Official Transcript of Proceedings 

 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 

Title: Workshop on Development of Regulations for 

 Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Facilities 

 

Docket Number: (n/a) 

Location: Rockville, Maryland 

Date: Tuesday, September 7, 2010 

Work Order No.: NRC-414 Pages 1-162 

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1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 

3 + + + + + 

4 PUBLIC MEETING 

5 + + + + + 

6 WORKSHOP ON DEVELOPMENT OF REGULATIONS FOR SPENT 

7 NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING FACILITIES 

8 + + + + + 

9 TUESDAY 

10 SEPTEMBER 7, 2010 

11 + + + + + 

12 The meeting convened at the Hilton 

13 Washington D.C./Rockville Executive Meeting Center, 

14 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD, at 12:30 p.m., 

15 Francis Cameron, presiding. 

16 PRESENT: 

17 FRANCIS CAMERON, Facilitator 

18 SVEN BADER, AREVA 

19 MARISSA BAILEY, NRC 

20 JIM BRESEE, DOE 

21 JOSE CUADRADO, NRC 

22 YAWAR FARAZ, NRC 

23 JOHN FLACK, ACRS 

24 CATHY HANEY, NRC 

25 THOMAS HILTZ, NRC 
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1 

2 PRESENT: (CONT.) 

3 MIRIAM JUCKETT, CNWRA 

4 ED LYMAN, Union of Concerned Scientists 

5 ARJUN MAKHIJANI, IEER 

6 ROD McCULLUM, NEI 

7 ALEX MURRAY, NRC 

8 PHIL REED, NRC 

9 STEVE SCHILTHELM, Babcock & Wilcox 

10 DANIEL PAUL STOUT, TVA 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

26 
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1 I-N-D-E-X 

2 Welcome, Explanation of Goals, Ground Rules, 

3 Introductions and Agenda Overview .................. 3 

4 NRC Presentation: Background/Overview of NRC's 

5 Responsibilities for Regulation of Spent Nuclear 

6 Fuel Reprocessing Facilities, Cathy Haney ......... 22 

7 Facilitated Discussion #1: Alternatives for 

8 Regulatory/Licensing Framework for Reprocessing 

9 Facilities ........................................ 38 

10 Questions from Public on Licensing Topics ......... 94 

11 Break ............................................. 96 

12 Facilitated Discussion #2: Alternatives for Safety and 

13 Risk Assessment Requirements for Reprocessing 

14 Facilities ........................................ 96 

15 Secrecy .......................................... 107 

16 Resume Roundtable Discussion on Safety and Risk 

17 Assessment Topics ................................ 121 

18 Public Questions on Safety and 

19 Risk Assessment Topics ........................... 150 

20 Wrap-up .......................................... 160 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 12:46 p.m. 

3 MR. CAMERON: Good morning everyone, or I 

4 should say good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the 

5 NRC's workshop on the NRC reprocessing rulemaking and 

6 I would just thank you all for being here and Ed, I am 

7 sorry if I rushed your lunch but thank you for coming 

8 up to the table. 

9 It is my pleasure to serve as your 

10 facilitator for this session and Miriam Juckett from 

11 the Southwest Research Institute is going to be 

12 assisting me and I just wanted to cover a couple of 

13 meeting process items before we get into the 

14 substantive discussions today. 

15 And I would like to tell you about the 

16 format for the meeting, tell you about some simple 

17 ground rules to help us to have a constructive session 

18 over the next day and a half, do some introductions 

19 around the table and then go through the agenda for 

20 you to make sure that we are all fairly clear on what 

21 is going to happen, when, and to answer any questions 

22 that you might have about the agenda. 

23 In terms of format for the meeting, we are 

24 using what we call a round table setting and obviously 

25 not literally, but a round table format as opposed to 
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1 the sometimes traditional town hall format that the 

2 NRC uses, is meant to encourage dialogue among the 

3 people around the table and so the format is designed 

4 to allow all of you to talk to one another about the 

5 issues rather than just talking to the NRC. 

6 And we have around the table 

7 representatives of interests who may be affected or 

8 concerned about reprocessing issues. The NRC staff is 

9 also with the table today to serve as a resource for 

10 all of you. 

11 And so we not only want to hear each of 

12 your opinions on the issues, but we want to get your 

13 reaction to other participants' opinions and 

14 perspectives on the issues. 

15 So it's a modest attempt to try to develop 

16 what I call a richer form of data than the NRC 

17 normally gets through written comments on the issues 

18 and the staff is also taking written comments on these 

19 issues and I believe the comment period closes no 

20 November 5 of this year. 

21 And although the focus of the meeting is 

22 at the table, we are going to go out to those of you 

23 in the audience for any questions or comments that you 

24 might have on the issues that are being addressed up 

25 here. 
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1 In terms of ground rules, if you want to 

2 speak I would just ask you to turn your name tent up. 

3 I think most of you are familiar with this method. If 

4 you could just put it up like that. And that allows me 

5 to know who wants to talk and you don't have to worry 

6 about jumping into the conversation. 

7 I may not take the cards as they turn up 

8 in order because we may be following a particular 

9 discussion thread, which is what we want to try to do, 

10 is develop those discussion threads rather than the 

11 unrelated monologue type of thing that can happen at 

12 these workshops. 

13 I would ask only that one person at a 

14 time, so that we can give our full attention to 

15 whomever has the floor at the moment, and also so that 

16 we can get a clean transcript. 

17 We are taking a transcript. Our 

18 stenographer is Jim Cordes over here, and one person 

19 at a time, Jim will know who is speaking. At the 

20 beginning as we go around, beginning of the session, I 

21 am always going to be referring to your name so that 

22 Jim can know who is talking and eventually he will get 

23 used to who is at the table. 

24 And I would just encourage you to 

25 participate fully in the discussion, talk to one 
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1 another. You may have different views on the issues 

2 but let's try to understand what the concerns and 

3 interests are behind those views so we can consider 

4 that. 

5 And we are going to have the typical 

6 parking lot over here, where if an issue comes up, a 

7 comment that doesn't fit into the discussion at the 

8 moment, we will put it over here in a parking lot and 

9 we will make sure that we come back to it before we 

10 are done at the end of the day tomorrow. 

11 And let's go around the table and do 

12 introductions right now. And I think I'll start here 

13 with Tom Hiltz. And you press the button on these 

14 microphones to activate it. 

15 MR. HILTZ: Thanks Chip. My name is Tom 

16 Hiltz. I am a branch chief of the Advanced Fuel Cycle 

17 branch and my branch is principally responsible for 

18 the work associated with the revised framework for 

19 licensing a potential commercial reprocessing 

20 facility. 

21 MR. CAMERON: Steve. 

22 MR. SCHILTHELM: Good afternoon. I am Steve 

23 Schilthelm with Babcock & Wilcox and Babcock & Wilcox 

24 is working jointly with AREVA on the reprocessing 

25 program. 
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1 DR. FLACK: My name is John Flack. My 

2 affiliation is with the ACRS. I am primarily here to 

3 keep the committee informed of activities in 

4 reprocessing and also had worked previously with the 

5 ACNW on reprocessing so we are very much interested in 

6 hearing what goes on today. Thank you. 

7 MR. McCULLUM: Hi, I'm Rod McCullum with 

8 the Nuclear Energy Institute. We are the trade 

9 association for just about everybody that does 

10 business in the nuclear industry here in the United 

11 States. There are certainly a lot of diverse interests 

12 in the recycling and reprocessing area in the 

13 industry. 

14 And I really want to thank NRC for holding 

15 this workshop. I was at Blue Ribbon Commission 

16 meetings, the presidential commission looking for next 

17 steps including recycling last week, and a recurring 

18 theme was having a regulatory framework that engenders 

19 public trust and confidence. 

20 And really the only way to get that is 

21 from the beginning, to continue to seek it out and so 

22 that is a very good first step. And as we make 

23 decisions in industry regarding our views on recycling 

24 and reprocessing, knowing that you have a regulatory 

25 framework that is capable of doing that is a very 
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1 important input for us as well. So thank you. 

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, and thank you Rod and I 

3 was a little remiss in perhaps offering, when you do 

4 introduce yourself, if you have any -- one or two 

5 sentences such as Rod just added on concerns that you 

6 would like to see addressed or objectives for the 

7 workshop, please add that in and I will go back over 

8 to these three gentlemen to see if they have anything 

9 to say on that account. But let's go to Alex. 

10 MR. MURRAY: Yes. Thank you. Good 

11 afternoon. My name is Alex Murray. I am with the 

12 USNRC. I am senior engineer, senior chemical process 

13 engineer. I have been in and out of reprocessing, 

14 waste management and MOX, it seems like for centuries. 

15 But my first job out of college was 

16 actually a MOX plant. Thank you. 

17 MR. STOUT: I am Dan Stout, Tennessee 

18 Valley Authority. I am working with Rod and others 

19 from industry on nuclear fuel recycling task force. 

20 Prior to that I was at the Department of Energy 

21 responsible for nuclear fuel recycling. 

22 And like Rod, I appreciate the opportunity 

23 to be here, sharing in this dialogue and it's 

24 important from industry's perspective for the NRC to 

25 continue with regulatory framework development. It's 
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1 an essential component of the decision making process 

2 going forward. Thanks. 

3 DR. BADER: I'm Sven Bader from AREVA 

4 federal services. I also work on the NEI task force, 

5 Rod and Steve Schilthelm of B&W is one of our team 

6 partners. My experience base is really on the MOX fuel 

7 fabrication facility down at the Savannah River Site 

8 and I hope that we can move forward with the 

9 regulations here to produce a similar facility on a 

10 pure commercial field. 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Hi, I'm Arjun Makhijani. I 

12 am with the Institute for Energy -- excuse me, I can't 

13 speak very well, I'm numb. 

14 MR. CAMERON: Arjun just had surgery this 

15 morning so I thank him for being here. 

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: I have long been interested 

17 in reprocessing from concerns regarding non18 proliferation, waste and cost and have written 

19 extensively about it and it's part of the reason, I 

20 guess, Chip invited me to be here. 

21 MR. REED: I'm Phil Reed. I am from the 

22 NRC's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. I am in 

23 the division of risk analysis and I am working on 

24 issues involving research for reprocessing facilities 

25 and I am also a member of the technical working group 
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1 that is putting together the technical basis 

2 documents, composed of the gaps that you will be 

3 hearing about this morning and tomorrow. 

4 MR. FARAZ: Hi. I'm Yawar Faraz. I am a 

5 senior project manager at the NRC. Tom Hiltz is my 

6 supervisor. And I am also on the technical working 

7 group that is working towards putting together a 

8 technical basis, a regulatory basis for processing. 

9 DR. LYMAN: I'm Ed Lyman, the senior staff 

10 scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. We 

11 oppose reprocessing barring really compelling reason 

12 to go forward with it and we still have seen no such 

13 reason. Our main interest here is to ensure that if a 

14 reprocessing rule is developed, that it is not watered 

15 down, diluted, weakened to accommodate the licensing 

16 of reprocessing plants which are incredibly expensive, 

17 failure-prone and a threat to the entire world for 

18 their production of fissile material that can be used 

19 in nuclear weapons. 

20 MR. CAMERON: Thank you Ed. Marissa? 

21 MS. BAILEY: I'm Marissa Bailey. I am 

22 deputy director for the division of fuel cycle safety 

23 and safeguards in NMSS at the NRC and I would just 

24 like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at 

25 this table for coming to this meeting and giving us 
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1 your perspective. As we move forward towards 

2 developing the framework for reprocessing, I think 

3 it's very important that we do get a wide range of 

4 comments, concerns, feedback from all stakeholders 

5 that are involved. So thank you. 

6 MS. HANEY: I'm Cathy Haney. I am the 

7 office director in the Office of Nuclear Material 

8 Safety and Safeguards. This effort falls under my 

9 responsibilities and I'll get a chance to do opening 

10 remarks in a few minutes so I'll save them for then. 

11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks Cathy. Jose? 

12 MR. CUADRADO: My name is Jose Cuadrado. I 

13 am a project manager, also at NRC, division of -- 

14 office of nuclear material safety and safeguards and I 

15 will be helping with any of your IT needs or any of 

16 the organizational aspects of the workshop. 

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Jose and Jose, 

18 as the project manager, has put a lot of effort into 

19 getting us to the table here today, as well as Miriam, 

20 so thank you for that. 

21 We are going to have some people joining 

22 us throughout the day: Jim Bresee from the Department 

23 of Energy will be here; Michele Boyd from Physicians 

24 for Social Responsibility is going to be here, she 

25 just got back from Argentina yesterday so this may not 
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1 be the first thing she wants to do today; and we have 

2 some other industry folks from GE that are going to be 

3 joining us tomorrow. 

4 So in terms of agenda, I just wanted to 

5 say a few introductory remarks about it, and we have 

6 already heard one overarching issue, which is the 

7 issues that Ed Lyman brought up about should we even 

8 be doing reprocessing? Obviously an important national 

9 policy issue however our agenda is going to focus on 

10 the NRC responsibilities in terms of developing a 

11 regulatory framework that is the most effective 

12 possible on this. 

13 And so all of the agenda issues focus on 

14 those aspects -- various aspects of the NRC 

15 responsibilities. Secondly, this is a complicated 

16 area, all you need to do is read any of the background 

17 documents on it to know that, and we are hoping that 

18 we help to simplify it a little bit through the 

19 development of the agenda. 

20 We are also going to have NRC staff 

21 members do what I call a tee-up on each agenda item 

22 before we go into it, to hopefully clarify what the 

23 important issues are. 

24 We haven't tried to address all of the so25 called gaps that were identified in the federal 
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1 register notice. We really wanted to focus on issues 

2 during the next day and a half that it might be 

3 productive to have dialogue on, as opposed to issues 

4 that can be very simply addressed by submitting 

5 written comment by October 5. 

6 And fourth, we really are also keeping our 

7 eye on the workshop that is going to be held in 

8 Albuquerque on October 19 and 20. Some of the same 

9 people may be around that table. We may have different 

10 people. 

11 But at the end of the day, tomorrow, if 

12 anybody has suggestions on issues that we might want 

13 to give more attention to in Albuquerque, less 

14 attention, whatever, we would really appreciate 

15 hearing that also. 

16 We are going to start off, as Cathy Haney 

17 mentioned, we are going to start with a context piece 

18 on NRC responsibilities and on this rulemaking -- 

19 Cathy is going to that for us. 

20 The first discussion issue -- and we'll 

21 have time for questions to Cathy after she does her 

22 presentation -- the first discussion issue is the 

23 alternative regulatory framework issue and you will 

24 see some of the ideas listed there that we want to 

25 talk about. 
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1 We will have a tee-up for that and I think 

2 Alex is -- you are going to be doing the tee-up on 

3 that one. 

4 The next topic for this afternoon is 

5 safety and risk requirements and Yawar is going to do 

6 the tee-up on that for us. 

7 We are going to finish at 5 today. We are 

8 coming back tomorrow morning at 8:30 and basically we 

9 are going to start right in on design and operational 

10 requirements for reprocessing facility and I think 

11 Alex, that's you, you are going to do the tee-up on 

12 that one. 

13 And then we are going to go to waste 

14 management issues, have a discussion of that and we 

15 are going to have Mike Lee of the NRC staff here with 

16 us to tee that one up for us. 

17 We are then going to look at security and 

18 safeguards issues and we will have either Tom Pham or 

19 Marshall Cohen to do that tee-up for us. 

20 And then we have environmental issues 

21 slated for the last topic of the day and that is a 

22 discussion of effluent limits and one of the things 

23 that all of you know or will see is that there is a 

24 lot of rulemakings, a number of rulemakings going on 

25 at the NRC that may have important implications for 
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1 not only reprocessing facilities, but all facilities. 

2 For example the Part 20 rulemaking that 

3 eventually is going to happen that might change the 

4 NRC's radiation protection standards. One of the 

5 things we can talk about is the effluent limits. We 

6 can talk about -- I know that there are some concerns 

7 about 40 CFR 190, which is in the EPA's bailiwick. 

8 We can focus on those issues or we can 

9 come back to discuss more fully something that you 

10 think has not been addressed. So we will be going out 

11 to you to find out whether that last agenda item is 

12 one that we should really do or whether we should go 

13 on to something else. 

14 So that's sort of the agenda overview. Are 

15 there any questions about the agenda at this point, 

16 about where something should be covered, something 

17 that we left out at this point? And then, do that 

18 John, just for practice, with the name tent. Oh great. 

19 Good, it works. Okay. Yes, John? 

20 DR. FLACK: Yes. I had commented earlier on 

21 this. One of the things is trying to understand what 

22 the risk really is from these facilities and what work 

23 had been done to assess that. I mean, going forward 

24 with the regulation, one needs to really understand, 

25 you know, what we are dealing with as far as the risk. 
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1 And I am not so sure that all the work has 

2 been done. I know research is involved in some of that 

3 and that's very good, but I'm not so sure enough work 

4 has been done in that area to really understand what 

5 the risk is from a reprocessing facility. 

6 And of course my background is in reactors 

7 and there, we use PRA all the time and of course that 

8 issue is now on the table as do we need to do a PRA 

9 versus an ISA. But we are not here to deliberate -- 

10 well, that's on the agenda, but I am not here to 

11 deliberate that issue. 

12 It is just really understanding what the 

13 risk really is and then from there, move forward to 

14 what needs to be done to protect the public health and 

15 safety. Without knowing what that is up front, I think 

16 it's going to be very difficult to get everybody 

17 aligned in the same direction on that issue. 

18 Because everyone will have a different 

19 feeling, a different understanding, a different 

20 perspective and so that's just an opening comment, I 

21 thought, to put on the table early on. 

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks John. That's a 

23 very good point. As we are going through -- and we are 

24 going to go over to Rod in a second here -- but as we 

25 are going through these discussions, if there is data, 
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1 more data needed on a particular issue, research that 

2 needs to be done, please emphasize that for us. 

3 And the NUREG report that John and his 

4 colleagues did on this, NUREG-1909 I believe, had six 

5 or seven research needs that you thought were 

6 important. 

7 So feel free to put those research needs 

8 in if you see them and let's go to Rod. 

9 MR. McCULLUM: Yes I will be very quick. I 

10 just want to second what John said. I think, beginning 

11 with an understanding of what the risk of these 

12 facilities really is, is important. I am not going to 

13 pretend to be able to answer the question right now. I 

14 know we have a lot of expertise in the room and I look 

15 forward to engaging them in a discussion of it. 

16 I will say one thing: they are not 

17 reactors and I think it's important to start with that 

18 realization from the very beginning and we are going 

19 to get into some topic about new and different 

20 regulatory framework here. 

21 But I agree, starting with the notion of 

22 what the risk of these facilities is, is very 

23 important. 

24 MR. CAMERON: Okay, and maybe we can do 

25 that when we get to Yawar -- we can do that this 
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1 afternoon when we get to Yawar's risk safety, to talk 

2 a little bit about that. Alex, did you have something 

3 to add on this? 

4 MR. MURRAY: Yes, if I could please. I just 

5 wanted to just make a very quick comment. It's 

6 important to differentiate between risk and hazards or 

7 consequences, okay? I think that sometimes when we use 

8 the term risk, we really are talking about hazards -- 

9 potential hazards and consequences from these types of 

10 facilities. 

11 Whereas, as regards risk, from the NRC 

12 perspective, the risk of any licensed facility, 

13 whether it's a reprocessing plant, a uranium facility 

14 or a reactor, the risks must meet our existing 

15 regulations and be comparable, acceptable and low to 

16 members of the public, because that's an important 

17 little differentiation there. Thank you. 

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, and Yawar, could we -- 

19 when we get to your -- you were going to do your tee20 up for your session. Is this a legitimate issue to 

21 start off with when we get to that? 

22 MR. FARAZ: Yes, one of the items that we 

23 will be discussing -- 

24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

25 MR. FARAZ: hopefully -- 
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1 MR. CAMERON: All right. 

2 MR. FARAZ: in that session. 

3 MR. CAMERON: And Ed? 

4 MR. LYMAN: Chip, there's one overarching 

5 issue that I don't really see addressed and it covers 

6 a lot of different areas, but that's the excessive 

7 secrecy that currently surrounds the licensing and 

8 fuel cycle facilities, in particular the designation 

9 of the ISA summary for Part 70 facilities as security10 related information and many of the related documents, 

11 in almost every instance, that is an excessive 

12 designation and it's been a huge obstacle to public 

13 confidence in the licensing facilities, like the MOX 

14 plant. 

15 So for a reprocessing rulemaking, going 

16 forward I think that is going to have to be addressed 

17 explicitly in the rule. 

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's put that on the 

19 agenda. It's in the parking lot. If there seems to be 

20 a natural place as we are talking through these issues 

21 to talk about that, then let's bring it in, but let's 

22 not leave the room tomorrow until we do talk about 

23 that. 

24 And as I mentioned, we are going to 

25 periodically go out to all of you in the audience for 
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1 comments and questions after we have had the 

2 discussion up here. 

3 I am going to deviate that for Mike, so 

4 that I could remind everybody that we are going to do 

5 that periodically. But Mike, could you just introduce 

6 yourself and say what you need to say? 

7 MR. EHINGER: Well, I'm Mike Ehinger from 

8 Oak Ridge and I was just asking the question of how 

9 you recognize us if we have some input. So you have 

10 answered the question. 

11 MR. CAMERON: Well is this life imitates 

12 art or something like that? Okay. Good. Thanks Mike. 

13 We arranged that in advance. But, Arjun? 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. I would just like to 

15 support what Ed said and suggest that maybe we discuss 

16 the secrecy issue at least for 15 minutes in the 

17 context of risk discussion because I think it's 

18 assumed that secrecy will improve security whereas I 

19 am not actually in agreement with that. 

20 I think there are pluses and minuses to 

21 secrecy in relation to security and I think we should 

22 discuss it at least a little bit today. 

23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks Arjun. We will 

24 do that. Okay, good. That was a useful commentary on 

25 the agenda and what I do now is turn it over to Cathy 
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1 Haney who is the director of the office of nuclear 

2 material safety and safeguards to give us some 

3 context. 

4 And Cathy, you can -- wherever you feel 

5 more comfortable. You can -- maybe you are the office 

6 director. You can do it from the podium. No one else 

7 can use it. All right. 

8 MS. HANEY: Well I am honored to be 

9 speaking from the podium. I think others can use it if 

10 you want it. I can override Chip. But sometimes it's 

11 easier speaking from down there at the table anyway. 

12 Well, I would like to welcome everyone to 

13 today's presentation and workshop. I think it's very 

14 important that we do this planning for the rulemaking 

15 in a very open forum and get as many of our 

16 stakeholders' input as early in the process as we can. 

17 We have been holding workshops along the 

18 process, so this is just another couple of workshops. 

19 But we do take all the input from these workshops and 

20 consider it as we move forward, whether we are 

21 developing issues papers or keeping the commission 

22 informed about what we are hearing. 

23 But I just want to let you know it is very 

24 valuable to me and to us in this process. 

25 What I would like to do is to just do an 
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1 overview. Some of this information is probably not new 

2 to many of you here, but from a starting point, to 

3 give you an idea of where we are within the agency. 

4 So if you can switch to the first slide. 

5 This is a very abbreviated organizational chart of 

6 NRC. As you can see I highlighted several of the 

7 offices that we work with most closely on this effort, 

8 but there are a few that you don't see represented 

9 here. 

10 The one that comes to mind if our office 

11 of the general counsel as well as we will be working 

12 closely with ACRS. But at this point in our technical 

13 preparation for working on the future in this 

14 processing and recycling area, there are three other 

15 offices that we are primarily involved with, and that 

16 is what we refer to as FSME, which is our office of 

17 federal and state materials and environmental 

18 programs. 

19 The low level waste work is one of the 

20 priorities in that office. I have high level waste but 

21 FSME has low level waste. They also support us on any 

22 environmental work that we are doing. 

23 And then we have our two offices that deal 

24 with reactors: NRR, which is our office of nuclear 

25 reactor regulation and then NRO, which is the office 
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1 of new reactors. 

2 NRR deals with our operating fleet that is 

3 existing right now and NRO is exactly what it says, is 

4 our new reactors that are coming online. 

5 What doesn't appear here is our office of 

6 nuclear reactor research, but again, they are a very 

7 important player in the role in helping us right now. 

8 In my organization -- I have three major 

9 technical groups that are reporting to me. One is the 

10 Division of Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation. 

11 This group is -- really does focus on spent fuel 

12 storage and transportation. They do the licensing for 

13 the independent spent fuel storage containers. 

14 But what's -- we need to be working with 

15 them closely with them on this effort, because 

16 whatever waste is generated or whatever material is 

17 moving to the plant, the transportation aspects of 

18 that material would fall under this particular group 

19 as well as storage area. 

20 The other division that I have to the far 

21 right there is the Division of High level Waste 

22 Repository Safety. This group to date has been 

23 focusing on the Yucca Mountain application -- the 

24 Department of Energy's application for the repository 

25 at Yucca Mountain. 
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1 We do continue to review the license 

2 application through this fiscal year. We will start 

3 transitioning to a closure mode, depending upon the 

4 resources that are given to us. But at least in this 

5 fiscal year, we are continuing to review our 

6 application. We recently issued Volume 1 of the Safety 

7 Evaluation Report. That was the week before last. We 

8 are working on Volume 3 to be issued in the November 

9 timeframe. Of course that is highly dependent upon the 

10 resources that we have for this effort. 

11 But we are also recognizing that there is 

12 a changing environment, changing national policy with 

13 regards to waste. That group is starting to look at 

14 what's the future of high level waste without a Yucca 

15 Mountain. Hence again why they are very integral to 

16 looking at this recycling and reprocessing work that 

17 we are doing here today. 

18 And then lastly but not least is my third 

19 technical division, which is the Division of Fuel 

20 Cycle Safety and Safeguards. And as you have heard we 

21 have several representatives from that group sitting 

22 at the table today. That group actually has the 

23 programmatic responsibility right now for this effort 

24 that we are here to discuss today and they have had it 

25 for a while. 
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1 That group also, in addition to the 

2 reprocessing work, does the licensing and oversight 

3 work for our existing fuel cycle facility as well as 

4 very actively engaged in licensing new facilities. 

5 We can switch to the next slide. I want to 

6 just, at a high level, we -- about almost a year ago, 

7 started talking about how can we make all of our 

8 efforts work together. We need some type of integrated 

9 approach to looking at transportation, at short-term 

10 storage, at long-term storage, at licensing, because 

11 no matter what happens with the future of high level 

12 waste, we need to make sure that we are working. 

13 Whatever framework is developed, everything will feed 

14 into it and we will be able to approach it from an 

15 integrated standpoint. 

16 And we wanted to do this with efficiency 

17 and effectiveness. Regulation to change rules, to 

18 develop rules, are very -- it's a very important 

19 process. It takes a lot of time but it also uses a lot 

20 of resources. 

21 So in doing any regulatory changes to one 

22 area of the regulations, we want to make sure it 

23 doesn't have an adverse impact on another part of the 

24 regulations and in fact we asked our question, how can 

25 we work closely, so that one area -- any efforts in 
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1 one area can benefit another area. 

2 So we develop an integrated spent nuclear 

3 fuel program. There is a paper that is publicly 

4 available. It is on our website if you'd like to 

5 review it. But it will go through much greater detail 

6 than what I will discuss today. 

7 But it talks about the program does, what 

8 it was envisioned to do and how we plan to go forward 

9 with it. But just a real brief overview on our next 

10 slide, is there are three program areas and the reason 

11 I mention it here today is because of that second 

12 bullet. 

13 But stepping through the three components 

14 of this program, the first one is the regulatory and 

15 analytical tools for high level waste disposal. This 

16 is really looking at something non-Yucca. Part 63 of 

17 our regulations was developed to support Yucca 

18 Mountain. We do, in the area of high level waste go 

19 back to Part 60 but we recognize Part 60 is old, does 

20 need to be updated, should we decide to go forward, 

21 should the nation decide to go forward with something 

22 and doing forward with a geological repository that is 

23 not Yucca Mountain. 

24 The second aspect of this is the 

25 reprocessing recycling. We decided to bring this into 
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1 the integrated strategy because, again, as I mentioned 

2 earlier, the material going towards a reprocessing 

3 facility, the high level waste or the waste coming out 

4 of the facility, we all need to consider this as part 

5 of the system, as part of the cycle and the best way 

6 to do that was to bring these things all together. 

7 And then of course the third component is 

8 the extended storage and transportation of spent fuel. 

9 And when do you say what does extended mean, you know 

10 put a time line on it, I really can't put an exact 

11 number on it but we have heard anything from greater 

12 than 120 to 300 years to 500 years. 

13 Right now we are not focusing on what is 

14 the number, just merely that without a geological 

15 repository, there probably will be a need to store 

16 fuel onsite for a longer time period so we are looking 

17 for the -- just making sure that material can be 

18 safely stored and safeguarded while it's on site. 

19 Now trying to focus down into just the 

20 reprocessing area, if I can have the next slide. Good. 

21 NRC does have the licensing jurisdiction over 

22 commercial reprocessing facilities. As I said, that 

23 area right now falls under my office because -- and 

24 the reprocessing facilities are considered production 

25 facilities. 
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1 From a historical perspective, back in 

2 1960 and 1970, NRC, or back in that time frame, if you 

3 look back with AEC, did license a reprocessing 

4 facility and issued construction authorizations under 

5 Part 50. 

6 Part 50 still is the guiding regulation 

7 for a reprocessing facility but if you look back over 

8 time it really has evolved to focus primarily on 

9 reactors and that is to support our operating fleet. 

10 We of course have Part 52 for the new reactors. 

11 It has not evolved for the production 

12 facilities over time, hence why it's necessary for us 

13 to look into developing a regulatory framework for any 

14 reprocessing facilities that would fall in this area. 

15 Move on to our next slide. I touched on 

16 this a little bit in just my brief opening remarks, 

17 was the importance of public involvement. We do 

18 recognize that in order to have a better product, we 

19 do need members of the public, and our internal and 

20 external stakeholders to help inform our process. 

21 We recognize the technical issues and 

22 policies are complex. We touched just briefly on the 

23 fact of what is the risk from these facilities, is 

24 there a risk from these facilities. They are not very 

25 easy answers to some of the questions that have been 
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1 raised under technical issues and policies. 

2 We do recognize that rulemaking will take 

3 a considerable effort and it could touch on multiple 

4 parts of our regulations, on the code of federal 

5 regulations, and we do plan on engaging the public 

6 throughout the process and this workshop is just one 

7 way that we can do that. 

8 We do have a second workshop that has 

9 already been scheduled and that is October 19 and 20 

10 in Albuquerque, so I will put my plug in now for I 

11 hope to see many of you still be able to attend that 

12 second workshop because we will be building on some of 

13 the discussions from this workshop as well as bringing 

14 some new topics to the table. 

15 We appreciate Chip's involvement in these 

16 lectures, because I think in these workshops, Chip 

17 does a great job of facilitating them and getting all 

18 thoughts on the table. It's important we hear from 

19 everyone in this particular area. 

20 And we do plan to focus the workshops to 

21 the best as a starting point, but again we want to 

22 remain as flexible as we can, but to focus on those 

23 rulemaking issues that were mentioned in the federal 

24 register notice and also to discuss any other, to 

25 broaden to other topics that fall under NRC's purview, 
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1 as you may see some of these items going up in our 

2 parking lot today from today's meeting. 

3 Next slide please. Just to give you an 

4 idea of what are we planning for and I think I'll 

5 start with the bottom bullet first because that's 

6 probably the one that I worried about the most on a 

7 day to day basis. 

8 We have great ideas. We want to move 

9 forward. But our effort in this area is really 

10 contingent upon the resources that we have available. 

11 Our resources are going to be growing in `11, so I 

12 have asked Marissa and her team to try to get as much 

13 done as we can in fiscal year `11 so that is why these 

14 workshops, the timing of them, as we move into fiscal 

15 year 2011 on October 1 are very important to us. 

16 But looking at the resources that I have 

17 available in `11 and that I hope to have available in 

18 `12, because we do NRC programs out on a two-year 

19 basis, this is the schedule that we are working 

20 toward, which is now and moving in through 2010, the 

21 regulatory gap analysis developing our regulatory, our 

22 technical basis for a potential rulemaking and then 

23 the workshops. 

24 In `11 to `12 time frame, we plan to 

25 complete the regulatory basis, initiate environmental 
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1 activities and that would be the time when we would be 

2 going forward to the commission asking for approval to 

3 proceed with a rulemaking. Should we get that 

4 approval, a draft rule would be available in a 2013 to 

5 2014 time frame with a 2015 as a final rule. 

6 So those are the dates that we are working 

7 towards. Again, I'll mention that last bullet again. 

8 The resources in `11, I am fairly comfortable with, 

9 `12 get a little iffy-er and then we'll start the 

10 beginning of next year planning for the fiscal year 

11 `13 budget so we will see how it goes. 

12 But that's the schedule for your 

13 information that we are working towards right now. And 

14 if we could go to the last slide. This is just, so you 

15 are aware, there are some additional information 

16 available should you be interested in more information 

17 on reprocessing. What you have is the website there 

18 that is specific to reprocessing and there you will 

19 find meeting summaries and presentations as well as 

20 transcripts, if the meeting was transcribed, there 

21 would be references there and then of course there's 

22 always additional documents available in ADAMS, or 

23 Electronic Reading Room. 

24 If there is something that you are not 

25 seeing, please feel free to ask me why you are not 
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1 seeing it or staff. There could be a reason why 

2 something is not being shared. And we will be happy to 

3 give you that reason. If not, if it's something we can 

4 go back and look for to see if it's something we can 

5 put up there, but we have tried to get as much 

6 information as we can up on the website. 

7 So with that, that concludes my formal 

8 remarks so Chip, I will take questions. 

9 MR. CAMERON: Questions for Cathy. John? 

10 DR. FLACK: Cathy, yes, I am just curious 

11 about the role of EPA in this and how NRC interfaces 

12 EPA. I know there is a number of things that didn't 

13 quite end some years ago with EPA and it looked like 

14 they needed to do some work and I was wondering what 

15 the interface with NRC and EPA at this point in time. 

16 MS. HANEY: Well, we have, in fact, as 

17 recently as this morning I met with EPA talking about 

18 when the need to move forward in dialogues. At -- as 

19 we move forward in the public meetings we will -- EPA 

20 is invited to participate but we are making sure that 

21 we are not getting out in front of them just by 

22 dialogue, and my staff to their staff and making sure 

23 that we are coordinated in any efforts moving forward. 

24 So I would say it's an ongoing basis and 

25 then formally, obviously there's the federal register 
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1 notices that another agency can comment on, our 

2 federal registers notices or information that we put 

3 out there. 

4 MR. CAMERON: And we do have environmental 

5 issues on the agenda for tomorrow, end of the day, and 

6 to the extent that there is a question about what 

7 EPA's plans are generally, we might be able to impose 

8 upon them to give us a brief on that. 

9 DR. BADER: Cathy, how will the Blue Ribbon 

10 Commission influence any of the schedule? 

11 MS. HANEY: It has the potential to have a 

12 big impact on the schedule. What we -- in developing 

13 this integrated strategy, what we have tried to do is 

14 not to get in front of the Blue Ribbon Commission, but 

15 to try to position ourselves so that no matter what 

16 the Blue Ribbon Commission comes out with, we would be 

17 able to rapidly respond to it. 

18 Should the Blue Ribbon Commission come out 

19 and say the solution is reprocessing recycling, I 

20 would expect that the Commission would move resources 

21 into this area. Should the Blue Ribbon Commission go 

22 the 180 degrees from that and say it's not even on the 

23 table, I could see potentially the Commission taking 

24 resources away from this project and possibly slowing 

25 it down. 
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1 I think if that latter thing would happen, 

2 staff would probably propose to the Commission a path 

3 forward for their consideration and make again a 

4 budgetary decision, and that really applies to any of 

5 the items under the integrated strategy we did. 

6 The paper that I referenced lays out a 

7 plan for the `11 and `12 time frame as well as going 

8 out I think as far as 2015. But that all is based on 

9 the resources that we have right now and based on the 

10 Blue Ribbon Commission's suggestions, it could alter 

11 that. 

12 So I guess the short answer is it could 

13 have a big impact but we are trying to position 

14 ourselves so that we would be very quickly able to 

15 adapt to whatever they come out with. 

16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks Cathy. Arjun? 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: I didn't understand the 

18 Blue Ribbon Commission has any direct authority on it. 

19 MS. HANEY: No, they wouldn't have the 

20 direct authority but I would say if they come back 

21 with a recommendation, the Commission would take that 

22 into consideration and also obviously we work through 

23 -- our budget goes through OMB and the Congress. 

24 So the Blue Ribbon would go back, it would 

25 be considered so you are right, it's not a direct, but 
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1 it obviously has a strong indication on how I think 

2 our resources would get directed. 

3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Anything 

4 else, any questions for Cathy? Thank you very much for 

5 kicking it off, Cathy, and you can't take that 

6 microphone. You had the podium, but no, you have to 

7 leave the microphone. All right. 

8 Why don't we just move into the first 

9 agenda item, regulatory framework? And Alex, are you 

10 going to do that for us? Okay. 

11 MR. MURRAY: Yes, I will, Chip and I will 

12 even put my card up and I will even quickly say, 

13 Cathy, I have my minivan, if you want that podium, 

14 it's yours. 

15 I will be very quick since we are little 

16 behind schedule. Jose, it's in there somewhere. Ah, 

17 there we go. 

18 Input 1 is always nice. I just want to 

19 give a very quick TR for presentation for discussions, 

20 a little bit of an overview about regulatory and 

21 licensing approaches, framework and so forth. Next 

22 slide please. 

23 We use the terms of reprocessing and 

24 recycling in the context from the ACRS/ACNW&M, 

25 basically those are the advisory committees of the NRC 
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1 and they put out this NUREG about two years ago. 

2 I have listed there reprocessing. 

3 Basically reprocessing is dissolving spent nuclear 

4 fuel and separating it into various constituents and 

5 recovering those constituents. 

6 We use the term recycling to mean making 

7 some or maybe even all of those recovered constituents 

8 and reusing them somehow. Next slide please. 

9 In the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, many 

10 of our regulations actually go back to what we call 

11 the Atomic Energy Act or AEA, which has been amended 

12 many times. The AEA defines production facility and 

13 has some very specific requirements for them. 

14 Reprocessing facilities meet the 

15 definition of a production facility, hence any of the 

16 AEA requirements apply to a production facility. I 

17 should add the Atomic Energy Act is a law, not a 

18 regulation. It is above, more important, more powerful 

19 than a regulation if you will. 

20 In Part 50 some of those minimum 

21 requirements are codified. I have listed some there. 

22 Part 50 also applies to a nuclear power reactor and 

23 for comparison, you have heard Part 70 and fuels 

24 mentioned. Those are considered special nuclear 

25 materials and they are regulated by a different part 
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1 of the NRC regulations, which we refer to as Part 70. 

2 Next slide please. 

3 On this slide, I just listed the two main 

4 regulations that might apply or would apply to 

5 reprocessing and recycling. Part 50 in the left 

6 column, Part 70 in the right column. As you can see 

7 Part 50 has some very specific requirements, 

8 deterministic, DBA, that's Design Basic Accidents. 

9 You can adjust some of the analyses by 

10 using PRA, which is Probabilistic Risk Assessment or 

11 Risk Analysis depending which school you go to, has 

12 some minimum requirements which we call GDC, so 

13 General Design Criteria. 

14 Other aspects, technical specifications 

15 and so on and so forth. QA represents Quality 

16 Assurance. 

17 Over the past three decades, as Cathy 

18 mentioned, the focus of Part 50 has become Light Water 

19 Reactors. Having said that, it still remains the 

20 current regulation for reprocessing and recycling. 

21 Part 70 is a regulation which applies for 

22 special nuclear materials. It's actually called 

23 domestic licensing of special nuclear material. 

24 Special nuclear material means, in simple terms, 

25 enriched uranium. It also applies to plutonium. It 
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1 also applies to an isotope of uranium called uranium 

2 233. 

3 It basically applies to the processing of 

4 non-irradiated materials, non-spent fuel if you will. 

5 In its current version -- it was revised in 2000, it 

6 has a risk-informed process based upon an integrated 

7 safety analysis. Yawar will discuss that in a little 

8 more detail in about an hour-and-a-half. 

9 Most applications of Part 70 involve low 

10 enriched uranium for power reactor fuel. Next slide 

11 please. 

12 This is just a chart. This chart was 

13 actually put out at the May public meeting as well. 

14 And basically at the top of the chart it lists low 

15 enriched uranium. Towards the bottom of the chart it 

16 lists MOX using reactor grade plutonium. That means 

17 plutonium that is recovered and recycled from 

18 commercial spent nuclear fuel that has been in a 

19 commercial nuclear power plant. 

20 And the right column there basically 

21 lists, if you will, the relative consequence of the 

22 material in terms of what we call a radiation dose, 

23 based on ingestion or inhalation I should say via the 

24 lung pathway. 

25 And as you can see, as you start getting 
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1 more and more of the plutonium and fission production 

2 materials in, the relative dose effects go up quite 

3 substantially. 

4 As you go towards the bottom of the list, 

5 the material behavior, potential consequence if you 

6 will, are more like Part 50 facilities. As you go 

7 towards the top of the list, they are more like Part 

8 70 facilities. Next slide please. 

9 Another aspect of our discussion involves 

10 how many steps are there in licensing. Part 50 is 

11 essentially based on two-step licensing: a 

12 construction permit followed by an operating license. 

13 That is how all currently operating 

14 nuclear power plants in the United States were 

15 licensed. About a decade or so ago, Part 50 was, if 

16 you will, modified along with another part of the 

17 regulations called Part 52, to allow one-step 

18 licensing. 

19 Part 70 allows either one-step or two-step 

20 licensing, and I have listed the options there. Next 

21 slide please. 

22 One of the things, when we discuss 

23 regulatory framework, is there has to be some if you 

24 will context from the different reprocessing and 

25 recycling technologies. 
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1 There are several existing processes. 

2 These were actually developed in the United States but 

3 they are currently applied on a commercial scale 

4 overseas. They involved aqueous processes and the 

5 process is generally termed PUREX -- it's a solvent 

6 extraction process. 

7 The other processes which have been or are 

8 under development, they have shown some promise, some 

9 potential advantages in laboratory applications. These 

10 include some such as pyrochemical or electrorefining 

11 methods. 

12 Potential domestic reprocessing plants 

13 might use some additional modifications of PUREX or 

14 they could go if you will and use one of these newer 

15 technologies. We do not know at this time. Next slide 

16 please. 

17 Here I have just listed some points for 

18 discussion. I am not going to walk through them. We 

19 can just go straight from here, Chip. Thank you. 

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, let's leave that slide 

21 up Jose, thank you. Thank you Alex. Let's start with 

22 Arjun and we will try to do this semi-systematically. 

23 Arjun, go ahead. 

24 DR. MAKHIJANI: Just a factual thing. Can 

25 you put up that slide with the relative dose? 1,5? 
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1 Yes, that one. I don't think you mean you do 3500 

2 percent. This is by mass, right? So you do 3500 

3 percent by mass, would have less impact than LEU 

4 because the main impact from LEU comes from U-234. 

5 I think you mean HEU, which contains one 

6 percent U-234, which is the main radiological impact. 

7 The main radiological impact of enriched uranium comes 

8 from U-234, not from 238 or 235 and I don't think that 

9 ratio slide is correct, from my back of the envelope 

10 calculation so I would check that. 

11 MR. MURRAY: We will check it. 

12 DR. MAKHIJANI: It looks more like 10 or 20 

13 to me. 

14 MR. MURRAY: We will check it. 

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Ed, and we 

16 will go over to Steve. 

17 DR. LYMAN: Alex, I had a couple of 

18 questions on some of the things you said. When you 

19 said Part 60 allows one- or two-step licensing, in the 

20 case of a plutonium processing facility, I mean that -

21 - a two-step process is required, isn't that right? 

22 There has to be a construction authorization if 

23 there's plutonium. 

24 MR. CAMERON: Yes, can we clarify that one 

25 point about Part 70 allows either a one-step or a two-
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1 step, particularly in light of what Ed is raising. 

2 Alex, do you have any clarification on that please? 

3 MR. MURRAY: As currently written and used, 

4 Part 70 can allow either one-step or two-step 

5 licensing. It was originally, when the revision was 

6 being worked on, the intent was to go to a full, one7 step licensing approach very similar to the Part 50, 

8 52 combination for reactors. 

9 But there was some concern at the time 

10 that in the future, some facilities, some potential 

11 licensees might come in and still request a two-step 

12 approach, one example being the MOX facility. 

13 DR. LYMAN: But it is true that there has 

14 to be a construction authorization if it's a plutonium 

15 processing facility. 

16 MR. MURRAY: Yes. 

17 DR. LYMAN: So that essentially forces a 

18 two-step. 

19 MR. MURRAY: Yes, yes, yes. I should add, 

20 in Part 70, plutonium processing means plutonium 

21 processing and fuel fabrication. It's not a 

22 reprocessing facility. 

23 DR. LYMAN: And my other question. You said 

24 that Part 50 is the main vehicle for licensing, 

25 reprocessing and recycling, but for the fuel 
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1 fabrication component of recycling, that would still 

2 be Part 70, right? Unless -- or it -- and what if it 

3 were integrated with the reprocessing? 

4 MR. MURRAY: Well, you just answered your 

5 own question. It depends how any potential licensees 

6 or applicants in the future approach the NRC. If they 

7 are separate, discreet facilities for reprocessing and 

8 fuel fabrication, they could be approached as two 

9 separate facilities being licensed under two separate 

10 parts of the CFR and conceivably the fabrication part 

11 could be under Part 70. 

12 Now having said that the, if you will, 

13 thrust of -- and I will let some of the industry folks 

14 chime in -- but the thrust of the industry as we 

15 understand it is going towards an integrated facility, 

16 where special nuclear materials such as plutonium are 

17 not kept in a separate form and shipped separately 

18 outside of being in a fuel assembly, but I'll let 

19 others speak to that. 

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I am sure we are 

21 going to get to that issue. Steve? 

22 MR. SCHILTHELM: Yes, while we are on this 

23 -- oops you have changed the slide. Can you go back to 

24 the consequence slide? Because -- Alex, I think you 

25 brought this up earlier about understanding the 
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1 consequence and John, you have mentioned understanding 

2 the risk -- am I correct? These are effective doses or 

3 cumulative doses, they are not acute doses, is that 

4 correct? 

5 MR. MURRAY: These are inhalation doses. 

6 They are basically 50-year doses. 

7 MR. SCHILTHELM: Fifty year committed. 

8 MR. MURRAY: Yes. 

9 MR. SCHILTHELM: Right. And I think we 

10 should really consider whether that is the most useful 

11 metric. When you talk about accidents, acute doses 

12 from a reactor accident are really what dominate. So 

13 to -- I would offer that this table gets arranged. 

14 Excuse me. 

15 I would offer this table gets a little bit 

16 rearranged on an acute dose standpoint. 

17 MR. MURRAY: That is something we can 

18 consider, but let me just add, in NRC regulations, we 

19 usually look at what we call a TEDE, the T-E-D-E which 

20 is the Total Effective Dose Equivalent, which encloses 

21 both the, if you will, the acute external dose as well 

22 as 50 year committed doses from inhaled and ingested 

23 species and that's what this is based upon. 

24 MR. SCHILTHELM: And I do understand that. 

25 That goes back to the old Part 20 debate -- 
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1 MR. MURRAY: Yes. 

2 MR. SCHILTHELM: of acute doses versus 

3 TEDEs. 

4 MR. MURRAY: Yes. Yes. 

5 MR. SCHILTHELM: But, not to revisit that 

6 or reopen that, but I think conventional wisdom is a 

7 reactor with the source term that a reactor offers 

8 would be probably the most hazardous nuclear facility 

9 from a potential consequence standpoint. 

10 And I don't think a MOX facility typically 

11 comes to that level of hazard classification. So as 

12 you draw the arrows more like Part 50 or more like 

13 Part 70, I think we could debate this table for a long 

14 time, I think is the point I am trying to make. 

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. This looks like it 

16 might be central to the risk agenda item. So we are 

17 going to be revising that but let's hear from Arjun 

18 and Ed before we go on, perhaps, to the question of 

19 how should the NRC arrange its regulatory framework 

20 for moving forward with this Part 50, Part 70, new 

21 part. But Arjun, do you want to comment on something 

22 Steve said? 

23 DR. MAKHIJANI: We are discussing a 

24 reprocessing plant, not a materials facility, MOX fuel 

25 fabrication plant, right? We are discussing 
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1 reprocessing regulations, right? 

2 MR. MURRAY: That is correct, yes. 

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. There are actually -- 

4 I can expand on this in the risk framework, but if you 

5 are talking about more like Part 50 or more like Part 

6 70, there are actually specific, unique things to a 

7 reprocessing plant and there will be specific, unique 

8 things that will go according to the design of the 

9 reprocessing plant. 

10 With aqueous processes, you have high 

11 level waste liquid -- liquid high level waste tanks on 

12 site, which would contain more long-lived 

13 radionuclides than any specific, single reactor site 

14 because you are reprocessing a lot of fuel. 

15 It depends on how the plant is designed 

16 and how your vitrification facility is designed and 

17 whether it works or not, whether it's more like La 

18 Hague or more like Sellafield. 

19 But I think -- I don't think you can 

20 summarize it in more like Part 50 and more like Part 

21 70 because some of the most important hazards are very 

22 specific to the reprocessing plant. 

23 So you are going to have to have that, in 

24 any case in your regulation. 

25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And that seems 
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1 consistent with what Steve was saying but from what 

2 you just offered, Arjun, the implication for you is 

3 that this should not be -- that the NRC should be 

4 developing a new part rather than trying to jury rig 

5 50 or trying to jury rig 70. 

6 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, I think you can draw 

7 on 50 and 70 but you know, recognizing that there are 

8 parts of the reactor regulation that are in themselves 

9 quite obsolete. I mean the Table S-3, which is used 

10 for reactor licensing, is completely obsolete. It was 

11 done in its waste aspects because it was written prior 

12 to low level waste regulations. 

13 It was written prior -- some of it may be 

14 brought back alive actually, because it assumed 

15 reprocessing and you have been licensing reactors 

16 assuming no reprocessing. 

17 So I think you can draw on what you have, 

18 but you have to recognize that what you have, even for 

19 reactors, is largely obsolete. What you have for waste 

20 is severely deficient and incomplete and you have 

21 recognized that to some extent in your paper. 

22 And you have got new elements that have 

23 not been really properly considered, at least afresh, 

24 and after 9/11 you have got still more new elements 

25 that you need to consider so. Yes. You need to develop 
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1 a new regulation, I would say. 

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let me check in with -- 

3 thank you Arjun -- with Ed on his comment and then 

4 perhaps others have some comments on what Arjun just 

5 suggested, which is one of the discussion points here, 

6 about how the NRC should structure its regulatory 

7 framework. Ed? 

8 DR. LYMAN: Yes, just for my understanding 

9 of this table. The table doesn't take into account 

10 relative volatility. It is just strictly one per unit 

11 mass of the material without taking into account 

12 pathways? 

13 MR. MURRAY: That is correct. Yes. How it 

14 gets airborne is a different matter. 

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Go ahead John. 

16 DR. FLACK: Yes, and I am thinking, you 

17 know, design basis accident Part 100 releases and so 

18 on, safety, you know and SSC versus IROFS, I didn't 

19 see that comparison made either about how that is 

20 begin dealt with in Part 70. 

21 Of course that goes Part 50 Part 100 as 

22 two pieces of that equation, and I don't see that 

23 playing out in the comparison. Now did you have 

24 something in mind on that, could you do that 

25 comparison off site to public -- well, I guess you 
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1 start with design basis accidents with reactors. All 

2 right? 

3 Do we have design basis accidents for 

4 these facilities, where then you would have to meet 

5 certain criteria, like Part 100 release -- so I think 

6 it oversimplifies the comparison a little bit because 

7 we are not going all the way out to the end points on 

8 this and that's the public exposure, off site. 

9 MR. CAMERON: And Alex, you have -- you are 

10 catching a lot of attention with this slide. 

11 MR. MURRAY: This is excellent. 

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

13 MR. MURRAY: This is excellent. It was put 

14 in there to enhance discussion. 

15 MR. CAMERON: And it may not be -- we are 

16 going to revisit these issues -- hazards, consequence, 

17 risk -- when we get to our second agenda item. But you 

18 have stimulated a lot of discussion already and do you 

19 have anything more to say on this now or --? 

20 MR. MURRAY: Let me just explain one more 

21 time. This is just strictly based upon inhalation 

22 does, okay? TEDE. Fifty-year committed dose for -- on 

23 a mass basis via the inhalation pathway. Okay? 

24 How it gets there, whether we had design 

25 basis accidents or not, that's another part of the 
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1 discussions of what should be in a revised regulation 

2 for reprocessing facilities. Some of that we will 

3 discuss in the risk and safety discussion in about an 

4 hour. 

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Rod? 

6 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, I just wanted to note 

7 quickly for the record that this is a rare instance 

8 where industry and Arjun Makhijani are in agreement. 

9 What you wrote on up there is that here is a need for 

10 new regulation. 

11 I think as we go down this dialogue and 

12 start to talk about what that regulation should be and 

13 what it should look like, maybe some of the academic 

14 debate on this table becomes irrelevant and what we 

15 really are is looking at the most appropriate way to 

16 develop a new regulation for these types of 

17 facilities. 

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Well, we will test out 

19 -- perhaps the table is not necessarily the 

20 organizing vehicle for the discussion we are going to 

21 have about risk and safety but does anybody have a 

22 different view on the need for a new part of the 

23 regulation to specifically deal with reprocessing? 

24 Okay. How about the issue of one-step 

25 licensing? I mean we have already had some discussion, 
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1 question from Ed Lyman about the existing framework in 

2 terms of construction authorization, plutonium -- 

3 anybody have a view about the one-step licensing? 

4 Steve? 

5 MR. SCHILTHELM: Yes I will offer some 

6 comments. These are not my own comments. I think 

7 Dorothy Davidson made these comments at a fuel cycle 

8 information meeting probably in `09. 

9 Confidence in the regulatory process is 

10 central to any commercial entity taking on 

11 reprocessing, or taking on a major nuclear project. So 

12 just like the reactors needed a one-step licensing 

13 process to make business decisions so that they didn't 

14 get into a two-step process that could go south on 

15 them after major capital commitments, a reprocessing 

16 facility, if it is going to be a commercial facility, 

17 really does need a one-step process in order to 

18 provide that regulatory certainty. And those were 

19 Dorothy's comments. 

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks Steve. That's 

21 one reason, one important reason why one step would be 

22 important. I know the staff has drawn the analogy with 

23 the Part 52 process for reactors. Are there things 

24 from the experience of the NRC with one-step licensing 

25 in reactors that the NRC should make sure that it 
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1 avoids if they are going to do one-step licensing for 

2 reprocessing facilities? Arjun? 

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: Actually, you are not 

4 actually following the original design of the one-step 

5 processing, because you were supposed to have settled 

6 reactor designs and not reopen the question of reactor 

7 designs while you are considering specific reactor 

8 applications. 

9 As things stand currently, you don't have 

10 a single reactor design that is completely settled and 

11 I think the problem is going to be much worse with 

12 reprocessing, and let me give a different view, that 

13 one-step licensing actually is not appropriate to a 

14 technology where there has been essentially no 

15 experience in the United States and there is going to 

16 be a lot of things that are specific to here, whether 

17 you are considering waste or environment or terrorism 

18 hazards or safety requirements. 

19 That's for a settled technology, like 

20 PUREX and you are also considering a new technology or 

21 host of new technologies that are not aqueous, that 

22 are radically different, that are in the pilot stage. 

23 And I don't see you can actually begin to 

24 discuss licensing of these things and at least for new 

25 technologies you have to have a two-step process. You 
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1 probably have to have a three-step process, because 

2 you don't even know how to assess the risk of these 

3 technologies yet. 

4 You have no data, other than laboratory 

5 data. You have no idea of operational problems and the 

6 frequencies of failure. So you can't have a one-step 

7 process for new technologies. I don't even think you 

8 can have one rule for technologies that are not yet 

9 commercial, that is common with technologies that are 

10 already commercial, where you have some basis for 

11 information and evaluation. 

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks for putting that 

13 on the table Arjun. Arjun referred to the experience 

14 in the reactor field with the one-step in terms of the 

15 designs not begin finalized and changing. 

16 But I think the important point is how do 

17 you deal with Arjun's concerns about these are new 

18 facilities, complex, lots of information needed. Rod, 

19 do you want to talk to any of that? 

20 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, I think there's an 

21 important distinction here between the world of 

22 reactor licensing and what would become the world of 

23 recycling facility licensing, which is the idea of 

24 having a design certification from a standardized 

25 design came from the notion that we would be 
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1 standardizing designs because you would want to 

2 replicate the same thing in a lot of places. 

3 A recycling facility, you know, maybe we 

4 would have multiples of those. Certainly I think each 

5 of my vendors here would want to have at least one of 

6 their own. 

7 But that would not be the intent. You 

8 know, in France you have 80 percent of the electricity 

9 comes from nuclear and they use MOX fuel and they only 

10 have one recycling or reprocessing facility. 

11 So you can support a lot of the 

12 infrastructure without having to try to replicate a 

13 standard design in a lot of places. So in that 

14 context, I think there still is an opportunity, 

15 although I agree that there are a lot of questions 

16 that need to be answered when you license one of these 

17 facilities -- there still is an opportunity for a one18 step licensing process. 

19 I would view it more as not a design cert 

20 and then a facility-specific license or a COLA. I 

21 would view it as you are kind of melding those things 

22 into one. You are doing the types of evaluations that 

23 you would do in a design certification review and some 

24 of the types of evaluations you are doing in a COLA 

25 all in the same place, because you are looking at both 
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1 the facility and its location in a holistic manner. 

2 So it is probably an area where the 

3 reactor analogy doesn't quite serve you but there 

4 probably are some lessons to be learned there. 

5 MR. CAMERON: And do you have anything else 

6 on Arjun's concerns about that one-step may be too 

7 ambitious for these types of facilities? He mentioned 

8 you may need two steps, you may need three steps. I am 

9 not sure what he meant by three steps but how do you 

10 react to that? And we will be getting some other 

11 comments and we are going to go to Ed -- do you have 

12 anything that you want to add on that part of it? 

13 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, just one thing and then 

14 I might let others who are even more expert speak, but 

15 I think that's where -- and it's on your list of 

16 things to talk about here today -- the notion of 

17 having risk-informed and performance-based regulations 

18 is important. 

19 Clearly you have to very thoroughly 

20 evaluate the facility and determine safety and you 

21 have to have a lot in there that can assure safety. 

22 But by being risk-informed and performance-based, you 

23 are focusing on what is the result? You know, what is 

24 the level of protection that you are trying to achieve 

25 here, and making sure that you have an applicant that 
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1 can demonstrate that. 

2 You know, the devil is obviously in the 

3 details but I think if the agency is committed to 

4 going down that path, it is possible. I mean we 

5 license a lot of very diverse fuel cycle facilities 

6 under Part 70. 

7 It is possible to construct a regulation 

8 that can credibly support a one-step process. I would 

9 also point out, in the reactor world, I mean there are 

10 things like ITAAC, where yes you have a one-step 

11 process, but you define all these inspections, tests, 

12 analyses, acceptance criteria that you will double 

13 check back at the end there. 

14 So there are ways to build in provisions 

15 to address those unique things you might not know at 

16 the one step. But I will go back to what Steve said, 

17 is that if recycling in this country is to be a 

18 commercial venture, regulatory certainty is absolutely 

19 a must. 

20 And you know, there are things you can 

21 build into a one-step regulation and you know, we 

22 would encourage the staff to continue to look in that 

23 direction to support that. And being risk-informed and 

24 performance-based I think is really the key there. 

25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We are going to come 
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1 back and explore those and I am going to go to Steve 

2 and John and Dan. I just want to make sure that we 

3 hear from Ed either on this point or you had another 

4 point, perhaps. 

5 DR. LYMAN: On the issue of one-step 

6 licensing -- well, I will start with what we just 

7 heard. It seems to me it's the original belief that 

8 the process in Part 52 is actually going to provide 

9 more certainty and be more efficient than Part 50. I 

10 think there is some question about it, given that the 

11 implementation of the ITAAC provisions and the closure 

12 of ITAAC and all those issues are still unresolved and 

13 are leading to uncertainty. 

14 So I think ultimately what you may end up 

15 with is the whole ITAAC certification process is going 

16 to be really a surrogate for the second step of the 

17 original two-step licensing process, and all you have 

18 done is cut the public out of the opportunity for a 

19 second hearing, or at least raised the bar 

20 significantly. 

21 So that's really the main outcome of going 

22 to one-step, is really curtailing the public's 

23 opportunity to seek a hearing. 

24 With regard to fuel cycle facilities in 

25 particular, I did look up the original genesis of the 
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1 construction authorization requirement in Part 70 for 

2 plutonium processing facilities and it goes back to 

3 the Atomic Energy Commission. 

4 And they determined that, as opposed to 

5 uranium processing facilities, because plutonium posed 

6 a significant additional radiological hazard, that 

7 they decided that they wanted an additional step of 

8 approval of the design bases for a plutonium 

9 processing facility before going forward, and that's 

10 why that requirement is in there now. 

11 So certainly, in any new requirement for 

12 reprocessing licensing, that logic would equally or 

13 even apply to a greater extent for a reprocessing 

14 plant, and therefore that construction authorization, 

15 I think, would have to be an essential part of any new 

16 licensing strategy for reprocessing plants. 

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Ed, and I 

18 think everyone should note the rationale that Ed put 

19 on the table for what the Commission thought 

20 originally. So let's keep going with this. Let's hear 

21 from Dan and then we'll go to John. Dan? 

22 MR. STOUT: I would like to recognize that 

23 there could be different levels of maturity of any 

24 kind of reprocessing facility that were to go forward. 

25 You could range from a new technology that isn't 
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1 proven, and that would likely require a demonstration, 

2 to something much more commercial, based on things 

3 that are in existence. 

4 And I encourage the NRC to formulate the 

5 regulation to accommodate the variety of technologies 

6 that could be put forward. And it comes to what Steve 

7 was talking about. It's a risk, a predictability of 

8 the regulatory process that is important in the 

9 business decision. 

10 And so let the licensee decide whether or 

11 not they are going to come forward with a mature 

12 design in a one-step process, or if they want to bear 

13 the risk of a two-step process and come forward with a 

14 less mature design and proceed with construction 

15 knowing that there is another step in the process. 

16 MR. CAMERON: So, under that view, Dan, the 

17 option would be available to either do a two-step or 

18 take advantage of a one-step. 

19 MR. STOUT: Correct. I am suggesting that 

20 the NRC consider formulating the rulemaking to allow 

21 either one-step or two-step and let the licensee 

22 decide and to go in with a mature design in one step 

23 or a less mature design and proceed with the two-step. 

24 MR. CAMERON: Well, going back, let me ask 

25 another question about that, going back to Rod's point 
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1 about that one-step would be appropriate given a risk2 informed, performance-based rulemaking approach. And 

3 then Rod, if I am not articulating it correctly, tell 

4 me. But I am trying to connect up what Rod said about 

5 risk-informed, performance-based with your idea of the 

6 mature design. 

7 Is there a relationship there? Or how 

8 would the NRC say that well, this is a mature design 

9 so therefore you can go one-step, or it's not a mature 

10 design and so -- how would the NRC give guidance or 

11 instruction to an applicant about what would be 

12 acceptable in that regard? 

13 And I am not sure there is a connection 

14 with Rod's point on performance-based, risk-informed 

15 but if anybody can make that connection, please do so. 

16 Do you want to say anything more at this 

17 point on that? Well, let's go to John and then Steve. 

18 John? 

19 DR. FLACK: Well, I think from lessons to 

20 be learned from the Part 52 and the new reactor 

21 licensing process, there's a difference between an 

22 ITAAC and a DAC. I don't know how many people are 

23 aware of that. 

24 And a Design Acceptance Criteria is not 

25 where you want to go. The ITAAC makes more sense 
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1 because everybody agrees up front what needs to be 

2 done and at the back end you just check and make sure 

3 it was done based on what you agreed to in the front 

4 end. 

5 And it depends on how well-defined that 

6 design is, makes a lot of sense because how do you 

7 decide what needs to be done on the front end if you 

8 don't -- if it's still a concept. 

9 So nailing it down at the front end, I 

10 think, is important all the way around, whether you go 

11 one-step or two-step or most importantly for one-step 

12 and you avoid what's known as Design Acceptance 

13 Criteria, where you have just a concept with the 

14 acceptance criteria, not the actual design. 

15 Having said that, again, it comes back to 

16 the risk. I mean, what's so important here that we 

17 need to know it up front and nail that down, that 

18 everybody can agree to, and that has to take some form 

19 of risk insight. 

20 When we look at this MOX facility, which 

21 the ACRS is looking at now, and you have 15,000 IROFS, 

22 I mean one has to stand back and say, okay, well, what 

23 is really important here? I mean, where do you get 

24 that perspective? 

25 That is I think key to the whole process, 
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1 that and being in complete understanding and a buy-in, 

2 up front, as to what needs to be done. 

3 ITAACs I don't think will be that much of 

4 a problem, but DACs are definitely a problem and I 

5 would avoid those at all costs at this point, getting 

6 back to your original question. 

7 MR. CAMERON: Now, just, I -- when you 

8 said, you used a term, is definitely a problem, what 

9 term was that? 

10 DR. FLACK: Well, the problem again comes 

11 to getting everybody aligned to what we mean by that, 

12 and what needs to be acceptable at the back end. So 

13 you are agreeing to something up front, but is 

14 everybody aligned, in total agreement up front about 

15 what that means. 

16 We will take the I&C area, which is 

17 continuously evolving and not knowing exactly what 

18 this is going to play out at the back end, but you are 

19 agreeing to some concepts in the front end. 

20 That presents a problem as to what 

21 everybody agreed to before, when you get to the final 

22 design. So it's ultimately important to nail the 

23 design down well in advance and not wait to the very 

24 end, a complete design or whatever you might be 

25 talking about here, I think is key to this whole 
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1 process. 

2 And so how well one can do that at this 

3 point, having not worked in this area for 30 years now 

4 and relying on international experience, I think takes 

5 a lot of work myself. 

6 So it may be too early even to answer this 

7 question, because I mean what are we really talking 

8 about here, you know a concept, basically. 

9 MR. CAMERON: So are you saying that -- one 

10 of the things you are saying is that the decision on 

11 one-step, two-step, whatever licensing really has to 

12 await an exploration of risk and design and things 

13 like that? 

14 DR. FLACK: I think we are going to need to 

15 know much more about it before we can make any 

16 decision on that. I don't know, that's my own personal 

17 view. Believe me, I am not speaking for the Committee. 

18 I don't know. The Committee has 

19 their own views on these things. So I am not speaking 

20 for the ACRS. These are my own personal beliefs from 

21 working in these areas over the years. 

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks John. Steve? And 

23 then we are going to go to the NRC folks and then to 

24 Rod. 

25 MR. SCHILTHELM: Yes, and I am not sure I 
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1 can make a direct segue between what Rod was saying 

2 and what Dan was saying, but when we sat down as an 

3 industry and put the white paper together that we sent 

4 into NRC, we had days worth discussion on this very 

5 topic. 

6 And where we landed was that the burden 

7 really falls -- as Dan was saying -- the burden is 

8 going to fall upon the industry and the licensee. If 

9 we have a mature design, then in the end, there's a 

10 facility already operating that looks like this 

11 facility, then it shouldn't be a stretch to put forth 

12 a mature design and put forth a set of ITAACs, not 

13 DACs, but ITAACs, that you can live with. 

14 On the other hand, if you don't have a 

15 mature design, and you try to put forth a set of 

16 ITAACs and you try to do that as a licensee, the end 

17 result would be something, I think to what Ed was 

18 alluding to in that you wouldn't have a certainty, and 

19 you would come into the ITAAC process essentially with 

20 a new design, or an evolved design from what you put 

21 forth. 

22 So I think the real burden comes upon the 

23 industry to understand where their technology is and 

24 what they do know and what they don't know about their 

25 technology, and what they do understand and they don't 
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1 understand about the accident analysis, and the risk 

2 that those accident analyses put forth. 

3 So that was the reason, when we put forth 

4 the white paper, we said we need to create the 

5 alternative. You can come with a one-part of you can 

6 come with a two-part. The one-part or the one-step 

7 process comes with a strong ITAAC process, and as a 

8 licensee, you have to be willing to live with that 

9 strong ITAAC process. 

10 MR. CAMERON: And that would depend on the 

11 -- again, to use Dan's point, the maturity of the 

12 design, the experience with that particular processing 

13 technology. Okay, go ahead Arjun. 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Just quickly to respond to 

15 that. I think, while the concept sounds wonderful, 

16 ultimately you can't leave it to the industry to 

17 decide whether the design is mature or not. This is 

18 something you raised earlier, Chip, when this first 

19 came up. 

20 It's got to be -- they have got to be 

21 defined criteria that the government set forth for 

22 that and a judgment that needs to be made as to 

23 whether a one-step or two-step. 

24 So you are going to -- you are going to 

25 wind up in a more of a regulatory uncertainty because 
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1 you will have to have a process for deciding whether 

2 it's one-step or two-step. 

3 You can't just say, well, you know I think 

4 it's one-step and bind the government to that. The 

5 government is going to have to make a decision. And so 

6 you are going to have two steps even in that case, in 

7 my opinion. 

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go to the points 

9 that people wanted to make but I think, keep in mind 

10 Arjun's point there about how does the NRC structure 

11 its regulatory framework to give criteria to the 

12 industry on what they would think would be a "mature 

13 design" that might be acceptable for ITAAC. 

14 Let's -- and before we go back to Rod, let 

15 me get Alex and Yawar and Phil on the record here in 

16 terms of any thoughts they might have about this 

17 discussion. Alex, do you want to go ahead or should we 

18 -- go ahead. 

19 MR. MURRAY: I was going to say, as I have 

20 already spoken a lot, I would like to give my 

21 colleagues some time and then I'll -- 

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go to Yawar and 

23 then Phil. 

24 MR. FARAZ: On this point I wanted to add 

25 that there is quite a bit that you could learn from 
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1 the international community. We have had reprocessing 

2 facilities in France that were -- when they were 

3 introduced, they were new design. 

4 Same thing for the UK. They have their own 

5 design, like Thorp. And there what they did was, they 

6 actually -- it wasn't really a pilot plan but it was -

7 - it wasn't at the lab scale either. Bu they did 

8 develop a testing facility and they went through 

9 elaborate tests. 

10 They would change the parameters and then 

11 see how the process would react. So there's a lot we 

12 can learn from their experiences and how they managed 

13 to establish unique and new designs and reprocessing 

14 and they have been by and large operating those plants 

15 fairly safely. 

16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks Yawar. Phil? 

17 MR. REED: Oh, I just wanted to make two 

18 points and both of them are questions for the audience 

19 and for the industry. The Part 52 has a very unique 

20 situation with regards to the early site permit and 

21 early siting. 

22 They allow it to be either incorporated 

23 into the one-step process or they allow you to discuss 

24 and present it outside, in which you have a lot more 

25 time, you can look at different types of facilities or 
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1 locations. 

2 And I was curious as to how we should deal 

3 with that process and is there a particular emphasis 

4 that you would like, either with the one-step or would 

5 you prefer it with the outside? 

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay, that's on the table for 

7 people to think about. In the meantime, while people 

8 are thinking about how to respond to Phil's question, 

9 Alex, anything to add and then we will see what Rod 

10 and then Ed. 

11 MR. MURRAY: Yes, if I could Chip. I would 

12 just like to point out that a one-step licensing 

13 process is not trivial as many of my colleagues in the 

14 reactor -- both the reactor side at the NRC and in 

15 reactor vendors have found out. Some of this has gone 

16 back to the mid- to late-1980s. It's a very extensive, 

17 very detailed process. 

18 I remember some of the design work which 

19 was developed, you know, would fill a small library 

20 just for one reactor design and I do ask, you know, 

21 for members at this table here to remember that if one 

22 is going to consider a one-step licensing process, 

23 there is a considerable amount of information that 

24 would have to be developed and created and what have 

25 you. 
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1 And as Yawar was mentioning, what was done 

2 overseas relied a lot upon pilot plant and testing 

3 experience as well as experience with older 

4 facilities. At the present time, that does not exist 

5 in the United States at all. 

6 If I go and look at the reactor analogue 

7 again, there were a lot of questions raised by my 

8 colleagues in the nuclear reactor regulation which 

9 required the vendors to go back and do testing to 

10 verify both the assumptions in the models and some of 

11 the results. 

12 And I will add members of the staff, both 

13 on the reactor side and when I say staff, I mean NRC 

14 staff just for clarification, on both reactor side and 

15 the fuel cycle side, have raised concerns both 

16 formally to management, but also in various, how shall 

17 we say, means of communication to applicants and 

18 licensees and vendors, about the level or potentially 

19 inadequate level of design in the applications they 

20 have submitted. 

21 So I encourage us all to think and discuss 

22 what is the level of design information that is needed 

23 for a one-step process? What is needed for a two-step 

24 process? Thank you. 

25 MR. CAMERON: So that's a key question, 
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1 right Alex? What is needed for a one-step process? 

2 MR. MURRAY: Yes, and again, look at the 

3 reactor site, 20 plus years, some of the design 

4 certifications from reactors have multiple, multiple 

5 revisions to their SERs. Now they are more 

6 evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but still, 

7 many modifications. Thank you. 

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Ron. 

9 MR. McCULLUM: Thanks. I just wanted to get 

10 back to this nexus between risk-informed, performance11 based and one-step versus two-step, and also clarify 

12 that Dan and I are on the same page on this. When I 

13 was arguing on behalf of a one-step process, the 

14 regulation should provide for it, because for many 

15 applicants that level of certainty will be needed to 

16 go forward. I wasn't saying, and I should have 

17 clarified, that we should not have the option as we 

18 have proposed, for a two-step process. 

19 I think where risk-informed, performance20 based comes in, and this may go a little bit to level 

21 of information, is that in fact becomes more important 

22 in a two-step process. The idea that you are focusing 

23 on the results and the outcomes you are trying to 

24 achieve and less on regulating to specific design 

25 details of specific types of facilities or 
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1 prescriptive regulation, is even more important, I 

2 would think, for someone who wanted a two-step 

3 application. 

4 I think that the -- as has been said here 

5 -- the burden does have to stay on industry and this 

6 has been a fascinating discussion and the common theme 

7 of this discussion is -- what we are talking about 

8 here is where regulation and business decision making 

9 come together. 

10 And for something as complicated as this, 

11 it's very important to get that right. Certainly at 

12 the highest level, industry needs to know as much as 

13 it can about the regulatory framework to make 

14 decisions on -- you know, we broadly support recycling 

15 -- but to make decisions on what types of recycling 

16 facilities and when and all of that. 

17 And indeed, an applicant going for a two18 step process would be saying, well, I want to go -- if 

19 this level of information and maturity as Dan says, to 

20 get some more certainty, then let me invest -- and 

21 this is where the business decision making -- the 

22 reason you need the certainty at the various steps is 

23 because you are going to make decisions to invest 

24 resources. 

25 An applicant with a mature design has 
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1 already invested a certain amount of resources in that 

2 and therefore you know, needs the certainty -- they 

3 both need to know what the regulation looks like. 

4 And that also comes up again with this, 

5 that I am glad that the ESP was mentioned. That's 

6 something that industry is seeing of increasing value 

7 in the reactor world. At first we thought we were 

8 going to skip over that process and just go straight 

9 to COLAs. We are now seeing more ESPs because I think 

10 in industry we are seeing a value to addressing siting 

11 issues before you, again, invest too many resources in 

12 a specific design. 

13 So it's providing a regulation that gives 

14 the public assurances that things licensed to that 

15 regulation will be safe and at the same time gives up 

16 perspective applicants the certainty they need to make 

17 the business decisions and when are we going to make 

18 these large investments? 

19 And yes, I think that can be done with a 

20 risk-informed and performance-based framework. 

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. So that's partly an 

22 answer to what Phil had asked before, at least that 

23 aspect of it. 

24 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, I think, yes, his 

25 question falls right in with the thread of the 
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1 discussion we are having because it's how do you build 

2 a regulation so an applicant can make the decisions 

3 with certainty going forward, at the point that the 

4 decisions need to be made and that's one way to build 

5 some additional certainty in. 

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Before we go back to 

7 Phil, I want to go to Ed, who I think might have 

8 reacted to Yawar's point on international experience, 

9 but go ahead, Ed. 

10 DR. LYMAN: Yes, I guess I would just like 

11 to caution whether or not a facility is based on a 

12 facility that is built elsewhere, if that really is an 

13 asset or would facilitate licensing. I think the staff 

14 needs to take a look at whether the fact that the MOX 

15 plant is substantially based on an operating facility. 

16 MELOX has really assisted in the licensing 

17 of that plant. When the design was first submitted by 

18 the contractor, it was only that 40 percent complete 

19 anyway and there are still issues, I would say with 

20 the MOX plant here which date back to the design phase 

21 which was never -- was never adequately resolved and 

22 is causing issues with regard to granting the 

23 operating license. 

24 With regard to a plant like Thorp, I would 

25 hope that if anyone tried to submit a reprocessing 
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1 plant application based on the Thorp design, the NRC 

2 would tear it up, given that the plant has never 

3 operated at capacity, has been shut down for years, 

4 had a major leak that went undetected for more than a 

5 year. I think that kind of experience should tell us 

6 to run screaming from that kind of facility. 

7 And with regard to Rokkasho-mura, the full 

8 operation has been pushed back another two years in 

9 case anyone hasn't heard that yet and I think there 

10 are significant questions whether it may ever operate. 

11 Thanks. 

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay thank you. Thank you Ed. 

13 Phil did you have -- 

14 MR. REED: Well, I just had one other last 

15 comment, which I also would like to direct to the 

16 audience and the members of the industry, and that's 

17 just so we don't forget, one of the items on the 

18 agenda is the technology neutral requirements, and we 

19 are going to face the possibility of having at least 

20 two licensees with two different aqueous separation 

21 processes and possibly a third one with a pyrochemical 

22 process. 

23 And I am just curious as to how we are 

24 going to deal with these two issues, particularly the 

25 aqueous versus non-aqueous and what kind of 
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1 requirements should be putting into our regulations 

2 that would address these, or can we do that with no 

3 specific requirements and just go to a complete 

4 neutral. How would we handle these for the two 

5 different types of processes? 

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. That is one of the 

7 items, the technology neutral and I think you brought 

8 in the issue we have been discussing of, you know, the 

9 mature design I think. So how are those integrated? 

10 How are they related? Arjun, did you have a comment? 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. One just brief follow12 up to what Ed said and then the other thing about the 

13 different technologies, technology neutral. 

14 I think you need to step back from this 

15 idea that there is a mature reprocessing technology. 

16 The French have operated their plant at 100 percent 

17 capacity for a number of years. It works well. Their 

18 vitrification plant works well. 

19 I have a number of issues with 

20 reprocessing but the British design is, in principle, 

21 the same. It's a PUREX process. I mean you have got 

22 the same kind of chemicals. You have basically the 

23 same flow sheets and it's operated miserably and has 

24 had huge numbers of problems. 

25 The idea that there is a mature design, I 
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1 think, just comparing the British and the French and 

2 the fact that they are both PUREX processes should be 

3 rejected. 

4 So I think at least going to the -- if you 

5 are going to international experience, and look at the 

6 facts on the table, you would -- at least I would not 

7 agree that there is a -- it's like looking at the 

8 breeder reactors, you know? FFTF may have worked 

9 reasonably well and then Superphenix worked reasonably 

10 well and then Superphenix was a failure and Monju had 

11 a leak in 18 months and it's just not a mature 

12 technology. There's no learning curve there. 

13 In regard to technology neutral, you can't 

14 really have technology neutral regulations. Certainly, 

15 parts of regulations can be technology neutral, 

16 because you know the kinds of materials you are 

17 dealing with, the kinds -- some of the waste that may 

18 come out. But I don't see how you can have technology 

19 neutral regulations when the waste products are 

20 dramatically different, the risks are different, the 

21 storage is going to be different, the chemical nature 

22 of the products is going to be different and in the 

23 case of pyroprocessing, the technology itself is not 

24 even defined. 

25 So I would say you can't even calculate 
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1 the risks. I am going to say more about this you know, 

2 after Yawar makes his presentation. But I don't think 

3 you can -- I think you should abandon this idea of 

4 technology neutral regulations as an overarching idea 

5 that you are going to do this without specific 

6 reference to even aqueous versus non-aqueous. There's 

7 at least got to be a minimal dividing line. 

8 MR. CAMERON: Can we address Arjun's point 

9 and perhaps it would be helpful to -- then we are 

10 going to go to Rod for this -- helpful to hear what is 

11 the concept of technology neutral and how do you 

12 address Arjun's points about these differences in 

13 terms of saying well, the rules should be technology 

14 neutral. Can you talk a little bit about that and then 

15 we will hear from Steve. 

16 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, I think Steve -- 

17 MR. CAMERON: And we are going to go to the 

18 audience. Okay? 

19 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, Steve may be able to 

20 amplify this point even better so I will try to be 

21 brief. And I guess for the first time now we are now 

22 in an area where industry and Arjun do not agree. But 

23 I think that risk-informed, performance-based is the 

24 opposite side of the same coin as technology neutral. 

25 We believe very strongly that the 
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1 regulation should be technology neutral and the way to 

2 accomplish that is by being as risk-informed, 

3 performance-based as possible. The less specific, the 

4 less prescriptive the regulation is, the more it can 

5 accommodate different technologies. 

6 Now that being said, you can't just have a 

7 regulation that is two words that says be safe. It 

8 would be nice if you could but you can't. So in areas 

9 where there is a need for specificity, the regulation 

10 and the regulatory structure and the reg guides and 

11 everything that is developed underneath that can 

12 provide off-ramps to different options. 

13 You can have a regulation that would say 

14 you know, if pyroprocessing section umptee-squat 

15 applies and if an aqueous process, section this and 

16 that applies. And in fact, we have recommended in 

17 previous meetings with NRC that in areas where the 

18 technologies are just not that well know, you may just 

19 want to put a reserved section in the regulation to be 

20 developed. 

21 If there is something about pyroprocessing 

22 that's not well known enough, you know where you refer 

23 to something that would be more applicable to an 

24 aqueous-type process, also reserve a section, you 

25 know, 7x.3y or whatever that would be developed at a 
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1 later point. 

2 So there are ways to do that and I would 

3 just point out that this is not something we don't 

4 have experience with. We have 104 reactors in this 

5 country and a certain, significant fraction of them 

6 are pressurized water reactors and a certain 

7 significant fraction of them are boiling water 

8 reactors and yet we manage to regulate both and there 

9 are some things specific. 

10 I mean I know reactor sump issues are an 

11 issue at pressurized water reactors and there's a lot 

12 of regulatory infrastructure developed around that. 

13 So I think by being as risk-informed, 

14 performance-based as possible, and by recognizing 

15 where we need to bifurcate and where we need to 

16 provide for differences in technology, you can indeed 

17 develop a technology neutral regulation. 

18 And I will say on behalf of all of 

19 industry, and the various technologies out there, this 

20 is critically important because having a recycling 

21 regulation is an important input to decision-making 

22 and as long as that is something that is completely 

23 unknown, if you aren't going to try to endeavor to be 

24 technology neutral, it's kind of like you have a 

25 chicken and egg situation you can't move forward on. 
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1 So for -- we simply believe it can be done 

2 and the key is on doing as much as you can with risk3 informed, performance-based. Thank you. 

4 MR. CAMERON: Okay Thanks Rod. And I am 

5 going to go to Steve now but I just want to put a 

6 question on the table for Arjun. If the phrase 

7 technology neutral wasn't used to describe what Rod 

8 just said about use performance-based, risk-informed 

9 as opposed to prescriptive, but that there would be 

10 the off-ramps, okay, for particular technologies where 

11 you would have to be more prescriptive perhaps. 

12 I guess if it was described like that, 

13 would that make sense? How much sense does that make 

14 to you Arjun? I am just wondering whether the phrase 

15 technology neutral may in and of itself be a problem. 

16 So I want to come back and ask you about that, but go 

17 ahead Steve. 

18 MR. SCHILTHELM: To the point of technology 

19 neutral, there are kind of two pieces to a regulation. 

20 One is the process. It tells you how you go about 

21 licensing. And then there's a technical piece that 

22 says these are the things you have to be concerned 

23 about. 

24 So you have to marry those two. When you 

25 talked about, and we offered this white paper to NRC, 
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1 we actually believe that an integrated safety process 

2 allows you to be more technology neutral than the way 

3 Part 50 is written with general design criteria. 

4 If you look in Part 50, they never really 

5 completed the general design criteria. They thought of 

6 perhaps writing more general design criteria for 

7 reprocessing plants and never really got to it because 

8 the reprocessing went away. 

9 But as a process, an ISA allows you to 

10 evaluate particularly chemical processes but 

11 mechanical processes as well against consequence 

12 thresholds. And Part 70 has clearly written 

13 consequence thresholds that you evaluate your 

14 processes against. 

15 So regardless of the technology, as long 

16 as the evaluation of the consequences and the risks of 

17 those consequences is done well, you can put together 

18 an appropriate safety profile. 

19 Now the other thing we did, we recognized 

20 that there was value in -- Part 70 calls it baseline 

21 design criteria, Part 50 calls it general design 

22 criteria -- we recognized that at least for aqueous 

23 reprocessing, we could make an educated assessment of 

24 what additional baseline design criteria were 

25 necessary, based on international experience and those 
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1 plants that are operating, and we offered additional 

2 baseline design criteria that you could apply in 

3 concert with the ISA and come to an acceptable and 

4 robust safety profile. 

5 What industry probably did not do as 

6 thoroughly as we may have liked to, when we presented 

7 the white paper, is assess what additional baseline 

8 design criteria might be appropriate for non-aqueous 

9 reprocessing. 

10 So there is work to be done there, but 

11 again, Part 50 was not flawed in its notion that we 

12 would develop additional baseline design criteria for 

13 reprocessing. The need for it just went away and if 

14 the need for non-aqueous reprocessing never comes to 

15 pass, then maybe there is no need to have more design 

16 criteria there. 

17 MR. CAMERON: So are the -- to connect up 

18 with Rod again, the ISA allows you to be more 

19 technology neutral and the ISA is really your 

20 performance-based, risk-informed tool and the BDC are 

21 perhaps the off-ramps? 

22 MR. SCHILTHELM: The BDC help you inform 

23 the ISA but the ISA has to work in concert with 

24 performance criteria. The ISA is a process. It's a 

25 process for evaluating the hazards of a particular 
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1 operation. You have to have performance criteria. 

2 I am actually working on a Part 50 license 

3 right now and frankly there are no performance 

4 criteria in Part 50. With regards to worker 

5 protection, with regards to chemical safety, with 

6 regards to criticality safety, the performance 

7 criteria just aren't really there in Part 50 and in 

8 Part 70 they are very clearly articulated from a 

9 consequence standpoint. 

10 MR. CAMERON: So you need the performance 

11 criteria and Part 70 provides a better model of the 

12 performance criteria? 

13 MR. SCHILTHELM: The point is you have to 

14 have performance criteria and you have to have process 

15 for doing safety evaluation, which is the ISA process, 

16 or a PRA if you choose that process. 

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay and we are going to talk 

18 about the PRA versus ISA in the next segment. Let me 

19 go back to Arjun in terms of what I asked originally 

20 and I may have been very inartful and perhaps it might 

21 be better to respond to Steve's description and see 

22 how much comfort or discomfort that gives you, and 

23 also I would like to check in with Ed on the same type 

24 of points plus whatever he has. Arjun, any thoughts? 

25 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think actually -- this is 
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1 a gut reaction -- technology neutral is a term that is 

2 interfering with my understanding and is misleading 

3 because you are going to have -- if you have the basic 

4 performance criteria, whether for workers or public 

5 already specified, you have got your dose limits, you 

6 have got 40 CFR 190, you know, you have got to keep 

7 your public organ dose limits and whole body does 

8 limits, so you don't need new performance criteria for 

9 that. You have already got performance criteria. 

10 The question is how are you going to 

11 translate that to a specific facility that you are 

12 licensing and you can't do that unless you consider 

13 technology. Now if you are going to say we are going 

14 to have one rule with one 10 CFR Part 73 or whatever 

15 and then reserve certain sections because we don't 

16 know the technology, it's really the same as saying 

17 you are going to have certain parts of the regulation 

18 that can general and certain parts of the regulation 

19 that have to be technology specific. 

20 So to my mind, actually, technology 

21 neutral interferes with the idea that Steve was 

22 putting forward, that there is a process, there's 

23 levels of performance. The basic level of performance 

24 I guess is a dose limit, which is the health and the 

25 consequence, whether it's an accident analysis or 
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1 routine analysis. 

2 But to translate that into technical 

3 terms, it's the NRC's job and you can't do that 

4 without reference to a technology so that's why I 

5 think this term is interfering with my understanding 

6 of what you are trying to do. 

7 MR. CAMERON: Yes, I wondered if it was and 

8 I think from the industry's point of view, there is 

9 some concerns and interest behind the concept of 

10 technology neutral and I guess the issue is, is that 

11 if you didn't use that term, how would those concerns 

12 and interests -- how should they be met in whatever 

13 the rulemaking framework is? 

14 But let's go to Ed and I think we have 

15 pretty much talked about a lot of the issues in this 

16 area and I want to make sure that we get the audience 

17 viewpoints and I am going to ask Miriam to go out for 

18 that, but Ed, what do you have to say? 

19 DR. LYMAN: Yes, on the issue of technology 

20 neutral, I just wanted to second what Arjun said. I 

21 don't think it's useful. I think that in practice 

22 there would be so many exceptions, variations, reserve 

23 sections that you would essentially end up with a 

24 technology specific regulation at the end anyway and 

25 you are only kidding yourself if you think you don't. 
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1 One of the keys is uncertainty and to the 

2 extent it's linked to so-called risk-informed 

3 regulation, if you are talking about technologies 

4 whose designs are not as well-established, as you 

5 heard about before, then obviously the ability to meet 

6 a performance-based rule when there is very high 

7 uncertainty in the calculations you are doing, once 

8 again, brings you back to the issue of the technology 

9 you are talking about. 

10 So I don't think you can escape that 

11 anyway. And there is also the issue of apples and 

12 oranges. If you are comparing aqueous and non-aqueous, 

13 it's not just the separation part, but the fact that 

14 General Electric, the proposed design would be 

15 integral with the reactor part so it's hard to see how 

16 you would have one framework that would cover an 

17 aqueous reprocessing facility that was supplying light 

18 water reactors with MOX compared to an integral fast 

19 reactor type design. 

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Ed. Miriam, 

21 do you want to see what the audience has to say and we 

22 can get a reaction perhaps if appropriate from any of 

23 the panel members. 

24 MS. JUCKETT: If you could just raise your 

25 hand. Say your name and -- 
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1 MR. EHINGER: Mike Ehinger. I am from Oak 

2 Ridge but I don't speak for Oak Ridge. I speak to you 

3 today as probably the only walking, talking, living 

4 dinosaur of reprocessing and with respect to that, 

5 history and evolution are very important and going 

6 back to the idea of single step licensing, I 100 

7 percent support everything that Rod and others have 

8 said. 

9 And I use an example, going back in our 

10 history to when we were first writing regulations in 

11 1974, and we didn't have them, and we were trying to 

12 license West Valley, go ahead, have your reactions, 

13 but there's a lot to be said that. 

14 I will skip a lot of the stuff, but in the 

15 end, it was the lack of one-step licensing that killed 

16 that place and a lot of people blame it on other 

17 things, but the reality is they didn't even give them 

18 the design requirements. 

19 And the thing that -- the one -- the straw 

20 that broke the camel's back was changing the 

21 earthquake requirement for the site. I lived through 

22 it. I can tell you the whole story. I won't bore you 

23 with it right here. 

24 With respect to -- and then with respect 

25 to Barnwell, where it was a licensing situation where 
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1 all of a sudden an executive order killed off their 

2 investment. And even though an executive order said we 

3 can continue, they said they don't give us the rules 

4 to play by, and that killed it there. 

5 With respect to technology, it's not the 

6 job of the NRC to evaluate the plant and the facility 

7 for operability, and I use another example from our 

8 past: the GE Morris Plant that was designed with 

9 current, PUREX technology but at the time the 

10 conventional wisdom was to put out a UF6 product and 

11 they designed -- there was a design change, in 

12 innovation with the GE Morris Plant that instead of 

13 doing the final purification step on the uranium, they 

14 went to a direct fluorination process. 

15 And in the end, their commissioning 

16 activity said the plant won't run because we can't 

17 keep the two ends of the plant operating at the same 

18 time. It was an issue of surge. 

19 So it met all the criteria, it met all the 

20 licensing, it's an operability problem and it's not 

21 the problem of the NRC to say whether or not a plant 

22 is going to be commercially viable. 

23 I will give another example of that that 

24 Ed likes to point out, but I will give it from a 

25 different perspective: the idea of Thorp versus COGEMA 
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1 and it's not one of the technology, it's one of the 

2 way they have built the plant and it's totally having 

3 an intimate knowledge of those facilities, having been 

4 there, having stood on the top of the tank where the 

5 pipe ruptured and said boy, that's a bad idea. 

6 The difference in the technology is one of 

7 surge capacity between cycles and that's one of the 

8 operator's design requirements. It's not the NRC. The 

9 NRC can look at that as a box. There are some 

10 technology things to be made. It's looking at it as a 

11 box in terms of what you want to regulate, in terms of 

12 effluents, and safety, but it's not the object to 

13 evaluate the design itself for operability. 

14 So without -- I could probably stand here 

15 and talk for hours at a time on this history, like I 

16 say having lived it right from the beginning in West 

17 Valley right through to having spent a lot of time in 

18 the Rokkasho plant and seen it come out of the ground 

19 internally, there is a need for one-step licensing, 

20 there is a technology envelope you can look at from a 

21 regulatory perspective without having to get into the 

22 details of the facility design and the operation and 

23 the process, but one-step licensing is absolutely 

24 crucial and I support everything that has been said 

25 here. 
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1 MS. JUCKETT: Thank you. 

2 MR. GEDDES: I'm Rick Geddes from Savannah 

3 River, another dinosaur. Former operations manager of 

4 the largest reprocessing plant in this country at F5 canyon. 

6 Couple of things. One is, I keep the 

7 reference to overseas experience and that's great. But 

8 I would like to point out that in fact there is a 

9 large body of knowledge of reprocessing in this 

10 country. 

11 DOE does process lots of fuel. In fact 

12 it's doing it today in both South Carolina and Idaho. 

13 It's out there. It's available. Some of that came into 

14 play in helping the AREVA and the MOX licensing 

15 effort. 

16 Secondly, the business of one-step versus 

17 two-step, I would disagree with Mike to some extent 

18 there. I think it's important to have both options 

19 available. 

20 I think one fundamental difference that I 

21 haven't really heard come out in any of this 

22 discussion in comparison to reactors and analogies to 

23 reactor licensing, is, in all deference to Mr. 

24 McCullum, there's 100 reactors out there. To me they 

25 are all the same. Reactors are a dime a dozen. Maybe 
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1 200 of them in 20 years or 30 years. 

2 But there's only going to be one 

3 reprocessing plant. A decade later, two decades later, 

4 there may be another one. There's not going to be 100 

5 of them. They are going to be unique things. They are 

6 going to be one of a kind. You know, there will be 

7 some evolution to the next one. 

8 I don't think you are going to find -- 

9 like, I've got mature technology, I've got this 

10 standardized design. They are all pretty much going to 

11 be unique. And that's why I think you are going to 

12 drive yourself to a two-step process and in fact I 

13 think there's another thing. 

14 I don't think anybody is going to say I am 

15 going to go out and build one of these commercially 

16 and make a profit on it. I think the MOX model is much 

17 more likely. This is going to be maybe a privatized 

18 operation, NRC-licensed, but probably government19 funded on a government reservation, at least for the 

20 next century, you know, who knows after that but 

21 there's not going to be very many of these things. So 

22 I think they are going to be fundamentally different 

23 in the licensing aspect than the reactors as we look 

24 forward. 

25 MS. JUCKETT: Other audience comments? 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Whoops. Could you just 

2 try to be brief? 

3 MR. EHINGER: Very briefly. Very briefly. 

4 Just responding to what Rick said. One of the 

5 difficulties that we have is that the only experience 

6 we have is in the weapons program, with very low 

7 burnup fuel and that's another part that I could speak 

8 to on the evolution of design, West Valley to 

9 Barnwell, Barnwell to Thorp, Thorp to COGEMA, COGEMA 

10 to Rokkasho, the evolution of design. 

11 We can't take -- we have to look at the 

12 evolution of design. One of the difficulties that we 

13 have is we stay in locked into the experiences of our 

14 weapons reprocessing, which is, again, very low burnup 

15 fuel with very characteristic processes. I will leave 

16 it at that. We do have to look to the evolution. We do 

17 have to take into account the evolution of design. 

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you both for 

19 those valuable perspectives on this and what if we 

20 take a break and is that what you were going to 

21 suggest, Alex? 

22 MR. MURRAY: No. 

23 MR. CAMERON: No. Okay. 

24 MR. MURRAY: I just wanted to add one very 

25 quick comment. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

2 MR. MURRAY: And then we can take the 

3 break. 

4 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

5 MR. MURRAY: If I could, please. I think 

6 both of you have made some very good comments. I think 

7 it's important, though, to understand the viewpoint of 

8 what I like to term your friendly nuclear safety 

9 regulator. 

10 In terms of the old experience, okay, I 

11 would be very cautious about trying to say, hey, 

12 everything went wrong from the regulatory perspective 

13 there. 

14 While to some degree the regulations were 

15 evolving, all -- I will say two of the three 

16 facilities had some -- I will use the term significant 

17 issues. I will phrase it politely like that. Like, 

18 portions of the process did not work behind shielded 

19 cell walls, things like 80 percent of the plant was 

20 contaminated. Things like doses which were not ALARA. 

21 So I think we have to tread very softly. 

22 When we go forward, we are going to have to make sure 

23 that things like ALARA are appropriately considered 

24 and enacted. I think while yes, obviously the 

25 regulatory framework and path forward has to be 
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1 defined, so too does the design and so too do the 

2 safety attributes of that design. 

3 Much of the work which has been done on 

4 processes is process-related not safety-related, okay? 

5 What was brought up here had to do -- also included a 

6 discussion about high burnup fuel. Most DOE facilities 

7 -- I don't want to get too much into jargon for the 

8 majority of our audience, but most DOE facilities went 

9 with fuel that had maybe a 1,000, 2,000 megawatt day 

10 per ton burnup. 

11 West Valley, the hottest fuel reprocess 

12 there was 20,000 and that was from Indian Point. In 

13 the case of La Hague and Thorp we are talking about 

14 45,000 or so megawatt days per ton. 

15 We have commercial reactors in the United 

16 States which are discharging fuel with burnups 

17 approaching 60,000, 62,000 megawatt days per ton. 

18 Okay? 

19 So yes, things have changed. Yes, we have 

20 to consider fully all the safety attributes, not just 

21 the process attributes. And we can discuss those more 

22 in upcoming sessions. Thank you. 

23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 

24 Alex for that context. We are obviously behind time. 

25 We started late. But I think that was a productive 
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1 discussion in a lot of ways and we are sort of testing 

2 out how much time we need for each of these, so I 

3 wouldn't be worried. I am not worried about it. 

4 And so why don't we come back at 3:15 and 

5 we will have Yawar tee up the next item and that's the 

6 last item on the agenda for today. Thank you. 

7 (Whereupon the above-entitled matter went off the 

8 record at 2:58 p.m. and back on 

9 the record at 3:24 p.m.) 

10 MR. CAMERON: Okay everybody. If we could 

11 get started again. Okay we are going to the safety and 

12 risk agenda item and Yawar Faraz is going to tee that 

13 up for us and he is going to pose a couple of 

14 questions for you that we will discuss. 

15 But we had the issue raised during the 

16 agenda check about secrecy and we were going to 

17 address it during this agenda item because obviously 

18 how is someone supposed to know if the facility is 

19 safe if they don't have access to the data. 

20 So after Yawar is done with his tee-up and 

21 the two questions, let's take a little time to just 

22 talk about that secrecy issue and then we will go to 

23 Yawar's two questions. Yawar? 

24 MR. FARAZ: Thanks. I have 10 slides so I 

25 will try to get done in about 10 minutes. Slide two. 
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1 John Flack and Alex were correct in that we need to 

2 understand the hazards associated with reprocessing 

3 facilities. 

4 And in fact the NRC is doing that. We are 

5 looking both domestically and internationally to try 

6 and learn to see what those hazards might be and we 

7 are improving in that regard day by day. 

8 Over the following discussions, what I 

9 think would be most useful is if we can focus on two 

10 items. One is how NRC could meaningfully regulate risk 

11 and what the methodologies might be to do that. So 

12 those are two questions that I think we should try and 

13 focus in on. 

14 The third bullet on this slide gives you a 

15 website where you can get some background information 

16 on risk, how NRC addresses that. Slide three. 

17 This slide identifies five NRC documents 

18 that address risk and what I will do is I will try and 

19 summarize these in the following slides, one by one. 

20 Slide four. 

21 In 1986, the NRC established the Safety 

22 Goals for nuclear power plants as follows: 

23 qualitatively speaking, there should be no significant 

24 additional risk to a member of the public; and the 

25 risk to society should be comparable or less than 
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1 other electrical generation risks. 

2 Quantitatively speaking, for a member of 

3 the public, the prompt or acute fatality risk should 

4 be less than one tenth of one percent from all other 

5 accidents that that individual might be exposed to. 

6 And from the standpoint of cancer and 

7 latent fatality risk, that should be less than, again, 

8 one tenth of one percent of the total cancer risk to 

9 that individual. 

10 This roughly translates to an annual 

11 fatality risk of one in a million for cancer fatality 

12 and a little less for acute fatality. Slide five. 

13 In 1995, the Commission issued its PRA 

14 policy statement, encouraging the risk of PRA, which 

15 is probabilistic risk assessment, using state-of-the16 art methods. PRA is a useful tool for determining with 

17 reasonable assurance that the safety goals would be 

18 met. 

19 For this, clearly PRAs would need to be as 

20 realistic as practicable, is what they had recommended 

21 in the policy statement. Slide six. 

22 PRA has been used for power reactors for 

23 the last 30 years or so and it is particularly useful 

24 for assessing complex systems with active components. 

25 When you come to passive systems, PRA clearly needs 
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1 some additional development and that is ongoing. 

2 When you compare PRA to ISA, clearly the 

3 way PRA has been used is it has been extremely 

4 quantitative. Slide seven. 

5 This is the third document in the list and 

6 it's on the risk-informed, performance-based 

7 evaluations, which was issued in 1998. It provides 

8 guidance and insights on how to identify and focus on 

9 the most important activities, monitor performance and 

10 focus on the results. Slide eight. 

11 In 2000, the integrated safety analysis or 

12 ISA requirements in Subpart H of 10 CFR Part 70 were 

13 issued. In an ISA, all credible accident sequences are 

14 identified and binned according to their consequences. 

15 Items relied on for safety or IROFS are 

16 identified to make the high-consequence accidents 

17 highly unlikely and the immediate consequence accident 

18 sequences unlikely. 

19 Now methodologies that can be used to 

20 assess the accident sequences can be quantitative, 

21 semi-quantitative or qualitative. So the ISA 

22 requirements do not specify that you shall be 

23 qualitative or semi-quantitative or quantitative. It's 

24 open. 

25 But most ISAs conducted so far use the 
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1 semi-quantitative approach, more of the order of 

2 magnitude type evaluations. For such ISA risks are 

3 estimated on a pure accident sequence basis and the 

4 total risk or the aggregate risk from all accident 

5 sequences to an individual cannot be estimated, 

6 especially if you're following the semi-quantitative 

7 or the qualitative route. 

8 So how are we -- considering the 

9 uncertainties and the resulting conservativeness 

10 involved in assessing risks using the ISA process, one 

11 would expect the facility risk to a member of the 

12 public to be in the order of one in a million per year 

13 range. Slide nine. 

14 This is the fifth document on the list. 

15 It's the Risk-Informed Decision-Making document that 

16 the NRC issued in 2008, or the RIDM document. It 

17 provides three regions of risk: unacceptable, 

18 tolerable and negligible. 

19 It's very similar to how risk is regulated 

20 in the UK. The RIDM document identifies quantitative 

21 health guidelines, or QHGs and for an individual, it 

22 discusses unacceptable fatality risk, tolerable risk 

23 range and also discusses where the negligible risk 

24 would arise. 

25 For a U.S. worker, a general worker, the 
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1 fatality risk is four, 10 to the minus 5 per year. 

2 Slide 10. And I think these are the discussion topics 

3 that we would like to concentrate on. We could carry 

4 that on after the one on the secrecy item. 

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much 

6 Yawar. Before we go to those points, can we just spend 

7 a few minutes on the secrecy issue, access to data and 

8 does anybody need Ed to put a finer point on what his 

9 concern is there before we discuss it? I mean, Ed, do 

10 you want say, just say some more on it? 

11 DR. LYMAN: The concern here is with regard 

12 to fuel cycle facility licensing, one of the basic 

13 components of the application, the ISA summary is now 

14 entirely considered as an official use only, security15 related document, and is not available to the public. 

16 And the rationale behind this is that it 

17 would provide -- could provide information that is 

18 useful to terrorists who want to sabotage the 

19 facility. But it is also the fundamental document 

20 describing the safety case for this facility, and as 

21 such, it's something that is really -- is really 

22 something that the public has a right to see. 

23 And to use the argument that anything that 

24 is safety related could potentially be used by a 

25 terrorist is an absurd argument, and has been used in 
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1 my judgment to conceal a great deal of safety 

2 information and is really of little use to adversaries 

3 at all. 

4 And there are numerous instances. There's 

5 one instance where the NRC inadvertently distributed a 

6 document associated with MOX facility licensing that 

7 was marked official use only but was distributed 

8 publicly so I can talk about it and it just described 

9 deficiencies in the applicant's method of calculating 

10 a certain chemical safety -- doing a certain chemical 

11 safety assessment. 

12 Now anyone who could say that that was 

13 security-related information the public shouldn't see 

14 is -- there's no case for that. So I think that the 

15 standards being used to conceal this information from 

16 the public are inappropriately broad and therefore 

17 there has to be a much more specific threshold for 

18 withholding information that should be built into this 

19 reprocessing rulemaking to ensure that important 

20 information related to the safety of the facility is 

21 not withheld from the public. 

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 

23 Ed. And I will just emphasize Ed's last point, which 

24 is that a new threshold for accessibility or 

25 inaccessibility as the case may be, needs to be built 
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1 into this rulemaking for reprocessing facilities that 

2 right now, the criteria is inappropriately broad and I 

3 don't know if anybody around the table wants to start, 

4 but let's -- Arjun do you want to just amplify on what 

5 Ed said and then we'll see if anybody has anything to 

6 say on it. 

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: I want to amplify on the 

8 comment that I made earlier, is there's an assumption 

9 that if you keep something secret, that it's therefore 

10 more -- that you are going to result in higher 

11 security and higher safety. I am going to give you 

12 three, quick examples of where the contrary is true 

13 and where information that was released in the past 

14 would likely not be released today, which would have 

15 been very detrimental to safety. 

16 And essentially all three were linked in 

17 some way to reprocessing. The first was the release of 

18 the tank farm Fault Tree Databank from Savannah River 

19 F and H Canyons from the reprocessing plants relating 

20 to high-level waste. 

21 And I did an analysis of that Fault Tree 

22 Databank in the `80s and found that Savannah River 

23 wasn't keeping very good track of the hydrogen 

24 evolution in the tanks and that twice, the hydrogen 

25 had reached close to or exceeded explosive levels. 
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1 This is from memory, from 25 years ago. 

2 But essentially, the availability of that 

3 information with the safety analysis report on the 

4 tanks led to -- and their appearance in the Washington 

5 Post and the Wall Street Journal and the New York 

6 Times of these, my findings with Bob Alvarez and 

7 others that resulted in improved safety for its 

8 procedures at Savannah River site, because they were 

9 not paying adequate attention to turning on the 

10 ventilation systems in the tanks after maintenance, as 

11 I understand. That was more informal. 

12 The second example relates to criticality 

13 risks in high-level waste tanks. It was the same 

14 problem -- not keeping track of the amount of 

15 plutonium that was going in there, both Hanford and 

16 Savannah River site. 

17 The third relates to inadequate accounting 

18 of plutonium within the weapons complex, and still an 

19 unresolved issue. Now today, the kind of information 

20 that Hazel O'Leary made public with plutonium and 

21 highly-enriched uranium may not be made public. 

22 But I would argue that in all cases, this 

23 is not just a public right to know. It's much more 

24 than that. It's the systems become safer. Tanks were 

25 put on criticality watch in Hanford because we had the 
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1 information in the public that the government's idea -

2 - Hanford's idea of what was in those tanks was wrong, 

3 and I happened to be part of the technical advisory 

4 panel on tanks, and I said, your numbers can't 

5 possibly be right. You have to revisit that. 

6 And then they put tanks on a criticality 

7 watch. Well, you cannot as a basis for this, you 

8 simply cannot assume that keeping something secret is 

9 going to make you safer and more secure. I think 

10 there's a very strong argument that information should 

11 be released to the public unless there's a very 

12 specific case that some terrorist couldn't find it in 

13 a simple Google search. 

14 I think your rule has to be biased in the 

15 direction of disclosure for the sake of public safety. 

16 That's the point that I want to make. 

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Arjun. 

18 Anybody -- yes Steve? 

19 MR. SCHILTHELM: I'll speak as a licensee 

20 and I'll just speak in general terms. In a sense I 

21 agree with what you are saying Ed and in a sense NRC 

22 is in a very difficult position. The threat is 

23 dynamic. The post-9/11 pendulum, if you will, swung, 

24 and as pendulums swing, it may have swung too far. 

25 But I can tell you as a licensee, NRC does 
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1 create a high hurdle for us. When we say something is 

2 classified or when we say something is proprietary or 

3 when something becomes official use only, the hurdle 

4 is pretty substantial. 

5 And from our perspective as a licensee, 

6 NRC's default position is that the information be 

7 public. I agree it may not appear that way to you. So 

8 we are seeing two different sides or coming at NRC 

9 from two different paradigms. 

10 But I do agree with you that it would be 

11 helpful if there were clarity from both perspectives 

12 because it's difficult for the licensees, it's 

13 difficult for the public and I'm sure it's difficult 

14 for the NRC. 

15 I'm not sure you can build it into this 

16 particular rulemaking. There are other areas in the 

17 regulation that deal with the public access to 

18 information but in a sense I agree with what you are 

19 saying, that certainty would be helpful across the 

20 board. 

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I guess a question for 

22 the NRC. And I've been looking at you Marissa, but I 

23 don't need to be I guess. But how would this issue be 

24 addressed, or could this issue be addressed in this 

25 rulemaking or would it be you know, a companion 
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1 rulemaking or whatever? But if you could just give 

2 people an idea of how the process might work. 

3 MS. BAILEY: Actually I don't really know 

4 and maybe Cathy can chime in. I am not quite sure how 

5 this issue would be addressed in this particular 

6 rulemaking and it's something that we would need to 

7 take a look at. 

8 It is a difficult struggle for us because 

9 we do strive to be open and so we want to make clear, 

10 we want to make clear, we want to put out into the 

11 public the basis for any of our conclusions. 

12 But on the other hand, there is -- we also 

13 want to make sure that we preserve security and that 

14 we protect security. So, it's something that we will 

15 just have to continue to struggle with. 

16 I don't know Cathy, if there's anything 

17 else you'd like to add, or Tom? But I guess this is 

18 you know, the issue of secrecy hasn't really come up 

19 in our working on reprocessing and so I would be the 

20 first to say that we haven't really given that much 

21 thought but it's -- I appreciate the issue coming up 

22 and it's something that we will have to think about. 

23 MR. CAMERON: And thank you. Thank you, 

24 Marissa, and it's good that the issue is being put on 

25 the table now. Ed, you heard Steve's comment about the 
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1 high hurdle and that he agrees that clarity would be 

2 useful for both the NRC and the license applicants. 

3 Do you have any suggestions for how the -- 

4 how NRC would go about looking at a new threshold? 

5 DR. LYMAN: Well, I think one problem is 

6 that right now the definition of this SUNSI security7 related information is not in the regulations at all. 

8 It's all -- it's regulatory guides and less formal 

9 directives, and as opposed to, for instance, the 

10 definition of safeguards information. So I think this 

11 is an overarching issue. 

12 It's not -- it would be a companion, the 

13 right part wouldn't be Part 70x but it would be an 

14 accompanying rulemaking possibly to have a consistent 

15 definition of security-related -- non safeguards, 

16 security-related information that is more specific 

17 than just any information that could possibly help an 

18 adversary do something. That's just too broad. 

19 I'll give another example. Shaw Areva MOX 

20 Services last year submitted a request for an 

21 exemption from certain material control and accounting 

22 requirements. Now there's a provision in NRC 

23 regulations that any information pertaining to 

24 material control and accounting should be treated as 

25 proprietary, OUO. 
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1 That document, at least 95 percent of it, 

2 was -- contained information that was previously made 

3 public that was in the construction authorization 

4 request. We went through it and found out that there 

5 were about maybe five lines that were appropriate to 

6 withhold. Most of the document should have been made 

7 public, yet it isn't. So there's a lot of 

8 inconsistency going on. 

9 MR. CAMERON: So there's not a whole lot of 

10 quality control in terms of -- even under the existing 

11 threshold, whatever that is, that there is some 

12 inconsistency involved here. 

13 So there's two issues, really. I take it 

14 that if there was going to be a rulemaking on SUNSI 

15 that people could comment and that there might be a 

16 way to improve the implementation of the present 

17 system. 

18 And is this something that the NMSS staff 

19 can bring to the attention of the people who, at the 

20 NRC, who are in charge of this particular area? I 

21 mean, will you take this message to them? 

22 MS. BAILEY: Yes, we can take this message 

23 back but I do want to emphasize that when we look at a 

24 document, there are a set of criteria that we follow 

25 to make a determination as to whether or not a 
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1 document is OUO and I think the staff tries very hard 

2 to follow those rules, because really our first 

3 reaction to a lot of these documents is that you know, 

4 we do want to make it public. 

5 Again, openness is one of our values so we 

6 do try very hard to apply those criteria for 

7 determining whether a document should be released to 

8 the public or not. But it's -- we will bring it back 

9 and -- 

10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

11 MS. BAILEY: Consider the comment. 

12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you Marissa, let's -- 

13 yes Arjun? 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Could I make a specific 

15 suggestion. The comment that Ed made kind of reminds 

16 of me other things that I have been involved in which 

17 I won't go into, but the proprietary as well as the 

18 other security-related kind of withholding supposedly 

19 security-related withholding documents from the 

20 public, results normally in the withholding of the 

21 whole document. 

22 I have been involved in situations there 

23 were whole documents that were completely public that 

24 were granted proprietary status as a blanket matter by 

25 the courts, just because the company asked for the 
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1 documents to be. 

2 I think in a proceeding before the NRC, if 

3 you are serious about your commitment to openness, you 

4 would not grant either proprietary or secret status or 

5 OUO status to any document as a whole. 

6 There may be, in this case, five sentences 

7 or may be five paragraphs, or it could be five pages 

8 or half the document that could legitimately be 

9 withheld, but to grant a blanket request to a license 

10 applicant that something should be proprietary or the 

11 whole thing should be secret, when it is easily 

12 available -- so a minimal threshold could be, how much 

13 of this information is available to the public already 

14 that is in this document? 

15 And as a minimal thing, the party asking 

16 for the secrecy should be able to show that none of 

17 that information is already public and whatever is 

18 public at least should be returned to the public in 

19 the context in which it belongs. 

20 That should be a minimal practice. I am 

21 not suggesting that it should be the whole thing, but 

22 it should be a minimal -- the burden should be on the 

23 NRC and the applicant before holding it and so far as 

24 I can see, from Ed's example, you are not fulfilling 

25 that burden. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks Arjun, and we 

2 are going to go to the first of Yawar's questions. But 

3 we are going to hear from Alex. Go ahead. 

4 MR. MURRAY: Thank you. I just wanted to 

5 add to that. I do think that as a member of the NRC 

6 staff, I do think that the majority of the staff and 

7 management of the NRC do want complete openness, or 

8 openness as much as possible. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: I agree with that. 

10 MR. MURRAY: And I do agree, over the past 

11 five years, there has definitely been a trend where 

12 instead of redacting small portions of a document that 

13 clearly have some proprietary or security-related 

14 link, the trend has been to, if you will, remove the 

15 whole document. 

16 And that is something that we as an agency 

17 are going to have to look at in our policies and 

18 procedures and so forth. 

19 As regards reprocessing specifically, let 

20 me just throw out something for people to think about 

21 and maybe comment on later on. We can -- we have a 

22 couple of approaches that can be followed. 

23 We do things where we have regulatory 

24 guides or NUREGs which give, if you will format and 

25 content of applications, or recommended format and 
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1 content of applications. It is possible, somewhere in 

2 there, we can outline if you will the guidance -- it's 

3 not a regulation -- but it's guidance to -- as to what 

4 would clearly be considered proprietary or non5 proprietary with the intent that as much as possible 

6 would be in the public domain. 

7 We could also put something in there for, 

8 to use a term, a summary of the ISA summary, where 

9 instead of being very specific to safety controls, 

10 IROFS, design safety requirements what have you, it's 

11 at a slightly higher conceptual level, where if you 

12 will the intent or the mechanism whereby the staff 

13 considers safety to be achieved, or the applicant 

14 considers safety to be achieved, is evident. That 

15 might -- but I throw that out for discussion. 

16 MR. CAMERON: Oops, your mic has to be on. 

17 Did you catch any of that at all? 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: Just like the NRC's 

19 commitment to the value of openness, and I am here 

20 because of it. 

21 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Arjun. 

22 So, we had some suggestions on how to deal with the 

23 secrecy issue, including Alex's suggestion that 

24 perhaps would not require rulemaking. So good 

25 discussion, and let's go to Yawar's first question and 
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1 I'm going to state it the way I think you did, Yawar, 

2 which is how can the NRC meaningfully regulate risk? 

3 Is that --? 

4 MR. FARAZ: You said it right. It's how 

5 could the NRC meaningfully regulate risk to an 

6 individual. 

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And this -- the follow8 on question is about the methodology, the PRA, 

9 integrated safety system or some combination. So on 

10 the first issue, what can be said? Does anybody have 

11 something to say on how can the NRC meaningfully 

12 regulate risk, is the way Yawar is asking it. Anybody 

13 want to start us off on that? 

14 And maybe, can you put a finer point 

15 perhaps, on that, Yawar, in terms of you know, you 

16 have total safety and risk, aggregation, summary, 

17 overall safety goal, how does that safety goal play 

18 into all this? We heard hazards and consequences from 

19 Alex a little while ago, clarifying what he was 

20 thinking about as risk. I am just trying to figure out 

21 where we should start with this discussion. 

22 And Flack has an idea. So we will go to 

23 him. 

24 DR. FLACK: Well, I think the first thing 

25 one needs to understand is what the risk is. I mean, 
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1 without knowing what the risk is, how do you make any 

2 meaningful decisions about it? So I think knowing what 

3 it is, is -- now, you know, what do we mean by risk, I 

4 guess, you know, and the bottom line is we talk about 

5 different, what, different kinds of risk. 

6 I mean if you use reactors as the way risk 

7 is defined, we are talking about risk to the public 

8 outside, around a facility, out so far from a facility 

9 and the risk that that imposes to those individuals 

10 living around that facility. 

11 Now, you can also talk about worker risk 

12 and the risk they are exposed to during operations. We 

13 could talk about accident risk, likelihoods of 

14 accidents and their consequences, and then you can 

15 talk about the risk of working at a facility, which 

16 could involve long-term exposures. 

17 So I mean it's -- I think we have to 

18 define what we are really trying to achieve and define 

19 risk. And then once defined, what is it, and then set 

20 the criteria about it, including defense in depth, 

21 uncertainty, defense in depth. All that comes after 

22 the fact, so it's a very broad general question, I 

23 think, when you just pose it as how do we regulate the 

24 risk, I mean, maybe we could be more specific on that, 

25 as it applies to say, a reprocessing facility. 
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1 MR. FARAZ: What I would offer is, you said 

2 it right, you provided the entire gamut. I would 

3 narrow down to maybe risk to a member of the public 

4 from accidents. 

5 DR. FLACK: Good. Okay, so that's the 

6 starting point. That's what we are trying to 

7 understand and -- okay, good. 

8 MR. FARAZ: Maybe if you can have a 

9 discussion on that, that would be really helpful. 

10 DR. FLACK: Yes, right. And how do you go 

11 about determining what that is. What tools do you need 

12 to do? Now, if you are talking about the integrated 

13 risk, the total risk of all accident sequences, or do 

14 we, like at an ISA divide them in by one by one, and 

15 define the threshold from which it's greater than, you 

16 know, there are different approaches to dealing with 

17 that. 

18 But in reactor space, you do a Level 3 

19 PRA. If you want to do the whole assessment and go 

20 from there, and then you can compare those results 

21 with the safety goals and that would be the next step. 

22 But first, being able to do that I guess 

23 is the question, or do we need to do that, I guess is 

24 the question, for these reprocessing facilities. Does 

25 that make sense, that question? 
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1 MR. FARAZ: Yes, exactly, yes. 

2 MR. CAMERON: So are we jumping right to -- 

3 is everything wrapped up in doing the PRA or ISA or 

4 some combination of that? I mean, is there a larger 

5 issue here that we need to talk about, or are we -- 

6 should we jump to the ISA PRA issue which Yawar 

7 referred to as a methodology. What methodology do you 

8 use to determine risk? I just want to make sure that 

9 we are not missing a larger point and go ahead Alex. 

10 MR. MURRAY: I think we should take a step 

11 back and ask ourselves the question, okay, which is 

12 essentially the first question on there, and that is 

13 are there are should there be a total risk or risk and 

14 safety goals, be they to a member of the public, to a 

15 worker, what have you, in some manner analogous to the 

16 safety goals that exist to reactors? Maybe they would 

17 be different ones, maybe there would be an 

18 environmental version as well as there is in Part 70, 

19 I don't know. 

20 But I think we have to first ask 

21 ourselves, is there some ultimate goal for 

22 safety/risk, some total risk that we are shooting for? 

23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go to Ed and then 

24 Arjun and Mike, we know you are out there and we will 

25 get to you, so you don't even need to raise your hand. 
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1 We won't ignore you. Right Miriam? Okay. Ed. 

2 DR. LYMAN: Yes, well I wonder whether 

3 that, looking at individual risk is the only 

4 appropriate endpoint or if the field is wide open, why 

5 don't you start talking about other issues which may 

6 be relevant to accidents at reprocessing plants, for 

7 instance, long-term land contamination. 

8 Right now there are no NRC regulations 

9 other than those pertaining to NEPA and SAMA, which 

10 even touch on long-term land contamination from 

11 fission products, yet in a reprocessing plant, a tank 

12 accident could well lead to significant economic 

13 consequences as well as long-term land denial and 

14 perhaps there should be an explicit endpoint in the 

15 reprocessing rulemaking having to do with restrictions 

16 on the aggregate release of fission products with 

17 regard to land contamination. 

18 MR. CAMERON: And Ed, I'm sorry, I just 

19 couldn't hear that, in regard to, that one word you 

20 have been using. 

21 DR. LYMAN: Land. 

22 MR. CAMERON: Land. 

23 DR. LYMAN: Contamination. 

24 MR. CAMERON: L-A-N-D. 

25 DR. LYMAN: L-A-N-D. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: L-A-N-D. Okay. 

2 DR. LYMAN: Right. 

3 MR. CAMERON: And let's hear from Arjun and 

4 get some reaction to Ed's point from Yawar and then go 

5 down to Ron. Go ahead. Go ahead. 

6 MR. FARAZ: It's a short point I wanted to 

7 make. In terms of part 70 we do have performance 

8 requirements for environmental contamination or the 

9 environmental performance requirements are there, 

10 which would, you know, address the land contamination 

11 issue. 

12 MR. CAMERON: And let me ask Ed if 

13 something similar to what Yawar is talking about -- 

14 DR. LYMAN: Sorry, what provision is that? 

15 I mean I am familiar with 7023 but -- 

16 MR. FARAZ: Yes, it's 7061, those are the 

17 performance requirements, and it addresses both the -- 

18 it addresses the worker, the member of the public as 

19 well as environment. 

20 DR. LYMAN: Anyone have the regulations 

21 here? 

22 MR. CAMERON: While we are doing this, let 

23 me hear what Rod has to say and then we are going to 

24 come back to Arjun, but we are sort of going from this 

25 overall safety goal and now we talk about land 
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1 contamination. I just want to make sure that we get on 

2 the same page and welcome to Jim Bresee, who has 

3 joined us from the Department of Energy. Thank you 

4 Jim. 

5 MR. McCULLUM: Jim, before I speak, do you 

6 want to introduce yourself, since the mic is on? 

7 MR. CAMERON: Just tell us a little bit 

8 about what you are doing and -- 

9 DR. BRESEE: I am with the fuel cycle R&D 

10 program of the office of nuclear energy and our 

11 purpose in life is to develop advanced technologies 

12 for possible future recycle of used fuel and we have a 

13 variety of alternatives and developing criteria by 

14 which we could do a down selection of alternatives. I 

15 hope I can contribute in that area. 

16 MR. CAMERON: Great, and you know anything 

17 that you want to suggest will be a useful 

18 contribution. Right now we are on the issue of risk, 

19 safety and risk from the facility. 

20 MR. McCULLUM: And I think that -- am I 

21 getting stereo here? I heard an echo of myself. But I 

22 think a lot of it does go to the tool you use to 

23 evaluate risk and a lot of that is where our risk24 conformed, performance-based regulation can talk about 

25 the use of the tool, the regular use of the tool. 
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1 However I think that there's probably 

2 elements of all of the above in that first question in 

3 there, and I think it is important that we be 

4 consistent with established precedent. I mean, the 

5 tools you use to determine the risk may be unique for 

6 a recycling facility I think, even though in terms of 

7 whether you should ISA or PRA and things like that and 

8 we certainly would have a lot to say on that. 

9 Clearly ALARA is going to apply and again, 

10 that's an area where you don't have to do a lot 

11 different for one of these types of facilities, you 

12 know, you don't have to specify in detail the 

13 technology, for example, to put ALARA in place. You 

14 know, we have methodologies for looking at ALARA that 

15 would translate. 

16 I think a lot can be accomplished on risk 

17 to an individual and we saw that in Part 63, the 

18 repository safety regulation. You know, you have a 

19 complex, geologic system and you could attempt to 

20 regulate it at all sorts of different points in the 

21 system, and in Part 60 there was an attempt to do 

22 that, to specify what were called subsystem 

23 performance requirements. 

24 But if you end up specifying the right 

25 tool, which in the case of the repository, was total 
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1 systems performance assessment, case of recycling 

2 facility might be an integrated safety analysis, or of 

3 PRA in some instances, you can use -- you can get a 

4 lot in terms of what is the risk to the individual 

5 from an accident in normal operations. 

6 And then being consistent with established 

7 precedent out there, I mean, we have 10 CFR Part 100, 

8 we have a lot of things out there where we kind of 

9 know what doses are appropriate and that shouldn't 

10 change a lot for recycling facility. A neighbor of a 

11 recycling facility should have the same expectation of 

12 safety that a neighbor of a reactor does. 

13 So I think really the discussion on this 

14 does go to the tool, the methodology. Recognizing you 

15 are going to apply ALARA in any case and recognizing 

16 that a lot is already known about what levels of 

17 individual risk are acceptable and a lot can be done 

18 with accident analysis, acceptable risk. 

19 What you are really trying to do -- and 

20 this gets back to the point Alex made at the very 

21 beginning -- you are trying to make sure you have 

22 adequately captured the hazards, and again, in the 

23 technology neutral, risk-informed regulation, you 

24 wouldn't specify please evaluate the following 16 

25 hazards because this would vary. 
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1 But you need to specify a regulation that 

2 will drive confidence that the methodology will 

3 identify the hazards and will appropriately evaluate 

4 those things that stand between the hazards and the 

5 public and provide assurance that those things -- and 

6 in an integrated safety analysis they would be called 

7 IROFS -- that those things will function with the 

8 adequate defense in depth, adequate assurances. 

9 So I think this is doable, again in a 

10 risk-informed, performance-based way and I think that 

11 and I think that a lot of that goes to the 

12 methodology, is providing a regulation that will 

13 specify a level of rigor that indeed the hazards will 

14 be -- the applicant will communicate an understanding 

15 of his hazards and will provide assurances that the 

16 things that come between those hazards and the public 

17 are adequate. 

18 MR. CAMERON: So your approach is that 

19 there would be something in the rule that would 

20 require the ISA to identify hazards or perhaps there 

21 might be, I think, the word semi or the phrase semi22 quantitative was used and that would be the way to 

23 approach the controlling the risk from the facility? 

24 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, correct, given that the 

25 overall goals are also that you are going to use that 
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1 tool to demonstrate that you are providing a level of 

2 protection that is also consistent with the level of 

3 protection you have provided other facilities, and so 

4 that should be articulated, but I don't think there's 

5 a need to reinvent the wheel there. 

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay, because that wheel is 

7 already been invented. All right. Let's go to Arjun 

8 and then we will go over to Steve and come back to 

9 Yawar and Ed. Arjun? 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, a couple of concerns. 

11 The idea that you can do a risk assessment, especially 

12 an integrated one, has an underlying assumption we 

13 never talk about that you can add up all the risks, 

14 that when you have different types of accidents, let 

15 alone routine releases and risks, that you can add 

16 them all up, that you can multiply the probability of 

17 an accident with the consequences, assuming you know 

18 them both well enough and come up with a risk. 

19 Whereas, you know, a lot of people don't 

20 trust risk assessments and don't want them done. I 

21 don't belong to that group, but I do have reservations 

22 with this idea that you can add up all the risks. It 

23 doesn't correspond to how we live and it doesn't 

24 correspond to common sense. 

25 The small probability of getting AIDS from 
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1 a transfusion that hasn't been screened for the virus 

2 multiplied by the probability of the consequences -- 

3 multiplied by the probability, the consequence could 

4 give you the same number as the large probability of 

5 getting a cold by going to work in winter. 

6 And the two -- we clearly protect 

7 ourselves very differently from those two risks and we 

8 don't add them up in practice and if a hospital told 

9 you they weren't going to screen blood to save money, 

10 you would be outraged, even though the probability 

11 were very small, and the average damage might be 10 

12 bucks or whatever. 

13 I think the fact that risk assessment 

14 mixes up large consequences, like the Mayak Explosion. 

15 Let's talk about reprocessing and not AIDS: 6,000 

16 square miles contaminated for decades, 30 towns and 

17 villages which had to be evacuated, long-term land 

18 denial from a high-level waste tank explosion, and I 

19 think that can't be equated to the consequences of a 

20 leak. 

21 The different kinds of accidents and the 

22 fact that we are adding all of these things up, I 

23 would say that for high-consequence accidents, the 

24 risks -- the consequences themselves have to be 

25 represented as a certain kind of societal risk, if it 
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1 is credible that it can happen. 

2 And the second problem is something I 

3 referred to earlier, is can you calculate the 

4 probabilities of these accidents? I think the 

5 Challenger accident showed that the prior calculations 

6 of these accidents did not correspond to the actual 

7 risks. 

8 Now we have had one explosion in a high9 level waste tank. We had a problem at La Hague with a 

10 failure of electrical power for several hours in April 

11 1980. Fortunately there was no accident that resulted 

12 from that. How are we going to take those events and 

13 actually calculate the probability of a high-level 

14 waste tank explosion at a commercial facility? 

15 I am not quite clear. You don't have 

16 enough data points. You have some indication: two 

17 types of tanks were kind of different; their cooling 

18 arrangements were different; and the regulatory 

19 arrangements were different. 

20 So I think these problems are -- when we 

21 say risk assessment, there are certain routine kinds 

22 of things that can be evaluated pretty easily and or 

23 without much difficulty and added up, and I would 

24 agree with that. 

25 But when you mix up that with severe 
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1 accidents and consequences as is routine, I think this 

2 specially needs to be revisited with reprocessing 

3 plants, and especially aqueous reprocessing plants. 

4 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks Arjun and we are 

5 going to go to Steve and I guess I would just put out 

6 a general question for all of you, is how would the 

7 approach that Rod suggested, how would that take care 

8 of Arjun's concerns or do we need to worry about those 

9 concerns? 

10 But go ahead Steve. 

11 MR. SCHILTHELM: I think I agree with a lot 

12 of what Arjun said. We tried, when we presented this 

13 white paper to the NRC, we tried to deal with that -- 

14 those concepts from the standpoint of thresholds, 

15 trying to recognize that maybe protecting workers 

16 against accidental things that might happen in the 

17 plant required a different set of tools than 

18 protecting the public against things -- large 

19 accidents that could actually affect the public. 

20 We offered thresholds consistent with the 

21 performance objectives that are in Part 70 for high 

22 and intermediate consequences. But I think what you 

23 are offering is maybe there's an ultra-high sort of 

24 consequence concept that may be appropriate. 

25 But we tried to deal with that thought 
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1 process within the white paper, because if we look at 

2 the MOX facility and we look at the licensing in the 

3 MOX facility, although the standards for protection of 

4 the worker and protection of the public are written in 

5 the same construct -- there could be a high 

6 consequence to the worker or a high consequence to the 

7 public -- the practice seems to be that protection of 

8 the public needs to meet a higher standard than 

9 protection of the worker, even though the consequence 

10 bin is the same. 

11 So we tried to deal with that in the white 

12 paper by creating some thresholds and offering that 

13 for events that could affect the public, there needed 

14 to be more thought given to a quantitative analysis, 

15 versus qualitative. Whether or not we hit the mark 

16 doing that, that was our attempt and that was what we 

17 were trying to recognize. 

18 MR. CAMERON: And I am going to -- yes go 

19 ahead. Go ahead Arjun. 

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: How do you deal with an 

21 issue where you don't have very much data to be able 

22 to calculate a probability? That is one of my big 

23 problems with this whole exercise. 

24 MR. SCHILTHELM: I will take that on 

25 because I was the safety manager at an NRC-licensed 
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1 facility and I was deeply involved in the conception 

2 of Part 70 and the ISA concepts. 

3 There is a significant danger to giving 

4 engineers tools that result in a number and letting 

5 them run with the number. My number is good, therefore 

6 I am safe. That is not safety. 

7 And there is a danger to believing that 

8 the input is good enough to justify the output. It's 

9 just what you said. So I am not a huge advocate of 

10 quantitative risk analysis, particularly when people 

11 are involved and it's not a machine, and particularly 

12 when the data to support the failure of the machine is 

13 not well-understood. 

14 And I am just echoing what you said, so I 

15 am not a probabilistic advocate from that perspective. 

16 MR. CAMERON: And just a follow-up on that 

17 Steve, so that you would think that an ISA -- let me 

18 put it, a non-quantitative assessment might be more 

19 effective. I don't know if I can do that but -- to 

20 you. 

21 MR. SCHILTHELM: No, I think we did believe 

22 that an ISA is more effective, absent good data, and I 

23 think the MOX experience -- and Sven is over there 

24 nodding -- that the lack of data for some of these 

25 chemical processes really inhibits the ability to do a 
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1 good PRA. 

2 A PRA can be done well, don't get me 

3 wrong, but it has its limitations. 

4 MR. CAMERON: But you said you talked about 

5 the danger of giving an engineer -- and maybe there's 

6 other people that they would be dangerous to, too -- 

7 give them a number and then you are going to run with 

8 it and just assume that you are safe. 

9 Before we go up to Yawar and Ed, I want to 

10 hear from Rod and John and then we'll go up to that 

11 end of the table. 

12 MR. McCULLUM: Yes. Thank you, Chip. And I 

13 will say, without getting into detail at this point, 

14 that industry will be further weighing in on this 

15 topic of ISA and PRA and to what level can you 

16 quantify things and to what level you may not need to 

17 quantify things. 

18 I think Arjun's example is an outstanding 

19 test of this very question, in that if a tank exploded 

20 and did the ruinous damage -- and I am not familiar 

21 with the Mayak incident, but you know -- obviously 

22 either one of two things did not happen. 

23 Obviously the hazard was not understood or 

24 appropriate mitigative features were not put in place 

25 in between the hazard and the public, and an 
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1 integrated safety analysis, and if the regulation 

2 required enough rigor, without specifying the details 

3 because you want to be technology neutral, you want to 

4 be risk-informed, performance-based and I am sorry for 

5 being a broken record on that, but I think it is 

6 possible to put in place a regulation which would 

7 require the applicant to assure that he had identified 

8 all the hazards and understood -- he or she had 

9 identified all the hazards and understood them, and 

10 placed in a defense in depth manner sufficient 

11 barriers in between those hazards and the workers and 

12 the public. 

13 And one can look at the old Soviet Union 

14 as an example where maybe that kind of thinking just 

15 didn't happen as often as it used to or should have 

16 occurred, but given that example I do believe, again 

17 focusing on your idea you are going to protect an 

18 individual, be that individual the worker, or be that 

19 person who lives on your fence-line and will stay 

20 there for 30 days after an accident, whatever the case 

21 might be -- you can indeed put in place a regulation 

22 that will require that the hazard be understood and 

23 communicated publicly and that those measures are in 

24 place. 

25 And this is a subject we do look forward 
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1 to additional dialogue. I think you will hear from 

2 industry on this subject and we would like, with the 

3 same folks around the table perhaps in the future to 

4 discuss in more detail, but yes, again, if you put the 

5 right amount of rigor into it and you understand your 

6 hazards, this can be done and accidents like that can 

7 be prevented and certainly in that case, should not 

8 have happened. 

9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 

10 very much, Rod. John and then we are going to check in 

11 with Ed and Yawar. 

12 DR. FLACK: Yes, a few things. Just to 

13 clarify a few points, at least in my own mind to make. 

14 Well, one is completeness and being able to capture 

15 all the hazards. It goes without saying, I mean that's 

16 a very important part of the process. 

17 But the part about not having the data and 

18 therefore not wanting to do a quantitative analysis, 

19 to me, I don't think it justifies it in a way that 

20 there is uncertainty with the data, and one needs to 

21 know what that uncertainty is. 

22 Now we could say, well, it's very 

23 difficult to deal with that uncertainty. That's fine. 

24 But at least I know it's there. And I also know when 

25 somebody is trying to write down a quantitative value, 
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1 I know what his thinking is and what he thinks he 

2 needs to achieve, and therefore I get that feedback 

3 from the analysis. 

4 Without that information, I don't know how 

5 to deal with it. I mean, it's just a matter of 

6 opinion. It's very difficult to get people to agree on 

7 things. And John Garrick once made a comment. He said 

8 that well, I can get people to agree on a number, but 

9 it's very difficult to have them agree on the 

10 uncertainty. 

11 And how true that is. And what we are 

12 dealing with is uncertainty, and I think by not 

13 recognizing that, I think there's a tendency to push 

14 it under the rug, and say well, okay, since we can't 

15 quantify, we don't have the data, we have got -- let's 

16 do it this way and let's get -- resolve the issue. 

17 But I think that's a mistake and I think 

18 that by trying to quantify something, you not only 

19 write down what you know and what you don't know in 

20 that way, by looking at the values and the 

21 uncertainties about those values, but also it tells 

22 you what you need to achieve. 

23 And the sensitivity of that to the end 

24 result, because now I have a model, now I have an 

25 understanding, now I can play with sensitivities and 
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1 understand what effect that has on the system, which I 

2 couldn't do without this model. 

3 So to me, I think resisting that and 

4 saying well, it's just too difficult to do or we don't 

5 have something, I don't think that justifies not doing 

6 it. Well anyhow, that's my opinion on the matter. 

7 Thank you. 

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks John. Ed, do you 

9 want to chime in on this and then we will see what 

10 Yawar has? 

11 DR. LYMAN: Well I mean I think the 

12 question that you have to deal with is if you are 

13 going to be creating some hybrid of Part 50 and Part 

14 70, are you going to go with a deterministic set of 

15 design basis accidents? Or are you going to go with a 

16 semi-quantitative hand-waving approach with regard to 

17 likelihood? 

18 And I would say that from what I have 

19 heard, at least, there seems to be some sentiment that 

20 we are not going to be in a position to estimate the 

21 likelihoods well enough that you can actually use that 

22 Part 70, at least until there's significantly more 

23 operating experience with some of these facilities. 

24 So I would think to err on the side of 

25 caution, that a Part 50-like approach, you specify a 
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1 set of events which could lead to high consequence for 

2 the public and that you have to demonstrate that there 

3 are controls in place so that the dose will be limited 

4 in a deterministic fashion and not try to play this 

5 game of highly unlikely, unlikely, likely, if you 

6 don't have the inputs to be able to make those 

7 determinations reasonably. 

8 MR. CAMERON: So you would prefer seeing a 

9 deterministic approach used? 

10 DR. LYMAN: I think that that should be the 

11 foundation of the new regulation for -- the 

12 fundamental safety basis should be a set of 

13 deterministic events. 

14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Yawar? 

15 MR. FARAZ: Yes. In terms of identifying 

16 the hazards and the accident sequences, clearly, in a 

17 chemical-like plant, or a chemical facility, clearly 

18 the approaches used for ISAs have been very effective. 

19 They have been used in chemical 

20 facilities. They have been used for fuel-cycle 

21 facilities quite effectively in identifying the 

22 hazards and the accident sequences. 

23 However, the methods that we have used 

24 have some very significant shortcomings. One is that 

25 the methods that are typically used are semi-
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1 quantitative. They only have two levels of criteria, 

2 performance criteria: high consequence and immediate 

3 consequence. They don't address, or they don't 

4 differentiate between a high consequence event that 

5 might impact one individual versus a high consequence 

6 event that might impact 10s or 100s of individuals. 

7 They are treated the same. 

8 So that's clearly a shortcoming in the 

9 methods that are used. Now, for existing fuel cycle 

10 facilities, that's fine because they tend not to have 

11 a lot of off-site risk. But in a facility like a 

12 reprocessing plant, where the inventories are very 

13 large and off-site impacts can occur if they are not 

14 properly protected against, then we need to think 

15 about something much better than the existing approach 

16 that they use for fuel cycle facilities. 

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go to Alex and 

18 then Sven and then Arjun. Alex? 

19 MR. MURRAY: Thank you very much Chip. I 

20 appreciate it. Just a couple of points. And first, 

21 just by way of clarification, I think the event at 

22 Mayak is better known to more people as the Kyshtym 

23 event if I am correct. Yes? Okay. 

24 So, one can easily search on that and find 

25 out details about that in any one of a number of 
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1 servers. Just also for clarification, it was for -- it 

2 was a high-level waste tank from a different type of 

3 process than is being considered by anybody that we 

4 know of today. It's basically a historical process. 

5 What I am hearing, and I have heard 

6 several people mention it now, about uncertainties and 

7 so forth. And again I throw it out, we get back to 

8 Part 50-like space in some areas, this concept of a 

9 design basis accident, the high-level waste tank shall 

10 not explode. Okay? The chemical cloud cannot happen. A 

11 criticality event cannot occur. 

12 And I ask the assembled group, are they -- 

13 is the thought that there should be some accidents 

14 that should be design basis like, deterministic 

15 analyses, some others which should be ISA or PRA-like? 

16 I do not know. But I throw that out there. 

17 I will also add, getting back to numbers 

18 and I have heard MOX mentioned a couple of times, 

19 having been intimately involved with MOX, being an 

20 observer with MOX, being involved with MOX going back 

21 30 plus years, I can tell you that when ISA analyses 

22 were done and presented without quantification for 

23 non-linear or more complicated event sequences, the 

24 staff, in order to support their safety determination, 

25 were asked, either by management or review committees, 
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1 to do a quantitative analysis. 

2 And again, I throw out to potential 

3 applicants to consider, in some situations, do you 

4 want to do your numerical analysis yourselves, or do 

5 you want to rely upon the staff? It takes time. It's 

6 uncertain, what have you. Staff should be reviewing. 

7 We should not be designing based upon numerical 

8 analyses. Okay? But I throw that out and I think 

9 basically -- 

10 Oh, last thing, I have heard a couple of 

11 people mention threshold, different products for 

12 members of the public. Is there a threshold? Should we 

13 consider a threshold for different types of analyses? 

14 I don't know. Thank you. 

15 MR. CAMERON: Very helpful though, good 

16 food for thought. Sven? 

17 DR. BADER: Thanks Alex for stealing a lot 

18 of my thunder there. Just from the MOX fuel 

19 fabrication experiences, yes, we are -- we definitely 

20 did an ISA summary and we had considered doing a PRA 

21 and it got to the point where we were, as Steve said, 

22 had an engineer sitting around manipulating numbers 

23 and it goes back to the uncertainty quote that I think 

24 you used, John, from Mr. Garrick. 

25 Another problem we have is this is a 
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1 chemical process and it's not a Boolean logic often. 

2 Often we didn't have a valve turning off or on. We had 

3 several different combinations of chemicals having to 

4 be mixed in a certain pattern that would cause an 

5 event. 

6 And really, the only way we found a 

7 meaningful approach to it was through the ISA 

8 approach, where we did a detailed HAZOP on this, 

9 looking at all the sequences and then we had computer 

10 models that actually went and modeled the deviations 

11 that we assumed are in the HAZOPs. 

12 So it was an integrated approach and yes, 

13 we did have some numbers because that's what our 

14 models were showing, but they were not probabilities. 

15 They were, you are not going to have a runaway, red 

16 oil or hydroxylamine nitrate type of event explosion 

17 hazard. 

18 So from the MOX facility, our main 

19 emphasis or our main insight that we saw was that for 

20 mechanical devices, yes, we could do some sort of PRA, 

21 those are the good devices that we could do a 

22 mitigation on certain events, certain release events. 

23 But on chemical processes, we really 

24 didn't see any alternative to the ISA process. And I 

25 will leave it at that. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks Sven. Arjun? 

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. I didn't want my 

3 remarks to be misunderstood, if they were, that if you 

4 don't have sufficient data that you shouldn't do a 

5 quantitative assessment. It might be you have a lot of 

6 other options. Maybe you should look for a different 

7 way of doing things. Maybe you should look for ways to 

8 generate data that are more reliable from similar 

9 facilities. 

10 It's not an invitation for hand-waving. 

11 That's not my intent for raising the question, just in 

12 response to what John said there. I think ultimately 

13 some form of quantitative handle on the consequences 

14 of accident sequences is very important, and so I just 

15 wanted to clarify that, that I don't think industry or 

16 anybody else should misunderstand my position that if 

17 you don't have the data that you can just decide to do 

18 without it. 

19 You have to have -- maybe just tell the 

20 licensee to go back and know more about their process 

21 before they make a license application. 

22 The second thing is that if you have 

23 extremely high consequence accidents that are 

24 possible, and it's true that PUREX is different than 

25 what they had in the Soviet Union and -- but the high-
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1 level waste tanks still contain fission products that 

2 have some potential for explosion in an event of loss 

3 of cooling, and that's simply there. 

4 And I think maybe a design requirement, if 

5 you have extremely high consequence accidents, should 

6 be that the consequences should be reduced, that the 

7 design should be such that you can't just rely on the 

8 multiplication of a -- calculate a low probability and 

9 say, oh it's 10 to the minus 7 or 10 to the minus 8 

10 and it's not design basis, or 10 to the minus 6 

11 multiplied by 10 to the 10 and your damage is $10,000 

12 or whatever. 

13 I think you have to go back to the drawing 

14 board and come up with a different design that doesn't 

15 have high consequence accidents, and maybe you need to 

16 put a containment dome around the tanks. I don't know. 

17 Something, a different process that doesn't generate 

18 the same kind of liquid waste, that if you lose the 

19 cooling it might explode. 

20 MR. CAMERON: So that would be one bottom 

21 line for you, is that for high consequence, require 

22 mitigation? Okay. Rod, and then we will go to Sven and 

23 then we will go to John. 

24 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, thanks for coming back 

25 to me and I just wanted to real quick note another 
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1 instance of agreement here between industry and Arjun. 

2 What you just wrote down there, I think that's the 

3 same thing I was saying where you have got to 

4 understand the hazards and assure you have put 

5 appropriate measures in between the hazards and the 

6 public and the workers. 

7 And again, that's probably what was not 

8 done in either case, or at least in one of those cases 

9 at this Mayak facility. But we believe that integrated 

10 safety analysis and a regulation that requires an 

11 appropriate amount of rigor in an integrated safety 

12 analysis, could in fact assure that that gets done. 

13 And without having to specify a bunch of 

14 predetermined, design basis accidents for facilities 

15 you can't in a technology neutral know in advance what 

16 they will be. 

17 But I would agree with that. You need to 

18 be able to demonstrate you understand the hazards and 

19 that you have mitigated them. And so I think that's 

20 notable. 

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Rod. Sven? 

22 DR. BADER: I just wanted to add, one of 

23 the things about mature technologies is that you don't 

24 solely rely on prevention. You have these defense in 

25 depth mitigated features available to you as well. 
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1 Then NFFF is designed with many of those features that 

2 are found in the mature plants in France AREVA runs. 

3 And another point was when we did these 

4 PRAs -- we have done some PRAs -- is that under Part 

5 70, where you have IROFS, it's very difficult to 

6 distinguish in an PRA, what you are crediting as IROF 

7 when you are trying to do a PRA and credit everything, 

8 that includes your defense in depth features. 

9 So there's a fundamental issue that we 

10 had, what do you pick out of your long list of action 

11 items or long list of fault trees, what items do you 

12 pick out of that to be the actual IROF? It's not a 

13 simple task to perform. 

14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. And John? 

15 DR. FLACK: No, I agree with that. I think 

16 it's more of a process and it's not risk-based. It's a 

17 risk-informed process. So you are using that 

18 information to make decisions on defense in depth. You 

19 are not saying it's just a low number, we are not 

20 going to do anything about it. 

21 So I think that basically goes back to the 

22 Commission guidance, not to just base things on 

23 probability, but also just to be informed by that in 

24 making a decision and then from that, decide how much 

25 defense in depth you need. 
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1 So high consequence events would get a 

2 certain level of defense in depth in any case, 

3 depending on how much it's the likelihood, whether 

4 it's credible and so on, but of course that you have 

5 that on the table to make those kinds of decisions, 

6 it's another piece of information to use that if you 

7 didn't go through that process, you wouldn't have. 

8 That's all I wanted to say. 

9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And let's go to Tom, 

10 Tom Hiltz. 

11 MR. HILTZ: Thank you Chip. I just have 

12 sort of a question. I mean the discussion for me has 

13 been very interesting, but it sort of hasn't 

14 punctuated on any real solution. I have heard that ISA 

15 is very useful. I have heard talk about the 

16 limitations of PRA. 

17 I guess my question is, if anybody has any 

18 insights, if we want to be faithful to the Commission 

19 policy statement that PRA should be used to the extent 

20 supported by the state of the art, what is the state 

21 of the art that we can use PRA for reprocessing, for a 

22 potential reprocessing facility? 

23 And what is necessary for us in order to 

24 make a safety decision using PRA? 

25 MR. CAMERON: Let's get opinions on that 
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1 point, as Tom called it, a punctuation. Rod? 

2 MR. McCULLUM: Yes. I think PRA can 

3 complement ISA and I think consistent with the 

4 Commission policy statement. I think there may be 

5 areas where, when you do have systems that are 

6 analogous to things that exist elsewhere in industry, 

7 that you do have data on, you can use it to get risk 

8 insights. 

9 And again, I am getting a little ahead of 

10 some things that we are working on right now in 

11 industry, where we would want to get back to you on a 

12 greater level of detail. 

13 But we would say that ISA should be the 

14 core of what you would call the safety case and then 

15 that you might also look for areas of opportunities to 

16 gain additional insights through PRA. 

17 But again you have got 104 commercial 

18 reactors, and that policy statement was written 

19 against that backdrop: 104 commercial reactors that 

20 have between 20, 30, 40 years' experience each. They 

21 could fall into two flavors: BWRs and PWRs most of 

22 them, well, Fort St. Vrain shut down. 

23 So you have this incredible population of 

24 data on very similar systems and we are not going to 

25 come at you with 104 applications for recycling 
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1 facilities and we don't have 104 existing ones that 

2 you can compare them to. 

3 So you have to start out recognizing the 

4 limitations, and what are the tools to again assure 

5 that you understand the hazards and you put the right 

6 measures in between the hazards and the people and to 

7 use PRA for insights. 

8 But to expect that PRA can play the same 

9 role for a recycling facility that it plays for 

10 reactor, probably you can't get here from there. 

11 MR. HILTZ: And I just want to be clear, 

12 that's not my suggestion and I think the policy 

13 statement says PRA shall be used to increase in all 

14 regulatory matters to the extent supported by the 

15 state of the art. 

16 So I am not suggesting that we would want 

17 to use where we are in the reactor world to say well, 

18 we have to have something directly analogous to that 

19 as we consider how to license a reprocessing facility. 

20 My question is, where are we with the 

21 state of the art and what is the level of application 

22 that we can reasonably apply for a commercial 

23 reprocessing facility that provides us meaningful 

24 safety insight, provides us meaningful safety benefit 

25 and helps us make informed decisions? 
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1 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, I just wanted to 

2 clarify. I didn't mean to imply that's what you were 

3 saying. I was trying to draw an extreme contrast 

4 there. And I think that's an area, if we recognize 

5 that the heart and soul of the safety case is going to 

6 come from ISA, then you have the task of saying okay, 

7 where are the areas we can apply PRA? Where are -- how 

8 do we trigger, okay, the system is something that we 

9 have experience with and/or is associated with a 

10 hazard where we might want to know more, making it 

11 worth it as well, again, just generating a number for 

12 the sake of it. 

13 And I think that that's something that 

14 both industry and NRC as well as the stakeholders need 

15 to continue to look at. But I think if you recognize 

16 that you are starting with this pretty good tool in 

17 integrated safety analysis, and you are looking at how 

18 do I complement it with a PRA, it's a lot more 

19 manageable of a task than oh my gosh, how am I going 

20 to quantify all this stuff to make a safety case. 

21 And yes, I didn't mean to misapply what 

22 you were saying with an extreme example there. 

23 MR. CAMERON: So Tom, is it you are looking 

24 for some more specifics on where PRAs could be used in 

25 this process than just well, we will use them where it 
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1 is feasible to use them? Are you looking for areas of 

2 examples for where a PRA could be used? 

3 MR. HILTZ: I think I am hearing that we 

4 should do quantitative analysis that we will 

5 potentially learn from it, that we can manage the 

6 uncertainties and maybe we can understand the 

7 sensitivities. 

8 To me that's not the -- I mean, ultimately 

9 I think where the fine point that we need to point on 

10 this, we need to figure out, I think, what the right 

11 balance is between the quantitative and the 

12 qualitative, to what extent we can use the PRA by the 

13 state of the art consistent with the policy statement, 

14 and sort of reach some consensus about how to move 

15 forward with balancing that quantitative and 

16 qualitative. So I hope that helps. 

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, well that's good and I 

18 know that you have to leave a little early so let me 

19 get Sven and John on the table quickly with comments. 

20 DR. BADER: I just have a real quick 

21 question. I know you guys went to Japan and Rokkasho, 

22 I know, does some selective PRA. Is there any lessons 

23 learned that you guys gained from that experience? 

24 MR. HILTZ: Yes. What Sven is referring to 

25 is that last December, we went over and did a vertical 
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1 slice at the Rokkasho facility on risk assessment and 

2 materials, controls and accountability, and yes, we 

3 did bring insights back that will help inform our 

4 ultimate decision. 

5 But I think we are also looking at this 

6 forum, to help inform that decision and while it did 

7 bring back insights, there is still I think arguments 

8 on both sides of the scale here about to what level we 

9 should use quantitative and to what level we should 

10 use qualitative. 

11 I mean I think if we had gotten all the 

12 answers, we probably would say hey, we don't need to 

13 have any more discussion on this. But we didn't. We 

14 just -- it just continued to help inform our process. 

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And John? 

16 DR. FLACK: Well, I think there's one thing 

17 at least I will speak for myself and my own views on 

18 this, and I think for reprocessing, ISA does not go 

19 far enough. I think -- I don't know if everybody 

20 agrees with that, but I just don't think it is going 

21 to work by itself. I think more has to be done, number 

22 one. 

23 And I think it's more, not only for 

24 licensing the facility, but also how do you 

25 demonstrate how well it operates downstream in the 
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1 FCOP? I mean they are running into trouble with that 

2 right now. I think you have to do some more analyses 

3 than just an ISA. 

4 I understand there's a lot of information 

5 in ISA. You can build on that. I mean it's there. It's 

6 great. It's like the PRA notebooks, you have got tons 

7 of information there to build on. You are pretty far 

8 there. 

9 Now the question is, is how much more 

10 value going the next step will provide you, right? So 

11 I think that when you start to look at what you 

12 already know and what you don't know from what you 

13 have done, and what you would like to know in order to 

14 give that extra bit that you are going to need, both 

15 in licensing and for operations later on, when you go 

16 inspect these facilities, and how do you know there's 

17 an issue there, you have got to do something about 

18 that. 

19 I think you can't just look at just one 

20 piece and then say this is good enough for this and 

21 now you are going to have to deal with it later on. I 

22 think you have to make that determination now and I 

23 think it's a very important question that needs to be 

24 answered. 

25 And it's not just quantifying everything 
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1 in the plant, I mean the facility, but there has to be 

2 a way you go about providing some of that insight in 

3 order to understand it, understand what risk this 

4 facility presents and when it does, if it should get 

5 into trouble, how do you know it? 

6 I mean, that's a very fundamental question 

7 that needs to be answered. And I think the technology 

8 is there to do it. People say you can't use it because 

9 I can't treat human error. But we have been dealing 

10 with human error within the nuclear facilities, power 

11 plants, from way back, you know that Tom, I mean, we 

12 started way back when we were talking about these 

13 PRAs. 

14 So I think one has to go back and really 

15 do the work and look at it and see where the value 

16 could come from and how you would use it and then take 

17 it to the next step and then say okay, here's where 

18 the criteria should be. 

19 So I think we are pretty close but I think 

20 there's more work that needs to be done on this. 

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let me ask Rod a quick 

22 question. Rod, since you mentioned it a couple of 

23 times, that the task force was trying to put more 

24 flesh on the bones so to speak on this particular 

25 issue -- 
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1 MR. McCULLUM: Yes. 

2 MR. CAMERON: and that you would be 

3 submitting that to --? 

4 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, we are envisioning 

5 another white paper on this topic and I think we are 

6 hearing some things here today that we want to be sure 

7 we reflect onto that. 

8 FFC. When you submit the white paper, and 

9 I don't know whether it would be part of the November 

10 5 comment or whatever, but will there be a possibility 

11 that others around the table who aren't on the task 

12 force, that there will be some opportunity for people 

13 to respond to that? 

14 Because you may be moving the ball forward 

15 in trying to answer Tom's question, and I'm just 

16 thinking that it would be, will others have an 

17 opportunity to comment on that? 

18 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, I mean obviously we 

19 will send it in a letter that will be public, but 

20 rather than just say, you know, watch ADAMS, I think I 

21 could distribute it to some of the others who are on 

22 here. And I would further encourage NRC to set up a 

23 specific public meeting in reaction to it. 

24 MR. CAMERON: Just to work on that one part 

25 -- 
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1 MR. McCULLUM: I mean this is one where -- 

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

3 MR. McCULLUM: I think we all recognize 

4 what tools what we have. We all recognize the 

5 limitations of those tools. We all kind of see a 

6 vision of where we want to go, and I think if we 

7 continue to put the right amount of experts in the 

8 room together as well as the stakeholders, we can get 

9 from where we are to where we need to be for the type 

10 of regulation that again, can be technology neutral, 

11 risk-informed, performance-based and provide 

12 assurances of safety. 

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And that would be -- 

14 that could be a focused discussion. We need to -- I am 

15 going to ask Miriam to see about the public, and while 

16 she is going to do that, Alex, wave your tent. Yes, go 

17 ahead. 

18 MR. MURRAY: Thank you very much Chip. I 

19 just wanted to comment a little bit about state of the 

20 art, PRA, ISA and everything. In general, many of the 

21 methods which we are using for fuel cycle facilities 

22 started in the chemical industry. The chemical process 

23 industry basically has continued to develop and refine 

24 its techniques. 

25 In general, when they do use an ISA, they 
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1 don't just have the three by three matrix that we have 

2 in Part 70. They generally have at least a five by 

3 five matrix, much finer if you will binning or 

4 gradation or categorization of events and 

5 probabilities, consequences and probabilities. 

6 Having said that, the chemical industry 

7 has also gone more towards what I would call a poor 

8 man's PRA. They use the term layer of protection 

9 analysis, or LOPA, where instead of doing if you will 

10 fault tree analysis or PRA analyses based upon 

11 components, they tend to do it more at a system or 

12 multi-component level. 

13 And that is perhaps something that we 

14 should kick around here or consider as we move forward 

15 on this, but definitely it is done. 

16 And the last thing I would say about the 

17 level of capability of PRA, I would say in both theory 

18 and practice, if one has the time, one can do it on 

19 anything. The Japanese in the `90s, for example, they 

20 went and did a very good PRA on red oil events. Okay 

21 it is out there. Very detailed at the component level. 

22 One -- if you look at the chemical 

23 industry again, for some of the -- I will use the 

24 higher hazard operations -- they look to doing a PRA 

25 type analysis because it is very complicated, it's not 
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1 if you will more of a linear logic, it's a very 

2 complex logic. They have to -- and it's potentially a 

3 high consequence event. You blow up the refinery. Or 

4 you blow up the phosgene production unit. Those are 

5 bad events. So they want to make sure they understand 

6 what is important and they go to a full quantitative 

7 analysis, PRA analysis, so they know what is important 

8 to safety ultimately. Thank you. 

9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you again. 

10 MR. PIERSON: This is Bob Pierson. I wanted 

11 to make one point, and that is that we are tending to 

12 use the term ISA and PRA interchangeably and really 

13 they are two different analyses. 

14 An ISA is a valuation of a process. You 

15 are looking at whether a process will fail and you 

16 assign items relied on for safety to prevent that 

17 process from failing or causing a consequence. 

18 A PRA looks at all the components of a 

19 facility, all the processes of a facility, and 

20 measures the overall risk of the facility. So from the 

21 start, you are not -- in a PRA and ISA -- you are not 

22 even looking really at the same thing. You are looking 

23 at a piece of the puzzle with an ISA, and assessing 

24 whether each piece of that puzzle will prevent you 

25 from having an accident, and that constitutes the 
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1 integrated portion of your safety analysis. 

2 In a PRA you are looking at all the 

3 intermediate pieces of the process, and evaluating a 

4 failure mode of them, and coming up with a total 

5 failure mode of the whole facility. But that is not 

6 what an ISA does. 

7 So I think it's important to make the 

8 distinction there, because if you don't do that, you 

9 are really -- you are comparing apples and oranges. 

10 The other thing is, an ISA or a PRA, 

11 there's always going to be uncertainty in both of 

12 them. There's always going to be some sort of analytic 

13 pools that you can use and I think what you need to 

14 avoid doing is thinking that somehow an ISA is 

15 inferior to a PRA which is somehow better. 

16 I worked with PRAs many years ago. In 

17 fact, the gentleman talked about the space shuttle. We 

18 did PRAs on the space shuttle and at the time we were 

19 coming out ostensibly about one in 25 missions would 

20 end up with a failure. 

21 Now those were probably more like an ISA 

22 not a PRA, because we couldn't assign failure indices 

23 to each of the components. But I think an ISA 

24 represents whatever the technique, if it's applied 

25 correctly, it's certainly as rigorous and as 
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1 appropriate for a highly complex system as a PRA, 

2 because I think, going back to what someone said 

3 earlier, if you are not careful, you can be mesmerized 

4 by erroneous numbers which give you a false sense of 

5 security if you are applying simply a PRA. 

6 But that doesn't mean that you want to 

7 throw all the quantitative analysis out. I think in 

8 some cases quantitative analysis helps significantly. 

9 So what I would suggest is, be careful 

10 about trying to compare ISA and PRA. What you are 

11 really trying to determine is what the consequences of 

12 an accident are and how you are going to prevent that. 

13 Whether you achieve that with an ISA or a 

14 PRA really isn't as important as doing that correctly 

15 and I think for most facilities, where you don't have 

16 as the gentleman said, Boolean processes, an ISA is 

17 probably a more usable process because it doesn't 

18 depend on a series of events that lend themselves to a 

19 Boolean process, which classically a PRA does and you 

20 are probably going to -- if you are not careful, you 

21 are going to be lost with -- you are going to be 

22 mesmerized by data which really isn't relevant to the 

23 overall safety judgment. So with that I will close. 

24 Thank you. 

25 MS. JUCKETT: Is there anyone else on this 
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1 side before I wander over? 

2 MR. EHINGER: Mike Ehinger from Oak Ridge. 

3 Chip, I think I should have taken your invitation to 

4 be at the table, because I have written down a lot of 

5 notes here on what has been said. 

6 I guess to start -- I guess I will start, 

7 I think I agree with what Rod said, I think. I don't 

8 know that this whole probability discussion is really 

9 generic to the reprocessing issue. I mean it's a 

10 bigger issue, and I think that we are seeing that 

11 there's a lot of uncertainty in the way things are 

12 done. 

13 I am really surprised that you guys used 

14 the Mayak tank explosion even in this discussion. One 

15 little aside. I think it was the very first visit 

16 anybody made to the RT-1 plant at Mayak. We had -- we 

17 were sitting in the office with the director and he 

18 was recounting the history of Mayak and the RT-1 and 

19 RT-1 was the first reprocessing plant the Russians 

20 built. 

21 And his comment was -- this was 1948 -- 

22 and his comment was, "We were a little unhappy with 

23 the performance because the workers were receiving 150 

24 hour per year average exposure, so we shut it down two 

25 years later and built another one." 
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1 But so, I don't even know why you even 

2 bring up the Mayak tank explosion and relate that to 

3 the issues. But I will come back to the whole. 

4 You started out in the very beginning with 

5 some very hard criteria. About less than one tenth of 

6 one percent of a risk in this way. These seem to be 

7 something you can hang your hat on. 

8 When we get into this whole idea of 

9 probability risk assessment and things that can 

10 happen, you know, our history over the years is that 

11 things happen that weren't being considered. You 

12 didn't analyze for it. Big accidents happen because 

13 it's something that we didn't even know was going to 

14 happen. 

15 And so what is the real value of this? And 

16 I will come back as a last comment in this thing. I am 

17 kind of troubled by all these discussions of 

18 probability risk assessment or whatever we want to 

19 call it. 

20 I have in my memory, after TMI, one of the 

21 NRC commissioners made a statement that he was the 

22 only victim of TMI because the stress caused a heart 

23 attack with him. And I bring that up in terms of this 

24 whole probability risk assessment and everything else. 

25 I happened to be in Vienna two years after 
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1 Chernobyl, and I won't bore you with that story, but I 

2 will bore you with the story that I read -- it's not 

3 my job, but I go back and look at some of these things 

4 every once in a while -- and I read a summary of 

5 Chernobyl and what happened. This was a meeting in 

6 1996. 

7 And all of the things that went on, and 

8 all of the hype and everything about Chernobyl and all 

9 the things I heard about when I was in the plume in 

10 Vienna, and all that other thing, they essentially 

11 concluded 10 years later, that the only real hazard or 

12 only real risk was -- or only real event -- was an 

13 increase in childhood leukemias, which is essentially 

14 100 percent curable. 

15 But their real concern was the additional 

16 health effects due to change in diet, stress and other 

17 things that were brought on by the event and the 

18 publicity of it. And this ties back I think to one of 

19 the first things I heard, was a discussion of secrecy 

20 versus press versus what people do with data when they 

21 are given it. 

22 And one of the things that we continually 

23 see is that the stress and the press and the hype and 

24 everything else, far outweighs any of the consequences 

25 of the actual -- other than immediate deaths from 
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1 something like crashing a plane into a building. 

2 But it really comes down to the fact that 

3 we can't even put into these probability risk 

4 assessments the real factors which is the way we use 

5 them and the way we portray it to the general public. 

6 And I guess that's as many notes as I can remember 

7 from the long discussion. 

8 MS. JUCKETT: Any other comments? 

9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thanks Miriam and 

10 thanks to all of you for today and your contribution 

11 and we are going to get started at 8:30 tomorrow and 

12 we will get out of here so that people who need to be 

13 in by sundown -- Rosh Hashana -- will be able to do 

14 that. 

15 We have parking passes at the desk for 

16 anybody who parked in the facility. 

17 MR. CUADRADO: Also an alternative 

18 arrangement, if you have your ticket, you can go to 

19 the executive meeting center right down the hall and 

20 get it validated or at the front desk. Alternatively 

21 you can take one of the already validated tickets to 

22 get parking free of charge. 

23 MR. CAMERON: So if you didn't park here 

24 today, park tomorrow because it's free. Okay. Thank 

25 you all. We are adjourned. Miriam, another? 
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1 MS. JUCKETT: There is going to be a lunch 

2 downstairs if you bring your own lunch or if you want 

3 to pay for lunch tomorrow. 

4 MR. CAMERON: And will we have coffee 

5 service tomorrow? 

6 MS. JUCKETT: -- tomorrow morning. 

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Great, thanks Miriam. 

8 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

9 adjourned for the day at 5:00 p.m.) 

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