a systems person. And I like what you
are leading to. If I had my way, there wouldn\'t be safety goals. There
wouldn\'t be any of that. What there would be would be a very
comprehensive Manhattan project, Apollo Project effort to quantify the
various energy cycles, the hydrogen cycle, the uranium cycle, the fossil
cycles. And to let the results of that analysis performed in the context
of a decision analysis framework, speak for itself and the citizens vote
accordingly. That\'s how I would do it if I had my way, because I have a
feeling that if we really did that the right way, and recognized that
energy is not something that you can solve in four and five\--let\'s
see, two, four and six year increments coinciding with the election
intervals, but is something that has to be done a 50, 100-year horizon.
And I think that\'s what is really missing. And so I think the broader
issue of health and these\--and this also happens to be one of the
things I really like about the risk assessment technol\--discipline. It
is not a compliance thing. It\'s asking one very simple question, and
that is, what is the risk? And my colleague and I formalized this a
little bit in the first paper of the risk analysis journal in 1981 to
put forth a definition of risk. And that\'s the three questions that are
on this handout you had, namely, when you ask the question, what is
risk, you\'re really asking three questions: What can go wrong, how
likely is it and what are the consequences? And the what can go wrong
component of the question is best answered by a series of scenarios,
including a category that might characterize the scenarios you can\'t
think of. You at least have to account for them. So I\'m very much a
student and a believer in this process of elevating this as high as you
can. I agree with you. I think that I\'m involved in something called
generation-four planning. This is the next generation of nuclear
facilities, nuclear reactors. And I think some of the things that are
being done there are a very creative, and they are finally realizing
that this is a much broader issue than a nuclear reactor. And I\'m
hopeful that it will trigger some of the very thought processes that
your question stimulates.

WONG: Okay, I think we\'re out of time. Thank you, Dr. Garrick.

GARRICK: Thank you.

WONG: I turn the meeting back to Chairman Cohon, and remind everybody
that this session will continue tomorrow morning with a presentation by
Dr. Tonis Papp.

COHON: Thank you. Thank you, Jeff, for your fine job of chairing the
session.

We have eight people who have signed up to comment at this time. I want
to just go down the list and seek confirmation. Parvis Montazer? Jacob
Paz, are you still here? Oh, okay. He\'s busy. Sally Devlin, Bob
Williams, Judy Triechel, Ruth Widenheimer. I saw her. That\'s it, it\'s
seven, not eight. And then a name, I apologize, I can\'t read it. Ms.
Widenheimer, I haven\'t called you up yet. I was just confirming you
were\--

WIDENHEIMER: Well, I was just going to say I have some children with me.

COHON: That\'s correct. All right. Well, we\'re ready. The best I can do
with the last name is something like Miranda, Miran. It starts with an
M. Who signed up to comment but they\'ve not heard their name called.
Anybody? Okay. We\'re down to six.

This will be the ground rules, okay? I\'m not going to cut you off, but
at five minutes\--please listen up. In five minutes I\'m going to raise
my hand. And then every minute after that I\'ll raise my hand. Just to
let you know that I\'m still here and that we all want to get home at a
decent time. So with that, let me start with the first one up. Parvis.
And if you could state your name again for the record.

MONTAZER: Can I use the\--

COHON: Of course. Do we still have the portable mike out? You want to
bring it back up?

MONTAZER: My name is Parvis Montazer. I\'m reporting on behalf of my
county. I just wanted to give you a quick progress report on the
preliminary evaluation of a naturally ventilator repository, and again I
want to emphasize that this is a progress report and everything I\'m
talking about is preliminary.

I was supposed to give a full presentation and unfortunately, because of
health reasons, I lost about a month worth of work in September so we
have a report that is prepared, a preliminary report. It\'s scheduled to
be released in\--next month, early next month, February. And the final
report is scheduled to be released in May before the next NWTRB meeting,
we hope we\'re going to have the opportunity to present a full
presentation at that time.

Of course, we\'re planning prior to presentation to the NWTRB present
our\--my county\'s viewpoint and suggestions to DOE. We have not had
that chance this go-around and mainly because most of my planning has
been in the past two or three weeks, so we\'ll give the whole report and
presentation by May for everybody\'s benefit.

Our objective of the permanently-ventilated repository has always been,
since 1995, my county has been studying this concept. Then to provide a
cool and dry repository. In this particular case we\'re hoping to
provide a way of allowing safe closure of the repository. Previous
ventilation, actually ventilated repository was considering and
continues to open a repository, which was not very well accepted. The
acreage requirement is going to be met by reducing the temperature and
of course, because of all of that the uncertainty will be reduced
significantly as everybody has talked about all day today.

The basic bottom line system is, there will be a number of relatively
large diameter area and have meteor diameter intake shafts, or I\'m
sorry, the drifts. And these will be eventually or at some certain point
in time depending on the design situation, will be filled with rubble.
Whether they can be constructed with rubble, the mining techniques
themselves, those are\--we\'re leaving that kind of aside. Basically all
of these at some point in time will be filled with rubble, and these red
tubes here indicate that basically the waste emplacement boreholes where
the waste is going to be. In this conceptual design the waste more or
less is going to be isolated from the ventilation system. Therefore, we
believe that it will provide a repository that can be closed as well as
providing a temperature relief.

In a simple cross section in these will be the ventilation drifts so
that it will be eventually filled. And these will be in this case, this
2.5 meter diameter, we\'ve taken as an initial and it\'s mainly to
increase the stability, but it\'s not cast in stone and other aspects of
the DOE design may change that.

This is a little bit of 3-D conceptualization of the same thing. There
are added help for removing heat from the canisters. These are the
emplacement boreholes, the canisters will be\--are very conductive. They
are mostly metal, and therefore we can take advantage of that in using
heat sinks, carry part of that heat to the ventilation system, and the
ventilation system can be provided with additional heat sink to improve
the heat transfer between the rock and the air screen that is going
through these ventilation systems that are going to be eventually filled
with rubble.

At a cross-section of the western part of Yucca Mountain just
pictorially I wanted to show how the overall systems would work. This
will be ventilation. Air will be coming through this rubble filled hose
and will be distributed both east, in the east/west direction as well as
north/south direction by these north-south drifts. And will be taken up
by a shaft. Again, all of these are going to be filled eventually with
rubble. And in order to increase the elevation difference, we\'re
proposing to put a chimney up there basically on the west side. The
important thing in this whole concept is not to penetrate the PTN, and
for two reasons. Number one, PTN is a protective system for hydrologic
system. Number two is that PTN is not a very good stable competent lock
to support an open\--even if it is filled with rubble and will affect
the longevity of the natural ventilation system.

I want to give you just a simple example where I\'ve used about 250
years of pre-closure ventilation, which in this case I\'m assuming that
it\'s going to remove most of the heat. We balanced this with the
previous simulations and we\'re going to verify that in this process
with a 3-D simulation, like I said. And this is basically what DOE has
presented in the PVR, except that in this case I\'m using one canister.
Basically this is half the loading of the fully loaded system.

The results are, these are again preliminary results. The\--I have a
profile along a ventilation shaft, I\'m sorry, ventilation drift and
each one of these ventilations showed are in between the two waste
emplacement boreholes. This is the ventilation, the temperature remains
at about 20 degrees C. And in this particular case I\'m putting 18
degree C air system through the ventilation system. And this is across
the borehole. The important thing is that about 20 meters above and
below the temperatures maintained after about 720, 725 years
is\--remains at 35 degrees. I have not run this simulation past 725
year, because I don\'t believe it\'s going to be much different than
this.

This is a result of the same simulation in the cross-section. Basically
these hot spots are the waste emplacement boreholes, and the blue spots
are the drifts. And again we\'re going from 200 years. I\'m just showing
you the 200, 500 and some are 25 years after the original, initial
installation of the borehole emplacement system.

This basically in summary we have tentatively concluded that for the
cases that are considered for 50 percent heat load applied after 250
years of pre-closure period, the host rock temperatures can be kept
below 60 degrees. Actually this is at the repository level. The area
requirement may be reduced significantly from DOE\'s. In this particular
case I calculated about 500 acres requirements. If you remember the HTOM
requires about 1100 acres, so this is less than half of the HTOM
requirement. And the only drawback in this is that we need ventilation
drifts spaced about 30 meters apart. That means that we need about 50 of
those ventilation drifts going in the east/west direction. That\'s a
construction issue and it is not necessarily overwhelming considering
what is already planned, and considered. And we\'re working towards
answering some of the questions that have been risen as far as our
assumptions, etcetera, are concerned. And these are basically whether
direct natural ventilation of the waste emplacement before we close the
repository, basically if that assumption is correct, meaning that can I
keep the heat load to basically nothing during the first 250 years? And
also we wanted to consider this as an alternative whether it\'s possible
to indefinitely ventilate the waste emplacement boreholes. In the
initial base line design we\'re planning after a certain period of time
to close those waste emplacement boreholes and that\'s when the heat
load starts going up.

Also we have not incorporated the fractures, the role of fractures in
the initial \'95, \'96 ventilation work. The practice played a major
role in this particular case that I have shown we are not considering
yet and I think that is going to add to the removal of heat
considerably. And also we have not considered additional north/south
drifts and how they might affect the temperature removal.

That\'s all I have and thank you for your patience.

COHON: Thank you, Parvis. He demonstrated a very useful technique. It\'s
called avoiding eye contact with the moderator of the public session.
You were good.

SPEAKER: (Inaudible) frantically.

COHON: Well done, Parvis. Thank you. And we do have the mike? Very good.
We have accompanying Mrs. Widenheimer a couple of young people for whom
hanging around for another 45 minutes to be very inconvenient. So I\'m
going to call on Mrs. Widenheimer now, and her one companion, or two,
depending on how many want to come up.

WIDENHEIMER: Well, we\'ve lost one.

COHON: Okay.

WIDENHEIMER: Could you identify yourself again, Mrs. Widenheimer for the
record.

WIDENHEIMER: Yes. My name is Ruth Widenheimer\--

COHON: Wait. Hang on. You need a mike. You can come over here where I am
or you could go back over there. You see that mike right there? Okay.

WIDENHEIMER: My name is Ruth Widenheimer, former school teacher, and
therefore I thought the best thing we could do\--you don\'t want to hear
me. I happen to get run over by two skateboards when I left earlier, and
I said to the two young lads here, would you like to come and talk to
the board. They said yes, they would. They went home and they both wrote
a speech, and I\'ve got one there. Maybe you can give him a hand and
he\'ll come up anyway. They wrote them out and here they are, and so I
present, and by the way, they are now on television at 7:00 o\'clock
tonight presenting their views along with the other skateboard kids.
That\'s Channel 41, our own television station, and I\'d like you to
listen to what they have to say. And they have not been coached. This is
Will and Shawn. Go ahead.

SHELDON: My name is Will Sheldon. The lady asked us if we\'d want to do
something about it and I said yeah. So I went home and I wrote a speech,
and I wrote, I think it\'s wrong what people want to do to Yucca
Mountain. I need to put\--they need to put this nuclear waste where no
one lives for at least on a 100 mile radius. Pahrump is like Las Vegas
when it was little. It has a lot of potential to grow, so if they decide
to store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain like planned, it will affect
the town majorly. In my thoughts I think if it does get stored here,
people will leave this town. The people in the community waste their
money on stuff to keep them safe so if something were to happen at Yucca
Mountain they\'d be okay. But if they didn\'t have to worry about Yucca
Mountain we could take the money and put it back into the community for
stuff that we need. For example, the movie theater is gone and us kids
don\'t have any skate park or any other recreations for us.

And I\'ve got one more thing to add. If they put nuclear waste in Yucca
Mountain that is a terrorist attack waiting to happen.

WIDENHEIMER: Thank you very much. I can\'t upstage the kids. They always
kind of beat you out at the polls, so I had probably one or two
questions to ask you or thoughts to deliver. I\'ve gone to your meetings
for about four or five years now and I\'ve heard a lot of the same
things, and a lot of the same uncertainties, and I think the whole thing
is a question of humanity. And so I\'d like to ask, seeing that I am 76
years old and I\'ve lived through all of this, I\'ve lived through the
country\'s storage of all this nuclear waste. It was necessary. We won a
few wars having it, etcetera. But we\'ve come to the point now where in
your own literature you say we have enough materials to store right now
for 1-3/4 Yucca Mountains. And that\'s the truth.

1-3/4? What are you going to do with the other 3/4 of the load. I\'ve
already, if you take the tour and you talk to some of the tour drivers,
they say, \"Oh, we\'re looking at that site right over there\", and they
point to a place about two or three miles up the road northwest of the
original Yucca Mountain between the two homes that could maybe again
catch fire again some day with\--or spew out the lava.

Anyway, the point is I am saying this only to say to you please try to
think of another approach. Don\'t put all your eggs in one basket. This
is a question of the survival of humanity, in my estimation, and the
quality of life. All you have to do is watch some of the nature programs
and you\'ll see how intertwined all the life is. And you\'ll look at it
and you count your blessings that you\'re alive today and that you can
suck another breath of air. Please think of other ways, put the money
out there and say to kids, \"Here\'s money. Come up with the ideas.\" If
you think money will get people to talk.

Anyway, good luck in your venture and we thank you all for coming here.
This is a very important task you\'ve taken on and I\'m sure it weighs
heavily on you shoulders. Thank you.

COHON: Thank you. And thank you, Will, for writing and reading your
statement. Jacob Paz. Dr. Paz. I believe we have a document from you,
yeah?

PAZ: My name is Dr. Jacob Paz. I was born Israel, make atomic
bombs\--and then by myself explode them at the Nevada test site. So I
presented myself self-employed. First of all I\'d like to thanks to the
Board for their good review and a comment which they make in their
presentation. I have certain uncertainty which I\'d like to share with
you, maybe through repetition, but very short and to the point. Yucca
Mountain, in my opinion, is not just a radioactive site. There is a very
good potential, probability of it to become a wrecker site, a mixed
waste site. This concern has been brought to the attention of EPA and
NRC and I\'ll just very briefly review it. EPA, when I raised the
question the Yucca Mountain site will become a resource recovery at site
as result of canister which the department of Energy plans to store.
Quote so quote, they gave the authority to regulate it to the state.
However, if you have requisite the law required you\'re going to do
visibility study, or remedial investigation. You have to locate to do it
now. Later it\'s going to be too late.

Second, there is all of the lawyers. A very serious legal question is
like if the Board would look into the matter potentially if it\'s a
requisite very clear in the regulations state that you cannot have a
requisite in a seismic active region, and or a hundred years of flood
zone. Progressively it has become a requisite when it\'s closure and
subsequently it will become a mixed waste site. Those issues need to be
addressed very clearly. There\'s an issue here where the dilution, which
issue by EPA is in compliance or not. It\'s not my point.

The other point which I want to mention is, first of all for after long
time of debating was they will look at Yucca Mountains, they agreed that
under consider to take the issue of complex mixtures. I will read only
two quotes. Fist of all it\'s paper by Shuzuki, study of mixed radiation
has progress, but was this the risk of environmental accident or space
radiation which is often composed of one or more two types. The action
of mixed radiation must be further investigated. We don\'t have
information this point of time.

Second, the most important part is human protection of human life and
the environment, and for some reason of not the effects of heavy metals
has not been fully addressed in the environmental and other documents.
If you have risk assessments and using probablistic risk you need data.
You don\'t have the data at this point of time on complex mixtures. I
hope I will change some of the people\'s position later on when it\'s
published and when we have the data. Other issue which is associated is
the migration of the rock and soil data. Heavy metals, when EPA
approached passed the bucket to NRC. NRC stated we don\'t have
regulation. I\'m not going to play. This type of force cannot be done.
It has to be slow. Who is responsible is the question. I have the
document. I will provide it.

Other issue which is extremely concern to me is the progression of the
Nevada Test Site risk assessment into Yucca Mountain. There is no
boundary. A very serious issue is in transportation. All the bridges,
and many of them the infrastructure in these are corroded and they are
potentially serious for accident.

Thank you. I just want to tell you I will also supply some of my
comments to the NRC and so on. Thank you.

COHON: Thank you, Dr. Paz. Next, Sally Devlin.

DEVLIN: Thank you, Dr. Cohon and Board. And there are a few people that
didn\'t get my report on transportation and I have it here, so\--but I
of course want to thank all of you for being the best Pahritzers
(phonetic) in Pahrump. And it has been a very, very long meeting and we
really welcome you. We\'re so glad to see you and I promise you no
cookies that will kill you.

I had several things to address on this. I just have to take
exception\--

SPEAKER: (Inaudible) closer to the mike.

DEVLIN: Oh, I\'m sorry. I just have to take exception with USGS and Mr.
Card (phonetic). Is he here?

SPEAKER: No.

DEVLIN: Well, anyway, I want this to go back to him. And the reason I\'m
saying it, he said our land here is worthless. Now, what earth science
worth his salt would say the land is worthless? Remember that Yucca
Mountain is part of the Bullfrog Range, and if you lived in Pahrump when
the mine was open, you would have had one heck of a party every time
they finished a million troy ounces of gold, and they wined and dined us
every year. And I went up for three years, so what is in Yucca Mountain.
What\'s in the cores you took out of Yucca Mountain? How much gold is
there, Russ? Our land is not worthless. Tell him I said so.

And I\'m just delighted to meet John Bartlett and John Garrick. And the
reason I say that is, obviously they\'ve been in sales because they used
the terminology that I used for over 30 years. Your costs, risks and
benefits. Now, the question is can we afford this, to load it up for 36
years and the second repository for another 36 years or more? That\'s
number one. And what about the DOD stuff? And you know I will never
trust anybody with DOD classified stuff, Abe. Did you hear me again?

My canisters, and I have to get into my favorite topic, which are my
bugs. And I can\'t wait to see the Congressional report. I remember when
colloids were first introduced to this group. And of course the bugs
right around that. And what fascinates me about the bugs, and I\'m very
disappointed, because I asked you for \$3 million several times for the
study of my bugs for Dr. Amy (phonetic) at UNLV. And these funds were
not forthcoming. Now I\'m going to ask you for triple that amount of
money. And the reason is until you test for my bugs at all 103 sites,
and every place else that the DOD is, which we don\'t believe, because
they won\'t tell us what they are putting in our mountain. I am very,
very curious to find out because they are just like the fungus we\'re
finding every day. And my bugs are multiplying. What are the bugs going
to do to the canister? Of course, they love nickel. And I\'ve given you
all kinds of things on it. And when I got into the bugs, it was because
at Hanford, they were in the salt and they dug a well that was 4500 feet
down and they found my bugs that didn\'t need oxygen. And it goes on and
on, 7000 feet under the sea bugs that eat a thousand rats. All kind of
fun. So this has got to be a national process where every single one of
these sites is really investigated for the bugs.

And to get back to Hanford, as we all know, in the water holes that are
holding all the rods, my bugs ate the rods. And that is why that company
got \$800 million dollars and a billion-dollar bonus. That was in the
GAO report I brought you. So there\'s lots of stuff and what\'s Hanford
going to do with their stuff? From what I understand, put it in dry
storage.

Now, we\'re talking not one but two repositories, 140,000 metric tons,
and I\'m going to talk about transportation and money tomorrow because
I\'d love to ask Lake Barrett for a trillion dollars, because that\'s
what it would take to provide the transportation canisters and so on.
That\'s only a third of our gross national product. But I do want Dr.
Amy to get some money and I do want the rest of these sites to get money
for testing the bugs.

I really feel very concerned about the word retrieveability, because
when I left you in September, Abe and I were sitting up at the two
repositories playing gin rummy and old maid and so on. And since our
government is only responsible for 100 years, I don\'t know if we\'ll
run out of cards in 200 to 225 years. So you\'re getting a picture again
of assumed uncertainties, my favorite thing. And I really feel as the
public that it isn\'t right for you to have assumed uncertainties. It
affects us very deeply to our hearts. We feel that there are other
methods, transmutation, moxing, what have you that this waste could be
put to, and I think the 9.7 billion, or whatever the numbers are that
the rate payers have paid, I get into the Price Anderson and what the
nuclear power plants are supposed to have in reserve for accidents.

And of course, we all have one other thing to add today. And that\'s
terrorism, sabotage, and so on. And I don\'t think there\'s anything
anyone here from the Governor\'s office, but we just went into the
interim legislative committee on home security, and I used my
toastmaster\'s word for the day, and that was xenophobic. And that\'s
what I accuse the State of Nevada of being. And I said that you will not
look at the State of Iowa, total virtual medicine. Wisconsin with total
virtual schools, and so on and so forth. And therefore, I say this state
needs educating. We are number one in two things: Sex and smoking.
We\'re at the bottom of the barrel with nursing. We have 42 nurses
versus every place else that has 720. So you see where Nevada stands and
I think I have to change that thing and we\'ve got to wake the governor
up, and we\'re working on it. So again, I\'m saying we need virtual
hospitals, and Russ, I want you to go and see Mr. Ness (phonetic) and
ask him for the hundred million again. And we\'ll form a committee and
we\'ll get virtual medicine here. We have no medicine in Pahrump. So,
please, everybody have a good, safe dinner, and enjoy it. And again,
thank you so much for coming. We\'ll see you tomorrow.

COHON: Thank you, Sally. Thank you, Sally. Bob Williams.

WILLIAMS: I would like to use the podium as well.

COHON: By all means.

WILLIAMS: So I can look you all in the eyes.

I\'m Bob Williams. I\'m retired from EPRI eight years now. A lot has
changed in those eight years, but a lot remains the same. I periodically
ask myself why I\'m here today. I think part of the reason is after five
years of not missing a nuclear waste technical review board meeting,
I\'m addicted. I occasionally need that fix.

The other part of it is I really do give a damn. So I\'m here to give
you some hopefully helpful advice. Hopefully, not offensive because I
offer it in the spirit of being constructive.

I really got mad when I read your report on the web, your January 24th
report. I compliment the staff for getting it on the web the same day it
was issued, but there was some congressman who said, dammit, give me a
one-handed scientist. I am tired of, on the one hand and on the other
hand, from scientists. Your report struck me as too many both-handed
comments. I\'ll get into that a little more later.

But there is no sense here that this is war; that anything has changed
to change the way we approach nuclear waste disposal or that there is
any more urgency than there was a year ago or ten years or 20 years ago.

One of the main underlying reasons as I thought about it for the last
four days is that you fellows have mastered the art of Beltway-speak, or
Washington-speak. You are so used to talking in code and talking in
legalisms that I don\'t think some of your reports really communicate.
Now, let me give you an example of what would be a plain statement. This
is my basic and prior, based on watching this program. I think there is
about a one percent chance of success in licensing in 10 years. I think
there is perhaps a 10 percent chance of success in licensing in 20
years, with the current design as it is. Now that would be telling it
like it is. You may have different perspectives. I think there is about
a 90 percent chance with a vitrified waste form, particularly a low
temperature vitrified waste form such as substantially purified. The
term of art is partitioned waste such as might be produced at Savannah
River, is being produced at Savannah River, might be produced at
Hanford.

So I keep asking myself why did our carefully crafted process fail to
work? Why did we fail to converge on a workable and licensable design?
And I\'ll try to answer that rhetorically in just a moment.

My third point is I have some free and hopefully constructive advice for
Steve Frishman. I think in the spirit of being plain-speaking, and Steve
and I have known each other for 20 years, I think, at least, please
don\'t hang your legal argument on this, Jeff (phonetic), for your
argument.

Between 1975 and 1980 a number of different analyses were done that
basically said you needed a reduction in the hazard, the ingestion
hazard of waste on the order of 17 orders of magnitude. And the studies
show that the geology would only accomplish 10 or 12 orders of
magnitude. Those are published in the proceedings of the Tucson
conference back in the early years. I might even still be able to find
one in my files.

So the point is the congress was well informed that they needed a
multi-barrier system and that the geosphere by itself was not adequate.
So I\'m confident that you can mount a legal attack that will tie us up
for five or 10 years, but please do it over something important, not
something that\'s such a bogus issue as that.

Now, the next part is that the reason you want the waste package to work
for a while is that radioactive decay basically gets things down to
where you only need 10 or 12 orders of magnitude of protection, and that
can be accomplished by the geology.

Now, my fourth point relates to strategy. The strategy is flawed a dozen
different ways. I will only highlight a couple or three of them. Earlier
speakers have said we need a simple strategy and we need a simple
explanation. I think most of the people in the room would say we have
neither.

Now, as part of my method of speaking plainly, let\'s lay it out on the
table like it really is. In some situations you have a course of action
called A, which is perfectly viable, and a course of action called B,
which is also viable. But a compromise in the middle, A-B, which is not
viable.

Now, I got this insight from my work in mental health, volunteer work in
mental health where somebody pointed out nobody in their right mind
would structure a mental health system the way ours is structured. But
then they thought it out, that it is the result of a terrible political
compromise, that we do only the things that the parties could agree
upon. So Nevada was what the parties could agree upon in 1987,

Thank you. I\'m trying to accelerate.

The pro nuclear crowd had so much technical arrogance, so vituberous,
that they figured, hey, we can license a site any place. The
anti-nuclear were equally shrewd. They said go ahead and work to your
heart\'s content. There\'s no way, with all the technical problems at
Yucca Mountain you\'ll ever succeed. So somebody like the technical
review board needs to stand up and say we are working on a particularly
difficult site. We have political advantages that permitted us to go to
work, but we have some other advantages that are becoming more and more
evident.

Now, I ask again, why did the process run amuck with respect to the
waste package? The concept was that it was too robust and easy to prove.
In my view, the whole thing has gone awry. Any of you who would take the
trouble and go back and read the licensing analysis for KBS-2 would
immediately discover that there is a succinct easy-to-understand reason
why the waste package will last a million years in the Swedish
groundwater. For me with a chemistry background it\'s easiest to speak
in terms of buffering the granite, then buffer the glass in such a way
that it won\'t corrode. The groundwater is such an EH/PH regime, with
copper, which is hot ice and statically pressed around the fuel, will
not permit the fuel to be accessed.

Now, I know because I personally worked on part of the design of the
multi-purpose canister that there are \$46 billion dollars in the
program for waste package, and that\'s before you add three more billion
or something for the drip shields. So there\'s plenty of money to go to
an oxide waste form. An oxide waste form is what doesn\'t get oxidized
when you\'re in a oxidizing environment, like Yucca Mountain. Glasses
are made out of metal oxides.

Now, where does this lead me? Why has the process run amuck on
licensing? Well, the cultural change that\'s being talked about here is
the least of our worries, in my humble opinion. My lesson learned from a
life time of experience in the licensing arena is don\'t start with a
design that you intend to change. You get 800 people working and you
start making major changes, you\'ll get tied up in your socks. The NRC
will never know what report, what drawing, what design they should be
working to. The reason you do advance design and the reason you have a
preliminary phase is so that you get a small group of people that can
rapidly complete the iterations and then proceed to turn it over to the
force of 800 or 1000.

So there is a major disaster that will result, first from that and
second from the long time frame.

Now, as one example, there is a forgetting function that I happen to
have insight into. It\'s this flooring in the teflon. EPRI got burned in
a joint program with DOV in 1984-85 because teflon came out in a joint
project we were running with Batelle (phonetic). We had 3/4 of a million
in it, Batelle had 3/4 of a million in it. And the leaching of fuel was
all screwed up by the flooring that came out of the teflon.

Now the MCC program which was a multi-laboratory program, now a Catholic
University had a big role, also got burned by the flooring coming out of
the teflon. Now, why didn\'t the peer review process pick this up? Well,
it\'s just impossible over a long time frame, over a 10-year period for
people not to make mistakes like that. So we\'re headed for disaster by
embarking on a licensing program that\'s going to run over 10 or 20
years.

Time scale is too long to efficiently manage. Now, one of the things I
think about is the third lesson that EPRI learned. My first contact with
John Bartlett is he was my surrogate regulator. EPRI had a two-part
contract beginning in 1979 that had SAIC, people like Larry Richardson
and Bob Bullen as the DOE design team, and John Bartlett and the
Analytic Sciences Corporation as my pseudo regulator. I think the DOE
needs to consider doing that so they get some straight-ahead stiffening
of what the regulators are likely to say.

I\'m getting very close to the end.

Now, I encourage each and every one of you, even if you have to do it
individually, to get rid of the Beltway-speak, even if you have to write
it on your personal stationary and draft a resignation letter from the
TRB that goes with it. But in the course of that letter, I\'m not asking
anybody to fall on their spear or fall on their sword, If you do it
right you have both the prestige and the forum to structure a vehicle
for political compromise.

Now, I jump ahead to say that there is too much talk about risk analysis
and not enough talk about decision analysis. Many of you who are experts
here, and I don\'t know precisely who the decision analysis experts are,
realize that. The political compromise in a nutshell is to say if we
were to go over the defense waste repository at Yucca Mountain, we might
be able to license it in five years. It would be the cold repository
we\'ve talked about. It would have a glass waste floor. Those of you who
have insight into the process maybe knows that there\'s some problems
there. You know, I\'m tempted to write that. I used to have my hands on
all the levers and could quote chapter and verse on virtually
everything. You folks are in a better position that I am to do that.

Now, another concept that got lost in the shuffle is \"compared to
what?\" The compromise that happened in the 1987 policy act was that we
took out alternatives. So I would like to charge you folks with taking
the bit in your teeth. You are this all\--panel which is supposed to
advise the President, advise the Secretary and compare the ease of
licensing Yucca Mountain to some surrogate repository that\'s
been\--like one of the KBS designs. I bet you could talk the Swedes into
doing that.

One thing I have to alert you to is the licensing criteria that cuts off
at 10,000 years. There is no way that the licensing process, given that
the rest of the world looks beyond 10,000 years, that this one can cut
off at 10,000.

Now, why should there be a political compromise? Why would Steve
negotiate with you? He\'s got you by the short hairs. Well, some
unforeseen event may force progress. Somebody might come in that, you
know, we talk about lying awake nights after 9-11. The thing I lay awake
is thinking that 98 percent of the containerized cargo comes into the
United States without inspection. Many ships come into the United States
without any inspection. So a nuclear weapon could just as well have been
at New York as well as airplanes crashing into the Trade Center.

Well, my concluding remark, again, is why didn\'t the process work? Why
didn\'t we come up with a better design like a heat-seeking missile that
hones in on the easily licensed, readily licensable solution? Well, the
blame is not totally that of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board,
but I think now is the time for you to not be bound so much by your
charter, but to sit down and be plain spoken about what needs to be
done. And I think the whole business of an override in Congress would go
better if the DOE and the program had made some attempt, making a
political compromise with the State of Nevada. In other words, go in and
see if they would accept the idea of accepting the defense waste
canisters which are so much more benign than the spent fuel. Part of the
horse trading would be to go find a new site for a repository. If the
earlier speaker is right, that we have enough waste for one and a half
or two repositories, and I think we go with the DOE system, then that\'s
the compromise. We then stand up to the public and say we\'ve got\--for
true waste, we\'ve got Yucca Mountain working for glass logs (phonetic),
and we\'re about to have X, Y, Z working for spent fuel.

Thank you.

COHON: Thank you, Bob. And thank you for not putting the entire blame
on\--at the feet of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. We
appreciate that.

Judy Triechel?

TRIECHEL: This is Judy Triechel of Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, and
this is really cool because I\'m not really sure I\'m going to see\--oh,
okay.

Okay, all I have are four view graphs, and they are just statements.
This one comes out of a new set of information sheets that comes out of
headquarters, and it\'s on the Energy.com web site instead of the
YMP.gov, or Energy.Gov instead of YMP. And it says volcanism resulted in
a low but calculable dose when considering how the low probability of a
volcanic eruption. The likelihood of the repository being disrupted by
igneous intrusion is extremely small, about one in 70 million per year.
And the big deal here is the calculated peak dose would be less than one
percent of the NRC and EPA radiation protection standards. And it\'s out
of a section called commonly raised topics.

Here\'s the second one out of that same set of information sheets.
Groundwater systems in the Las Vegas Valley, Pahrump and the Amargosa
Valley are not connected. Yucca Mountain is located in the Death Valley
hydrologic basin. The boundaries of the Death Valley Hydrologic Basin,
in which the repository would be located, are defined and understood.
Water in this basin does not flow into any rivers or oceans and is
isolated from the aquifer systems of Las Vegas and Pahrump.

I don\'t think that those are dishonest, but I think they are very
misleading. This leads you to believe that the water system is not
around anyone. And when you couple that, the next two quotes, the last
two view graphs are from a tour guide on a Yucca Mountain tour. Even if
water carries radioactive waste away from the mountain, he said, the
local watershed stops far before any residential area or waterway. And
the same guide, as for earthquakes, they are primarily surface
phenomena. Well, you wouldn\'t be seeing the fault lines down in the
repository if in fact earthquakes were just primarily surface phenomena.

COHON: That\'s it?

TRIECHEL: No. I know you\'re weary. I know you\'re bleary, but that\'s
not it. Those are the examples I want to use. That tour guide at Yucca
Mountain took journalists and has taken many journalists, and the
journalist that I got those from writes for Cox (phonetic) News, so
there were articles printed all over the country with those statements.
And they are very misleading. Now, the Board is charged with the
technical validity of the scientific work, the technical validity of the
work that DOE is doing, the reports that they put out. And those reports
are supposed to, according to your charge, be defensible to the
scientific community and understandable to the general public. And it
seems to me that the first rule of technical validity is accuracy. And
as far as the public is concerned, accuracy means honesty. And the
examples in those statements are stated without any sort of uncertainty.
They are just plain facts that this water never goes to anybody and that
those basins don\'t have anything to do with anywhere that people are.
And that\'s absolutely misleading. And those shouldn\'t be out there.
And we met with two journalists who had been to the mountain and they\'d
been told to pull those fact sheets off of the web before they went so
that they could read some stuff.

And earlier, I think when you, Dr. Cohon, were talking about the letter
report that you had put out, you said that decisions will be made,
policy makers will decide the acceptability of the amount of
uncertainty. But how do they do that? Policy makers do not read these
reports. They don\'t do as John Bartlett did. They don\'t do as John
Garrick did. They take a tour, they listen to a tour guide and they read
some information sheets. And that\'s why this country\--I\'ve been
getting e-mail messages and phone calls from people all over the
country. I guess the nuke industry is out there on a rant, and
submitting editorials that are coming in with this absolute certainty,
Yucca Mountain is completely perfect for nuclear waste. There\'s nobody
around, there\'s no water, nothing happens, and so it appears that this
kind of information is going out to people. And there are only two kinds
of information or those sorts of fact sheets, and a trip to Yucca
Mountain with somebody who is telling them this stuff, it comes out
wrong.

One of the things that Steve was alluding to when he spoke earlier and I
heard it again during the day was that Yucca Mountain becomes safe
because it\'s so needed. And Bob Williams was kind of talking that way a
little bit. But that\'s not true. It doesn\'t matter how much you need
or you want to have a place for nuclear waste. It doesn\'t make Yucca
Mountain get any better.

There were also two more statements that were in an article recently by
a person who formerly worked for the NRC and seems to have come to his
senses. But he said the unknowable can be stated with certainty. That\'s
what we saw in these things. These are very uncertain things, and they
are being stated with absolute certainty. And this is being sold as a
chain that\'s as strong as its strongest link, which of course is the
canister. But I just really think that within your charge you can direct
the DOE to be accurate And I think they need to be accurate when it
comes to the people who do not read the reports and who only rely on the
stuff that they see. And it\'s out there.

Thank you.

COHON: Thank you, Judy. Is there anybody else who cares to comment at
this time?

(No response.)

COHON: Let me close the meeting with two sort of partial responses or
reminders about what the Board is and what the Board isn\'t. And I\'m
reacting in particular to some of the things that Bob Williams said and
one thing that Judy just said.

The Board has a congressional mandate. Like it or not, it is what it is.
And it\'s very clear as to what it is. And the line that separates what
the Board can do and should do from what it shouldn\'t, which is to say
policy, is a very clearly bright\--clearly drawn bright line. And the
Board is well aware of it.

The other issue is I think that Judy, the Board feels like it has played
a role of insisting or strongly encouraging the DOE to be accurate and
to be comprehensive. For us, again, respecting that line that separates
the technical from the policy, for us the focus has been on strongly
conveying the importance of quantifying uncertainty, and conveying it in
a meaningful way. That has always been part of our statement. We don\'t
just say quantify. We say convey it in a meaningful way.

Our focus has been on national decision makers, but you raise a good
point about how\--well, I\'m inferring a lot from what you said. There
are decision makers everywhere. There are people who influence opinions
everywhere. And the input that they receive is also very important, so
your point is well taken.

We will adjourn for the evening. Now, let me remind you that at 7:30 in
this room, one hour before the start of the formal meeting, we will
serve up breakfast. And the Board, and you are more than welcome to join
us in that informal setting. My thanks to everybody for their
participation today.

(Whereupon, at 6:35 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)

REPORTER\'S CERTIFICATE

MEETING NAME: NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD

WINTER 2002 BOARD MEETING

LOCATION: PAHRUMP, NEVADA

DATE: JANUARY 29, 2002

This is to certify that the above transcript is a true and accurate
record of the aforementioned meeting which was electronically recorded
and transcribed under my direct supervision.

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

Scott Ford

Federal Reporting Service , Inc.

17454 E. Asbury Place

Aurora, CO 80013

303-751-2777ssss