Official Transcript of Proceedings

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Title: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards

Radiation Protection and Nuclear Materials

Docket Number: (n/a)

Location: Rockville, Maryland

Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Work Order No.: NRC-4112 Pages 1-173

NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.

Court Reporters and Transcribers

1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20005

(202) 234-4433
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1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

3 + + + + +

4 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS

5 (ACRS)

6 + + + + +

7 RADIATION PROTECTION AND NUCLEAR MATERIALS

8 SUBCOMMITTEE

9 + + + + +

10 TUESDAY

11 APRIL 9, 2013

12 + + + + +

13 ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND

14 + + + + +

15 The Subcommittee met at the Nuclear

16 Regulatory Commission, Two White Flint North, Room

17 T2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, at 8:30 a.m., Michael T.

18 Ryan, Chairman, presiding.

19 COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

20 MICHAEL T. RYAN, Chairman

21 J. SAM ARMIJO, Member

22 HAROLD B. RAY, Member

23 STEPHEN P. SCHULTZ, Member

24 GORDON R. SKILLMAN, Member

25
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1 NRC STAFF PRESENT:

2 DEREK WIDMAYER, Designated Federal Official

3 LARRY CAMPER, FSME

4 ANDREW CARRERA, FSME

5 DAVE ESH, FSME

6 CHRISTOPHER GROSSMAN, FSME

7 DEBORAH JACKSON, FSME

8 MICHAEL LEE, FSME

9 CHRIS McKENNEY, FSME

10 ABY MOHSENI, FSME

11 LEAH PARKS*

12 GREGORY SUBER, FSME

13 PRIYA YADAV*

14

15 ALSO PRESENT:

16 WARD BRUNKOW*

17 TED BUCKNER*

18 DIANE D'ARRIGO*

19 RUSTY LUNDBERG*

20 CHRISTOPHER THOMAS*

21

22 *Present via telephone

23

24

25
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1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

2 Introduction, by Deborah Jackson ........ 6

3 ACRS Recommendation ............... 9

4 2012 Public Outreach Initiative,

5 by Michael Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

6 Staff Efforts to Revise Part 61: 

7 Key Concepts, by David Esh . . . . . . . . 53

8 Site-Specific Low-level Waste Technical

9 Analyses, by Chris Grossman . . . . . . . 117

10 Time Line, by Andrew Carrera . . . . . . 156

11 Adjourn

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

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

2 (8:30 a.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN RYAN: All right, we'll go ahead

4 and open the meeting. This is a meeting of the

5 Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, Radiation

6 Protection and Nuclear Materials Subcommittee.

7 I'm Michael Ryan, Chairman of the

8 Subcommittee. 

9 ACRS members in attendance are Sam Armijo,

10 Dick Skillman, Harold Ray, Steve Schultz. Dana Powers

11 and Dennis Bley will be joining shortly, I believe.

12 The purpose of this meeting is to discuss

13 the rulemaking language in 10 CFR Part 61, proposed

14 revisions to low-level waste disposal requirements.

15 The proposed revisions were published in the Federal

16 Register for public comment this past December. 

17 The Subcommittee will gather information,

18 analyze the relevant issues and facts, and formulate

19 proposed positions and actions as appropriate. The

20 Subcommittee will meet and discuss again on this

21 matter on June 20, and which the matter will be taken

22 up by the Full Committee at the 606 ACRS Full

23 Committee meeting in July. 

24 This meeting this morning is open. The

25 rules of conduct are that your participation in the
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1 meeting will be published in the Federal Register as

2 part of the notice for the meeting. Derek Widmayer is

3 the Designated Federal Official for the meeting.

4 A transcript of the meeting is being kept,

5 and will be made available on the ACRS webpage.

6 Therefore, it is requested that speakers first

7 identify themselves and speak with sufficient clarity

8 and volume so they can be readily heard. 

9 We have not read received any requests for

10 time to make oral statements from anyone prior to

11 today's meeting. However, there will be time made

12 available at the end of the proceedings for anyone who

13 wishes to comment at that time to make a comment at

14 that time. 

15 I understand there are a number of folks

16 who are listening in on the meeting on our bridge

17 line. The bridge line will kept in a listen-only mold

18 to minimize noise disturbance here in the meeting

19 room, but we will open it for any comments that anyone

20 wishes to make at the end of the proceedings.

21 Thank you.

22 We will now proceed with the meeting. I

23 call upon Deborah Jackson, Deputy Director of the

24 Division of Intergovernmental Liaison and Rulemaking

25 and FMSE, to open the proceedings.
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1 INTRODUCTION

2 BY DEBORAH JACKSON

3 DEPUTY DIRECTOR JACKSON: Thank you, Mike,

4 and good morning to everyone.

5 We are here today at your request to give

6 you an update on the work with the Part 61 rulemaking

7 up to December 2012. At our meeting with you in June,

8 we will discuss public comments on the proposed rule.

9 Over the course of this rulemaking, the

10 staff met with the ACRS on multiple occasions to

11 provide updates and solicit the Committee's views on

12 certain technical issues related to the Part 61

13 rulemaking and implementation guidance document

14 development.

15 These meetings resulted in an ACRS comment

16 letter dated December 22, 2011. This letter provided

17 four recommendations to the staff with regards to the

18 approach to this rulemaking. In a response letter

19 dated November 3, 2011, the staff discussed its views

20 on the ACRS recommendation approach. Mike Lee will be

21 discussing the views in greater detail in the next

22 presentation.

23 Next slide. 

24 This rulemaking began when the staff

25 received direction from the Commission to engage in a
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1 limited-scope rulemaking to add requirements for site2 specific technical analysis prior to the disposal of

3 significant quantities of depleted uranium and blended

4 waste. 

5 With this direction, we were to identify

6 the technical requirements that would apply to the

7 site-specific analysis and develop a guidance document

8 that outlines the parameters, assumptions, and those

9 things conducting with such site-specific technical

10 analysis.

11 In the SRM in 2012, listed at the second

12 bullet, the Commission directed the staff to expand

13 the ongoing limited-scope provision of Part 61 to

14 include the following issues:

15 1. Allowing the licensees the flexibility

16 to use the latest ICRP dose methodologies in the site17 specific assessment for the disposal of all

18 radioactive low-level waste;

19 2. developing a two-tiered approach that

20 establishes a compliance period that covers the

21 reasonably foreseeable future, and a longer period of

22 performance that is not a priority and established to

23 evaluate the performance of the site over longer time

24 frames;

25 3. providing flexibility for disposal
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1 facilities to establish site-specific LORW acceptance

2 criteria based on the results of the site's

3 performance assessment and intruder assessments; and

4 4. recommending a compatibility category

5 element of the revised rule that ensures alignment

6 between the states and federal government on safety

7 fundamentals while providing the states with the

8 flexibility to determine how to implements these

9 safety requirements.

10 I'll note for item number four on that

11 previous slide, the agreement states' compatibility,

12 the staff is working with NRC Standing Committee on

13 Compatibility on appropriate compatibility

14 recommendations on these proposed revisions.

15 Now, for the last slide, the submitted

16 agenda is different than, I believe, what's on this

17 slide and that Mike Lee is going to discuss the ACRS

18 comment letter. I think what we had submitted was

19 different. 

20 So today, we have five presenters. Mike

21 Lee is going to go over the ACRS comment letter, and

22 he'll discuss the 2012 public outreach initiative.

23 Dave Esh and Chris Grossman well talk about the 2012

24 regulatory basis development document. Andrew Carrera

25 will go over the proposed language that luminary
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1 proposal language. And Aby Mohseni will discuss the

2 path forward under Part 61. 

3 So, with that, I'll turn it over to Mike

4 Lee.

5 MICHAEL LEE: STAFF VIEWS ON

6 THE ACRS RECOMMENDATION APPROACH

7 MR. LEE: Good morning.

8 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Good morning. 

9 MR. LEE: Can everyone hear me? 

10 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yes. 

11 MR. LEE: I drew the short straw, and I

12 get to talk to the Committee about its earlier letter

13 to the staff. 

14 (Laughter.)

15 MR. LEE: While I was on vacation, I got

16 volunteered -- no, I'm just joking. It's always a

17 pleasure to talk to the Committee. 

18 I'm currently in FSME, and this slide

19 speaks for itself, so why don't we go to the second

20 slide, please?

21 Just to provide some context, as everyone

22 in this room knows, or is probably aware by now, the

23 staff has received no fewer than three sets of

24 direction on this particular rulemaking from the

25 Commission. 
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1 The initial direction was provided in an

2 SRM from the Commission in March 2009. This is in

3 response to SECY-08-147, and that's been, in many

4 respects, the primary driver for what we're doing in

5 the rule.

6 If I were to amend the slide today, I

7 would also acknowledge that there was a second piece

8 of direction we received soon thereafter in connection

9 with the blending paper that Jim Kennedy put together.

10 So that was kind of the two pieces of information that

11 were in play when the Committee first looked at the

12 Part 61 rulemaking that the staff submitted.

13 Your letter dated September 22, 2011,

14 reflects, as you know, a series of interactions the

15 Committee had with the staff in the summer of 2011.

16 And the Committee submitted four recommendations to

17 the staff to consider. We subsequently reviewed those

18 recommendations and responded to you and a letter

19 dated November 3, 2011.

20 Slide three, please.

21 For the first part of this presentation,

22 I'm going to follow this standard template, if you

23 will. It shows what the Committee recommended to the

24 staff initially in its letter, how the staff responded

25 in the November 3rd letter, and then how we're
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1 currently implementing it in the context of the

2 rulemaking. 

3 So your first recommendation, of course,

4 was that Part 61 should not be amended in accordance

5 with the staff's recommendations. We believe that, in

6 response, we know we're doing with the Commission told

7 us to do, which was to introduce an explicit

8 performance assessment and human intrusion analysis

9 for requirement for the Part 61 regulations.

10 Heretofore, they did not exist.

11 (Cell phone ringing.)

12 MR. LEE: As a reminder, everyone please

13 turn off your phones.

14 (Laughter.)

15 MR. LEE: I'm sorry. 

16 Returning to slide three, in the context

17 of the rulemaking that the Committee looked at

18 previously, we did introduce an explicit performance

19 assessment and intruder analysis requirement to the

20 regulation, consistent with earlier Commission

21 direction. So we believe we're doing what the

22 Commission told us to do.

23 Slide four, please.

24 In the Committee's second recommendation,

25 "Implementation guidance for Part 61 should not
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1 specify it a priori a period of performance." The

2 staff agrees. 

3 Originally, we specified a longer-term

4 period of performance. As you recall, that was a

5 20,000-your number consistent with the dose

6 calculations that the staff did. However, the staff

7 believes that it is important now to specify a period

8 of compliance in the rule because that's the most

9 recent set of directions we received from the

10 Commission. 

11 We now are proposing a time of compliance

12 of 10,000 years and a longer unspecified period of

13 performance based on risk insights that were developed

14 consistent with the performance assessment. 

15 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Mike, this might not be

16 the right the right time to ask this question, but let

17 me just put it out there. 

18 MR. LEE: Sure. 

19 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Somewhere between 100

20 years and 20,000 years, you go from quantitative to

21 qualitative.

22 MR. LEE: Right. 

23 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I'd like to understand

24 somewhere during our conversation, maybe not even

25 today, but -- 
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1 MR. LEE: Yes, how the -- 

2 CHAIRMAN RYAN: -- through that -- 

3 MR. LEE: Either through the presentations

4 later today or in the next presentation that we have

5 in our second meeting with you all, we'll be able to

6 articulate it. 

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And I asked the question

8 because I think it's critical that the Committee

9 understand the details of what that transition is,

10 from a quantitative to a qualitative assessment. 

11 MR. LEE: Sure. 

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: You know, where we draw

13 conclusions from analytical data, it's pretty clear to

14 everybody, you're above or below something.

15 MR. LEE: Right. 

16 CHAIRMAN RYAN: But how we make a decision

17 based on qualitative criteria is not clear.

18 MR. LEE: Sure. 

19 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Generally and

20 specifically, in this case, it's not clear at all, to

21 me at least. So that's one area where I think we

22 hopefully will spend a little bit more time --

23 MR. LEE: Sure. Yeah. 

24 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Again, not necessarily

25 today, but -- 
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1 MR. LEE: Well, seeing that I drew the

2 short straw, I'll volunteer Dave Esh to talk to that

3 later, either later today or in the next two. 

4 CHAIRMAN RYAN: That's fine. Whenever we

5 get to it is fine. I just thought I'd get it out on

6 the table. 

7 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Mike, let me follow up

8 on Dr. Ryan's question. 

9 MR. LEE: Yes.

10 MEMBER SKILLMAN: In this discussion

11 sometime today, I would like to her the distinction

12 between the period of performance --

13 MR. LEE: And the time of compliance.

14 MEMBER SKILLMAN: -- and institutional

15 control period. 

16 MR. LEE: Oh, okay. Sure.

17 MEMBER SKILLMAN: It seems to me that one

18 is the analytical for how the progeny may affect what

19 might be discovered many, many years from now. But

20 institutional control period has a direct bearing on

21 the ability to identify it, discover it.

22 You have a driver's license that expires

23 every two years. 

24 MR. LEE: Sure. 

25 MEMBER SKILLMAN: You have another kind of
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1 permit that might expire after five years. I'm

2 wondering if there isn't a connection between the

3 period of performance and the institutional control

4 period that would serve to address some of the

5 concerns that this Committee has. 

6 MR. LEE: Well, I think the short answer

7 is, the original institutional control period is a

8 derivative of how the waste classification system

9 under Part 61 was first developed, and that's

10 described in the EIS that dates back to the late 1970s

11 and early 1980s.

12 The staff arrived, based on its analyses,

13 at 100 years, and that's pegged to the waste

14 classification scheme which pegs out, I think, for

15 class A.

16 There was no period of performance under

17 the original regulation. The original regulation was

18 predicated on assumptions related to siting, design,

19 and the basic classification system in the context of

20 those concentration levels for the isotopes

21 identified. 

22 Currently, there's no nexus between the

23 two, but we can get into this discussion later on. 

24 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Great.

25 MR. LEE: Either Dave or Chris Grossman
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1 will speak to it when Brian comes up. 

2 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Well, like Chairman

3 Ryan, I'm just getting it on the able right now.

4 MR. LEE: It's good to have these -- 

5 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Thank you. 

6 MEMBER ARMIJO: Mike, one of the things

7 I'd like to hear about this morning from the staff is:

8 How does one actually satisfy your compliance

9 requirements that you're going to propose in this

10 rule? Exactly what does someone who manages one of

11 these facilities have to do to demonstrate that this

12 is the appropriate compliance period, and this is how

13 it's satisfied? It's all analysis; right? No one can

14 guarantee what's going to happen 10,000 years from

15 now. 

16 So what will it take to satisfy the staff

17 that the requirements of this proposed rule have been

18 met?

19 MR. LEE: Well, I don't put too much on

20 Dave's plate, but the short answer is that in the

21 numerical performance assessment that's been proposed

22 for the 10,000-year time of compliance, you'd run the

23 numbers for 10,000 years and evaluate them against the

24 61.41 performance objectives.

25 The details of the analysis, the
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1 attributes of the features that we believe should be

2 included in the performance assessment, will be

3 discussed in detail in the guidance document that goes

4 out in parallel with the draft rule text. 

5 Dave, is there anything you'd add, or?

6 MR. ESH: I think I already have

7 indigestion and it didn't even get to me; it sounds

8 like my plate is filling up. 

9 (Laughter.) 

10 MR. ESH: For this topic, yeah, I plan to

11 talk about it in detail after we get through Mike's

12 spot. So we can wait and talk about it then in

13 context with the slides, or we can talk about that

14 now, whichever you prefer.

15 MEMBER ARMIJO: When you're ready to talk

16 about. Why don't we cover it in the -- 

17 MR. ESH: I'm making notes here to try to

18 remember to talk to these things, and if I forget,

19 just remind me. 

20 MEMBER ARMIJO: We'll try. 

21 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Thanks, Dave. 

22 MR. LEE: I think I'm on slide five --I'm

23 at the end. Thank you very much.

24 I have another presentation.

25 On slide five, the Committee noted that it
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1 believed that its earlier recommendations were equally

2 applicable to both DU as well as other low-level

3 waste. The staff agrees, for the reasons that are

4 outlined in our earlier letter responding to your

5 comment.

6 We believe that once you become more

7 familiar with the current edition of the rule text,

8 you'll begin to see how we've implemented that

9 direction, or how it comports with your views.

10 The final slide of this series, slide six,

11 applies to Recommendation 4. Compliance with the

12 performance objectives of the disposal system after

13 institutional control ends, as well as the possible

14 doses to the hypothetical intruders should be

15 evaluated considering the features, events, and

16 processes for a given site for a period of time,

17 commensurate with the risk for a specific facility and

18 site. 

19 The staff agrees, and we believe that in

20 the context of the regulation that we developed in

21 2011, and the current version, we were consistent with

22 that theme, and we would again be glad to point that

23 out as we get farther into the presentation. 

24 So, unless there are other questions with

25 respect to your earlier letter, I can jump into the
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1 second presentation I have, which speaks to the 2012

2 public outreach initiative. 

3 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Please go ahead. 

4 2012 PUBLIC OUTREACH INITIATIVE

5 MICHAEL LEE

6 MR. LEE: So, again, to put things in

7 context, in 2011, the staff developed a rulemaking

8 consistent with Commission direction in both SRM SECY9 08-147 as well as the blending Commission paper that

10 Jim Kennedy put together. For the life of me, I can't

11 remember the number. I think it was 10.47, but it's

12 in the record somewhere, and we can get to that

13 number.

14 As the rulemaking was making its way

15 through the concurrence process, we received

16 additional Commission direction in the January 2012

17 SRM. 

18 The Commission told us to take the

19 existing direction they had given us and complement it

20 with the additional requirements that they told us to

21 go out and float with the public. Consistent with

22 that direction, we were told to seek public feedback.

23 We issued Federal Register notices, and we were very

24 proactive in contacting our partners at the agreement

25 states on what the Commission asked us to look at. 
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1 I believe Debbie has already spoken to

2 those four additional initiatives in the earlier

3 slides, so I'm not going to repeat them here.

4 So what the staff did was it kind of work

5 on two fronts. The first front is we already had some

6 pre-program public meetings. We were going to

7 participate in certain public events. We also hosted

8 our own independent events.

9 Slide three.

10 So if you look at slide three, you'll see

11 a series of events that the staff participated or

12 sponsored during the summer of 2012. The events that

13 the staff sponsored have little stars after them. 

14 We had public meetings in Phoenix, Dallas,

15 and here and Rockville, Maryland. We had transcripts,

16 and from those transcripts, we collected information

17 from the public that were in attendance, and got their

18 views on the four initiatives that the Commission

19 asked to be added to the rulemaking effort.

20 Slide four.

21 The other initiative we undertook is we

22 created a docket in the Federal Register. We announced

23 that availability of that docket for receipt of public

24 comments, and through the course of the summer, we

25 received approximately 16 sets of comments from
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1 various individuals, organizations, and entities, and

2 they approximately corresponded to 200 individual

3 comments, questions, and suggestions.

4 So, between the record and the meeting

5 transcripts as well as the docket, we had a body of

6 some data that we could evaluate and consider in the

7 context of the four additional things that the

8 Commission asked us to consider.

9 So turning to slide five --

10 MEMBER ARMIJO: Mike, before you --

11 MR. LEE: Yes, sure. 

12 Slide four.

13 MEMBER ARMIJO: We got a copy of a letter

14 from the Consortium for Risk Evaluation, with

15 stakeholder participation three, and that's not on

16 your list of commenters. Is that an oversight, or

17 didn't they comments in time?

18 MR. LEE: You received a letter directly.

19 MEMBER ARMIJO: Yes. It was addressed to

20 Larry Camper. It was just a copy of this letter --

21 MR. LEE: I think they --

22 MEMBER ARMIJO: -- C-R-E-S-P.

23 MR. WIDMAYER: I think the answer is I

24 think it was within the time frame.

25 MEMBER ARMIJO: The reason I bring it up
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1 is because their comments were pretty consistent with

2 ACRS comments.

3 MR. LEE: That's E-S-P.

4 MEMBER ARMIJO: C-R-E-S-P.

5 SPEAKER: It's Cresp. What is the date on

6 it?

7 MEMBER ARMIJO: Vanderbilt University,

8 Howard University, Oregon State.

9 MR. LEE: Oh, I'm sorry; that -- we're

10 kind of confusing two, we're talking about two

11 populations of comments. The letter that I believe

12 you're talking to is the one we received in a second

13 round of comments that we submitted. 

14 MR. McKENNEY: No, January 4, 2013.

15 MEMBER ARMIJO: This is January 4, 2013.

16 MR. McKENNEY: Which is --

17 MEMBER ARMIJO: So was early this year.

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Chris McKenney?

19 MR. LEE: Chris.

20 MR. McKENNEY: Just to clarify, that is in

21 the second set of comments, none of which are on the

22 chart above, because, as requested by the Committee,

23 we're here to bring you up to December 2012 because

24 we're not addressing the comments received on the

25 draft proposal text that we put out in December. And
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1 that Cresp letter will be discussed in June.

2 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay. Thank you.

3 MR. LEE: Thank you, Chris. Just the kind

4 of everybody on the right page.

5 You know, I'm confused. We went out for

6 comments in 2011. We got additional direction in

7 January 2012. We went out for comment yet again in

8 calendar year 2012. The slides three and four

9 summarize what we did in 2012 up until December to

10 seek public input on both the original Commission

11 direction as well as the second set of direction we

12 got from the Commission.

13 The letter from Dr. Armijo, that you're

14 referencing from the Consortium at Vanderbilt and, I

15 think, Rutgers, was in response to a third outreach

16 request made as recently as December of this year, and

17 that will be discussed later. It's not part of this

18 population that I'm talking now right now.

19 MR. WIDMAYER: Do the comments that you're

20 referring to on the slide predate the ACRS? Is that

21 correct?

22 MR. LEE: These comments were post-ACRS.

23 MR. WIDMAYER: So, post-ACRS would have

24 been pre-December --

25 MR. LEE: These are the comments we got
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1 last summer subsequent to the receipt of the

2 Committee's letter.

3 MR. WIDMAYER: Okay.

4 MR. LEE: And these comments, the material

5 that I'm speaking to on slide three and four, are with

6 respect to the four additions that the Commission

7 asked us to seek public input on, in the context of

8 its earlier direction. 

9 As a result of that second request for

10 comment, if you will, we received 200 individual

11 comments, questions, and suggestions. So this is

12 basically what we heard last summer after we received

13 your letter.

14 Turning the slide five.

15 The intent of this slide is to give the

16 Committee and others a sense for how the public's

17 comments were tracked out. We kind of pinned them,

18 for the purposes of review, in some categories. These

19 are ranked-ordered. The bold type with the asterisks

20 refer to the four Commission questions that came out

21 of the January 2012 SRM. We received additional

22 comments from the public and other interested

23 stakeholders on other matters bearing on the

24 rulemaking. 

25 We applied some simple statistics your to
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1 give everyone a sense for where most of the comments

2 fell. The other comments, if you will, the second3 highest rank bin was basically miscellaneous comments.

4 As you can see from the slide, most of the

5 comments we've received are on the period of

6 performance and time of compliance, themes that you've

7 expressed some interest in already this morning. Our

8 second and third rank ends were miscellaneous

9 comments. We received a lot of comments on the waste

10 classification tables found at 61.55. And then, in

11 decreasing order, are the other themes that we heard

12 from our stick was on.

13 And just for the record, the total is not

14 exactly 100 because of rounding errors.

15 On slide six, what we tried to do is, have

16 two populations of comments: comments received at the

17 public meetings and available in the transcripts, and

18 the written comments. I think we could fairly see

19 that there was generally no disputing the need for the

20 rulemaking. By and far, most commenters felt that

21 there was a need to freshen up Part 61. However, they

22 were disparate views on how we should freshen up the

23 rule and what the rulemaking should include.

24 With respect to comments from the

25 agreement states, the staff were very proactive in
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1 contacting the agreement states. Not all agreement

2 states chose to express that you on the rulemaking at

3 this time, which is understandable because we're only

4 in the drafting of proposal rule text. 

5 Later on, when the rule goes out for

6 public comment, we expect to solicit additional

7 comments from our --

8 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Mike, do you think this

9 will be focused mainly on the sited states as opposed

10 to states that don't have and probably think they will

11 never have a low-level waste site?

12 MR. LEE: We went to sited as well as

13 unsited states.

14 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And what was the response

15 from each?

16 MR. WIDMAYER: What does the -- obviously,

17 not all agreement states express an opinion -- what

18 does the slide mean?

19 MR. LEE: Well, I'm trying to communicate,

20 first of all, that we directly targeted agreement

21 states. And in particular, to put a finer point on

22 Dr. Ryan's question, we made direct calls to the four

23 sited agreement states. Not all four sited agreement

24 states chose to express a view on what we're doing

25 right now.
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1 CHAIRMAN RYAN: How many didn't?

2 MR. LEE: I think between -- two, three,

3 maybe. I mean we contacted South Carolina Washington,

4 Texas, Colorado -- Utah; excuse me. We also contacted

5 Washington state, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania by

6 virtue of their arrangements in terms of waste

7 processing and other interest, historically.

8 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. Thank you.

9 MR. LEE: I mean we can get back to you

10 with that detail if you'd like to see it. 

11 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I guess what I'm reaching

12 for a little bit -- and I don't expect an answer this

13 minute -- is, what were the tone and tenor of comments

14 from the various constituencies?

15 MR. LEE: We're going to get to that in a

16 little bit -- 

17 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. That's fine.

18 MR. LEE: -- in the remaining slides.

19 What I've tried to do is, with respect to the four

20 comments or questions that the Commission asked us to

21 take to the public, I do have some details on that.

22 But for future reference, if you go to Chapter 5 of

23 the regulatory basis document, there are tables that

24 address specific agreement states comments.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yes, okay. All right.
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1 Thanks.

2 MR. LEE: But to kind of put a flavor on

3 this particular issue if you will, in terms of what

4 the agreement states had to say, they noted that like

5 many state governments, the agreement states have

6 budget challenges, and these challenges, you know, are

7 -- there are other things besides implementation of

8 new NRC regulations that the states have to balance in

9 terms of their budget priorities. 

10 Of course, some of the states' comments

11 that we received are very limited. To the extent that

12 we did receive comments, there were comments to the

13 effect that the duration of institutional control

14 should be extended from 100 to 300 years. And other

15 comments were that states were wary of adding new

16 requirements to the regulations that might oblige them

17 to receive large quantities of depleted uranium.

18 MEMBER SCHULTZ: So the bullet, "Budget

19 Constraints" means we just don't have the resources to

20 look at this now, not that they have budget

21 constraints and can't implement what you're proposing.

22 MR. LEE: No, I think they were

23 sensitizing the staff to the fact that given competing

24 priorities at state levels, if the Commission were to

25 go ahead and issue new regulations in the area of Part
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1 61, this would impose another challenge to their -- 

2 MEMBER SCHULTZ: -- budget line. So it's

3 a regulatory burden issue.

4 MR. SUBER: Mike, how are you doing?

5 This is Gregory Suber. I'd just like to

6 put a finer point on some of the things that Mike's

7 talking about because he participated in some of the

8 outreach but not all of it. 

9 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Could you introduce

10 yourself, please? 

11 MR. SUBER: I'm sorry; my name is Gregory

12 Suber. I am the Chief of the Low-Level Waste Branch.

13 We did contact each sited state. In fact,

14 we had meetings in various locations. We had a

15 meeting in Texas at which we invited Texas to

16 participate. They wanted to observe, but they not

17 actively participate. 

18 We also went to OAS, and at the OAS

19 conference, we had a meeting with all of the sited

20 states that chose to attend at those meetings. They

21 did come to us with a variety of concerns, and one of

22 them was a resource concern.

23 The state of Texas was having a high

24 degree of turnover in their program, and that was one

25 of the reasons that their participation was limited.
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1 And one of the constraints that they mentioned as far

2 as actively participating in the process and being

3 able to simultaneously complete the licensing of WCS

4 and actively participate in a Part 61 limited ruling.

5 South Carolina also expressed concern

6 about their ability to manage the Barnwell site and

7 simultaneously participate actively in the number of

8 Part 61 activities that we had ongoing because we had

9 the rulemaking going on at the same time we had the

10 revision of the Branch Technical Position on

11 concentration averaging. 

12 So the staff have a lot of stuff going on,

13 and several sites said it was a challenge. They

14 didn't say they couldn't do it, but they did recognize

15 that they had the same kind of fiscal constraints that

16 the federal government has and that it was becoming

17 increasingly challenging for them to actively

18 participate in all of the Commission activities as

19 well as to manage the sites that they were responsible

20 for. MR. LEE: Okay. So again, just for

21 additional details, I would refer you to Chapter 5 of

22 the regulatory basis document, which is publicly

23 available. I believe there's a table or two in there

24 that summarizes what we heard from the agreement

25 states.
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1 All right. Turning to slide seven, the

2 next series of slides, I again kind of followed the

3 same format here. In the left-hand column, you see

4 the Commission proposal from January 2012. The

5 stakeholder response, response from the agreement

6 states, and then some preliminary staff observations.

7 Again, this was high-graded from Chapter 5 in the

8 regulatory basis document.

9 The first direction received from the

10 Commission in January 2012 was to allow licensees the

11 flexibility to use the latest ICRP does methodologies.

12 The stakeholder response was generally in

13 favor of this topic by this proposal. The agreement

14 states, to the extent that we heard from them, were

15 mostly in support of this proposal. And in terms of

16 implementation, allowing the staff to use or allowing

17 licensees the flexibility to use the up-to-date ICRP

18 recommendations would align with past agency practice

19 generally in this area.

20 Slide eight.

21 Same format again -- the Commission

22 proposal to implement a two-tiered approach to

23 performance assessment that establishes a compliance

24 period that covers the reasonably foreseeable future,

25 and a longer period of performance that is not defined
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1 a priori. 

2 Again, the stakeholders expressing a view

3 on this topic were generally in support of the

4 Commission's proposal. The agreement states -- again,

5 not all agreement states expressed a view on the

6 merits of the two-tiered approach at this time, and

7 the comments that we did receive from agreement states

8 were mixed.

9 The preliminary staff observation is the

10 staff had previously advocated the adoption of a two11 tiered approach to the conduct of PA both in 2011 and

12 the current rulemaking package that's in concurrence.

13 MR. WIDMAYER: Mike, I've got a question.

14 MR. LEE: Sure.

15 MR. WIDMAYER: The staff interpretation of

16 this, that the performance assessment should be done

17 this way, did you guys assume that they also meant the

18 intruder assessment?

19 MR. LEE: No. 

20 MR. WIDMAYER: You did not.

21 MR. LEE: No. 

22 MR. WIDMAYER: So that intruder assessment

23 does not have to be done in a two-tiered approach.

24 MR. LEE: I don't believe so. 

25 MR. WIDMAYER: Okay.
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1 MR. LEE: Chris Grossman's here, I think,

2 if he wants to make any additional response.

3 MR. GROSSMAN: The December package that

4 we put out at the compliance period and period of

5 performance for both performance objectives, both

6 61.41 and 61.42, 61.41 being the PA, essentially, and

7 61.42 then being the intruder assessment.

8 (Pause.)

9 MR. LEE: Okay. 

10 MR. WIDMAYER: Yeah, but it sounds like

11 it's been okayed by the Commission if you took two

12 separate purchase.

13 MR. LEE: Help me out here. 

14 MR. WIDMAYER: The Commission did not say,

15 do an intruder assessment with a two-tiered approach;

16 so, therefore, you could have done some other approach

17 it. Am I missing something, or?

18 MR. LEE: Yes -- I -- yes.

19 MR. GROSSMAN: The Commission wasn't

20 explicit about intruder assessment.

21 MR. WIDMAYER: Okay.

22 MR. GROSSMAN: There could have been a

23 different approach, yes. 

24 MR. WIDMAYER: Okay.

25 MR. LEE: And we'd be happy to talk to you
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1 about the current approach that's in the rulemaking

2 package later on this morning.

3 MEMBER ARMIJO: Let me ask you a question.

4 MR. LEE: Sure. 

5 MEMBER ARMIJO: Is the intruder assessment

6 still a central driver for this new rulemaking? 

7 You know, it seemed to me, in the earlier

8 version that I read, that so many of the things we're

9 doing were all driven by this hypothetical intrusion

10 sometime in the future. And I thought that if it just

11 disappeared, there wouldn't be much left to this

12 rulemaking. 

13 Is that way out of line, or is the

14 intruder assessment still central to this rulemaking?

15 MR. LEE: Well, I think, to put a historic

16 perspective on this, you'll recall that the waste

17 classification tables were designed around an acute

18 exposure to an intruder. So, for the purposes of the

19 development of the waste classification system under

20 61.55, the staff historically relied on the intruder,

21 the acute does to an intruder.

22 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I think the key point is

23 that probability of intrusion has always been one.

24 MR. LEE: Yes. Yes.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: It's one. That's what the
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1 assumption is; there will be intrusion. At some

2 point, there might be a different structure to the

3 ways people look at it, but there are dose scenarios

4 where the intrusion is less than one or 100 percent.

5 So that's something to think about a little bit, I

6 think. 

7 Is there it been where protections or

8 designs or other features could make the probability

9 of intrusion less than one?

10 MR. LEE: Yeah, well, the tension in the

11 philosophy underlying Part 61 generally is that, at

12 some point, you maintain a period of institutional

13 controls for about a hundred years. There's some

14 feeling that you'd have some additional duration of

15 time for which institutional knowledge is maintained.

16 Society is aware that this site exists, and folks

17 would generally avoid it.

18 Today, if you want to drill a well, you

19 have to get a permit, you have to go to the local

20 government center, maybe the county seat, and go

21 through records, look through land affidavits and

22 things like that, to get permission stick do certain

23 things. 

24 But the Commission recognized at some

25 point, there would be a loss of institutional
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1 knowledge of the site, and there was a potential for

2 an inadvertent intruder to go in there and to get

3 exposed. And that's how the tables were arrived at.

4 That's the assumption, that you can't protect that

5 site in perpetuity, at some point there was the

6 potential for --

7 MEMBER ARMIJO: Can you regulate and

8 perpetuity? That's the thing that bothers me. You

9 know, there's no way to prove that you're actually

10 accomplishing anything except adding burden to the

11 siting of a new low-level waste site and discouraging

12 the creation of more low-level waste sites, which the

13 country needs. 

14 I just don't see how you're getting around

15 that, particularly if you make the intrusion a

16 probability of one.

17 MR. LEE: Well, unless Kenny or Grossman

18 has something to say, I prefer defer to them. It's a

19 point as well noted, but --

20 MR. GROSSMAN: This is Chris Grossman of

21 the staff. 

22 To get to your first question, Dr. Armijo,

23 yes, we believe inadvertent intrusion protection for

24 intruders is still an essential component of Part 61.

25 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay.
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1 MR. GROSSMAN: We'll discuss a little bit

2 of the probability more and our presentations later

3 on.

4 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay. You know, different

5 people on the Committee will have different views on

6 that, but I just think this whole intrusion

7 requirement is just so arbitrary and so difficult to

8 prove that you've taken into account short of not

9 building any low-level waste sites that it's really an

10 impediment to a good regulation -- 

11 MR. LEE: Well, I --

12 MEMBER ARMIJO: -- that says let's

13 concentrate on protecting the people, here and now,

14 and maybe for a couple of hundred years. What is it

15 Mike? Five hundred years? This is still low-level

16 waste site, so after that, forget about it. You know,

17 if the country is still in existence, people in the

18 future will deal with the problem.

19 MR. LEE: Right. 

20 MEMBER ARMIJO: Why do we have to deal

21 with it now? Where do licensees have to deal with all

22 these hypothetical things so far into the future?

23 It just seems to me it's -- I struggle

24 with how you can do reasonable regulation without --

25 MR. LEE: Well, the original framers of
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1 the Part 61 regulation found that by limiting

2 concentrations of waste in the ground, you could

3 protect future generations to an intrusion event.

4 That's how the concentration tables came up. They

5 viewed this as an issue of, at some point, there was

6 not going to be any control of the site, so how do you

7 protect future generations? 

8 MEMBER ARMIJO: It seems to me that made

9 a lot of sense.

10 MR. LEE: Right, and one of the things you

11 do is limit concentrations of what you put in the

12 ground because of decay factors and certain

13 engineering features for different classes of waste.

14 And that's a burial. The original framers of the

15 regulation found that there was some level of

16 protection that could be afforded.

17 CHAIRMAN RYAN: There were some accepted

18 constraints on this thought process. One is, for

19 example, uranium, which has a half-life that's way

20 longer than most of the universe, is in play in low21 level waste. Take that out and you've got a whole new

22 ballgame in terms of what's in play. 

23 MR. LEE: Sure.

24 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And if you look at

25 inventories of existing sites, the fraction of the
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1 inventory that's going to be there in 100 years of 300

2 years is quite thoroughly small.

3 So, you know, I think we're trying to

4 wrestle with the long term and the short term of

5 what's there and what's not there. And, you know, is

6 there some way to address that? Correct me if I'm

7 wrong.

8 MR. LEE: Yes. I mean these points are

9 very good to discuss, but again, going back to the

10 Commission's direction, we were given a set of

11 instructions to do some limited changes to the

12 rulemaking and not to undertake a wholesale revision.

13 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And I do appreciate that,

14 I think, very much. So I'm not --

15 MR. LEE: Yes.

16 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

17 MEMBER ARMIJO: We understand you have a

18 history of different instructions. Some of them are

19 in conflict. And you have other people, including

20 ourselves, giving you other input.

21 MR. LEE: Sure.

22 CHAIRMAN RYAN: But as you beyond the

23 scope of our discussion today. 

24 We also have the conundrum of depleted

25 uranium, which is basically piled up; we put a little
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1 topsoil on it, and grass, and that's the end of that.

2 So, you know, I wonder where the risk management

3 analysis is for that -- 

4 MR. LEE: Chris McKenney.

5 CHAIRMAN RYAN: -- analysis on -- sorry.

6 MR. McKENNEY: This is Chris McKenney of

7 the Performance Assessment Branch. 

8 Just to manage expectations for a second,

9 while we'll be getting into some of the intruder

10 assessment, a lot of the discussions of how much that

11 can possibly drive and analysis and some of the stuff,

12 especially with the WAC, a lot of those details will

13 likely be more in June when we can talk about the

14 guidance and everything else, and how guidances

15 differed for different in some stuff, just so that,

16 just my reminder that we can get into a bit more

17 detail on the management of some of these activities.

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: That's great. I will look

19 forward to that very much, Chris. 

20 I think what Dr. Armijo and the other

21 folks who have spoken are trying to say is that we're

22 just trying to share with you what the thoughts are,

23 that we're thinking about, how we can somehow come to

24 alignment, so we're all on the same page.

25 MR. McKENNEY: And that's what I'm saying;
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1 right. But for most of the facilities, so far, they

2 have actually done site-specific intruder analyses.

3 That's not the driving risk. Even using generic

4 scenarios, those are not the driving risks for the

5 facilities that have been developed for the analyses

6 we do for waste-incidental processing. In both cases,

7 the site-specific analyses no longer drive the risk.

8 It becomes --

9 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And getting insights into

10 what does drive the risk there would be helpful. 

11 MR. McKENNEY: It would be the off-site

12 dose, the off-site dose level.

13 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay, then I guess we'll

14 hear from you either way. Okay.

15 MR. LEE: Slide nine.

16 In this slide, what we wanted to do is

17 provide the Committee with a little additional detail

18 on what we've heard relative to the Commission's

19 proposal regarding a tiered approach to the conduct

20 low-level waste PA.

21 Just to summarize, again, we found that

22 there was general support. With respect to the time

23 of compliance concept, we received mixed responses. 

24 In the Commission's SRM, they use the term

25 "foreseeable future," which heretofore was an
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1 undefined term. It's a new term of art, if you will.

2 We received comments to the effect that

3 1,000 years was an acceptable duration for that

4 calculation of any dose under the first tier. We

5 received comments that 1,000 to 10,000 years was an

6 acceptable duration for the time of compliance. We

7 also received comments to the effect that 10,000 years

8 was a number that was easily achievable in terms of

9 arriving at a meaningful number.

10 Again --

11 MEMBER ARMIJO: Easily achievable -- it's

12 easy to calculate anything, Mike, but I can't

13 understand how anybody could -- 

14 MR. LEE: I'm playing the tape and telling

15 you what we heard from stakeholders. 

16 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay.

17 MR. LEE: Whether or not it means it's

18 meaningful is really up to the eye of the beholder, I

19 guess. 

20 In terms of the period of performance

21 concept, stakeholders told us that it should not be

22 defined in the regulation. They argued that it was

23 technically challenging as well as questionable in

24 terms of its decision-making value. 

25 And we also received comments to the
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1 effect that you really shouldn't have a dose

2 associated with any performance, longer-term

3 performance period.

4 CHAIRMAN RYAN: When you're dealing with

5 receptor as the -- 

6 MEMBER ARMIJO: The 500.

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yes.

8 MR. LEE: Yes.

9 Slide 10.

10 In terms of comments on the flexibility of

11 disposal sites to establish a site-specific WAC, the

12 majority of stakeholders commenting on this were in

13 favor of it. 

14 To the extent that we heard from the

15 agreement states, they were also in favor of it. In

16 fact, many several of the agreement states have WAC17 like features in their regulations licensing

18 conditions today.

19 However, one of the comments we received

20 under this particular topic was the caveat that,

21 again, some agreement states didn't want to be forced

22 to receive large quantities of depleted uranium.

23 A preliminary staff observation is that

24 many is that any many states in fact already have a

25 WAC, if not in name, then certainly in practice.
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1 Slide 11.

2 Moving along, the compatibility issue is

3 one that we received a lot of comments on. I guess

4 the short version, for the purposes of time, is that

5 many of the agreement states are interested in

6 maintaining maximum flexibility in terms of how any

7 new amendments to Part 61 might be implemented. 

8 We noted that comment. This is an issue

9 the staff will make a recommendation on, for the

10 purposes of the rulemaking, and later on, as the

11 rulemaking package proceeds, there's a compatibility

12 committee that evaluates this in more detail.

13 My last slide is slide 12.

14 In addition to comments on the

15 Commission's four rulemaking proposals, we received

16 other comments, and these comments in some respects

17 fall into that miscellaneous category that I referred

18 to earlier on slide 5.

19 Some of the key comments we received were

20 that the tables at 61.55 should be updated with the

21 latest ICRP dose conversion factors and methodologies.

22 I've already made reference that the duration for the

23 institutional control period should be revisited.

24 We also received comments with respect to

25 the so-called Phantom 4 isotopes, which were found to
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1 be the limiting isotopes for the purposes of the

2 groundwater dose in the earlier Part 61 EISs put out

3 --

4 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Just to complete our

5 record, would you mind listing those four? 

6 MR. LEE: Okay. This is a test on the

7 Phantom 4.

8 (Laughter.)

9 MR. LEE: Chlorine-36 --

10 CHAIRMAN RYAN: No.

11 MR. LEE: No? I'll let McKenney answer.

12 I'm sure he's --

13 MR. McKENNEY: He's gets it wrong on the

14 first one.

15 (Laughter.)

16 MR. McKENNEY: Chris McKenney from the

17 Performance Assessment Branch. 

18 The four radionuclides in the hard-to19 detects considered to be tritium, which of course is

20 a short-term mobile radionuclide present in most of

21 the issues that we've had in the past disposal sites;

22 iodine-129; technetium-99; and -- now I'm in the -- 

23 MR. LEE: oh, man.

24 MR. GROSSMAN: Carbon-14.

25 MR. McKENNEY: Carbon-14, yes.
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1 CHAIRMAN RYAN: The reason I asked that --

2 and thanks for getting us the right list among you all

3 -- is that those are interesting in that, in terms of

4 dose consequence in the performance assessment, are

5 they really that important? Are they hard to detect?

6 Are they of relative low importance in terms of

7 importance in terms of an overall PA?

8 MR. ESH: This is Dave Esh from the

9 Performance Assessment Branch. 

10 There's an interesting issue with those,

11 in that many times, they do show up in the performance

12 assessments. But is that a real effect, or is that

13 due to the fact that the inventories are over-reported

14 due to limitations in the detection technology? 

15 CHAIRMAN RYAN: In the detection.

16 MR. ESH: Yes. I'm not at liberty to say

17 which is the answer for that, but they do show up, and

18 a number of times they will show up in the output of

19 the performance assessments.

20 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. I think that kind

21 of raises a general question, which may be not for

22 today but sometime in the future. What is the real

23 relative certainty or uncertainty of some of the

24 assessments that make assumptions used limited data on

25 those kinds of issues?
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1 MR. ESH: Yeah.

2 CHAIRMAN RYAN: You know, in other words,

3 how do we propagate a range of uncertainty in any

4 conclusions for the revised view of a performance

5 assessment? We'll be looking ahead to maybe hearing

6 a little bit about your insights in that area.

7 MR. ESH: Yes, and I can talk about

8 uncertainties during my presentation.

9 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay.

10 MR. ESH: And if want to talk about it

11 further -- 

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. Fine. And I'm not

13 looking to get the whole story today, but I just kind

14 of want to have a placeholder. Maybe that's a more

15 detailed discussion for our follow-up meeting.

16 MEMBER SCHULTZ: Dave, are you -- excuse

17 me. 

18 Are you going to talk about the

19 uncertainties as well as other treated? 

20 MR. ESH: Yes.

21 MEMBER SCHULTZ: How the uncertainties are

22 treated?

23 MR. ESH: Yes, I can.

24 MEMBER SCHULTZ: I would appreciate that.

25 Thank you.
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1 MEMBER ESH: I mean, there are a lot of

2 different methods to manage uncertainties, and there

3 are lots of different types of uncertainties in these

4 assessments. So there's not necessarily one way to

5 treat the problem, and we allow people to do different

6 types of analyses, but they have different

7 implications, how you treat them.

8 One of the biggest issues for me in the

9 whole rulemaking process and moving forward is, if

10 you're going to rely more on site-specific technical

11 analyses, then that requires that those analyses are

12 credible, and it requires that they undergo a

13 sufficient review by an independent entity to ensure

14 that they're credible. Those are the two main

15 pillars.

16 Everything else -- talk about

17 requirements; what they are, time of compliance,

18 intruders -- all that's in the wash if you don't do

19 good analyses, if you don't have a good independent

20 review of those analyses. 

21 So those are the two things. If you

22 really want to get them right and make sure your

23 process is truly effective in terms of public health

24 and safety, that's where you really want your energy.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Tell me if I'm summarizing
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1 this well in terms of what you just said, David. 

2 To me, that says that you have to have a

3 credible representation of the geohydrologic

4 environment at which a site sets. By "geohydrologic

5 environment," I mean all the parts and pieces and how

6 they all interact and over what time frames, you know,

7 at what ranges and interaction and all of that, to

8 say, yeah, I understand how the system works.

9 MR. ESH: One way that a true risk purist

10 gets upset about things is when people try to manage

11 risk with conservatism. But from a regulator's

12 standpoint, that is a valid approach to manage

13 uncertainties and, therefore, manage risk. When you

14 have limited information or you're faced with

15 uncertainties of different types, you can choose

16 conservative representation or conservative approach

17 to evaluate that problem, so that comes into play in

18 these analyses and the review of the analyses. 

19 Like I said, there's multiple ways you

20 could handle this problem. 

21 And by analogy, saying the XLPR program

22 for the Extremely Low Probability of Rupture in

23 reactor piping systems, you could take a conservative

24 approach there and try to estimate what's the impact

25 to the systems, how you need to redesign the systems
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1 and enhance them, what not. You could also do

2 something similar to what they're doing, which is

3 basically do a nested Monte Carlo analysis with an

4 epistemic globe and an aleatory loop to try to fully

5 assess the uncertainty and make estimates of

6 probability and, therefore, decisions about what you

7 what you need to do the system. 

8 We don't necessarily dictate in these

9 sites and for these analyses that somebody must use

10 one approach or another. Our objective is to lay out

11 the requirements that allow them to succeed with

12 whatever approach they choose, especially in the area

13 of uncertainty.

14 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Thank you.

15 MR. LEE: So, to finish up this slide, we

16 also received comments that if you're going to go

17 ahead and amend Part 61, you should introduce

18 requirements for the disposal of greater-than-Class-C

19 low-level waste, and lastly, we should introduce

20 criteria for clearance, a la low activity waste.

21 The staff put together a paper designated

22 SECY-13-001 that described what its views were,

23 relative to these issues. We received direction from

24 the Commission previously that if anything came up

25 that would potentially affect the timetable for the
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1 completion of the rule, we were to inform the

2 Commission accordingly. 

3 In that paper, we lay out some proposals

4 for the Commission to consider relative to these five

5 recommendations. First, relative to the ICRP update,

6 we currently have direction from the Commission to

7 proceed with an update of the 61.55 waste

8 classification tables. That's currently scheduled to

9 begin in Fiscal Year 2015.

10 In reference to the duration of

11 institutional controls, as part of any update to the

12 61.55 tables, we could look at that issue in that

13 context.

14 In terms of the so-called Phantom 4 plus

15 chlorine-36, which was offered up by our friends at

16 Waste Control Specialists in Texas -- I get partial

17 credit for that -- the staff has begun that

18 initiative. We had a meeting earlier this year in

19 Phoenix following the waste management meeting. And

20 Don Lowman of the staff is leading up that initiative,

21 and we're going to have a number of interactions over

22 the next several months to address how the guidance

23 document in NUREG/DR-0204 would be updated to address

24 that stakeholder recommendations.

25 In reference to greater-than-class-C
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1 waste, the ball is currently in DOE's court. They

2 have an EIS to prepare. They have to get

3 congressional approval on the preferred approach. So

4 right now, the staff doesn't believe it has any

5 obligations other than to letting that process run its

6 course relative to that decision-making.

7 And lastly, in reference to low-activity

8 waste, that issue was addressed previously a

9 rulemaking to Part 20, and in 2005, the Commission

10 decided to defer any decision-making on any amendments

11 to Part 20, including consideration of clearance.

12 So, with that, unless there are any

13 questions, we'll just segue right into Dave Esh's and

14 Chris Grossman's presentations.

15 CHAIRMAN RYAN: We're going to take one

16 break this morning, and I would suggest that you be

17 the place where it's good to do that. We'll be happy

18 to have you guide that decision.

19 MR. LEE: What time is it?

20 MR. ESH: We have 42 slides. So, if we

21 did Mike five minutes per slide, we're going to eat up

22 four hours.

23 MR. LEE: I tried to go as fast as I could

24 go.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Let's go ahead and get
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1 started David. Are you next? Yes. And we'll take a

2 break at a good point when you point it out to us.

3 Okay?

4 MR. ESH: We're going to share the

5 presentation, and we're going to cover three elements

6 and he's going to cover two. So maybe I can cover

7 three and we can break and then Chris can start off

8 with the second part.

9 CHAIRMAN RYAN: That's fine. Whatever

10 suits you all.

11 STAFF EFFORTS TO REVISE PART 61: KEY CONCEPTS

12 DAVID ESH, PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT BRANCH

13 MR. ESH: It's my pleasure to be here

14 today and talk with you about our efforts on the Part

15 61 rulemaking. Fortunately, I do not have to sing

16 Hail to the Victors before I start this morning. I'm

17 going to talk about our efforts to revise Part 61.

18 Next slide, please.

19 The main topics we're going to cover is,

20 I'm going to cover some key concepts, site-specific

21 low-level waste technical analyses and analysis time

22 frames and then Chris Grossman is going to cover the

23 second two topics.

24 For key concepts, it's important to

25 understand basically the problem context. So what is
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1 the risk? How do these systems perform? How are the

2 disposal systems anticipated to perform? And what,

3 especially, are the waste characteristics that we're

4 dealing with?

5 I'm basically going to cover the what,

6 how, and why of site-specific low-level waste

7 technical analyses. And then everybody's favorite

8 topic -- analysis time frames, which is kind of like

9 having a political debate at Thanksgiving dinner, but

10 we will have it nonetheless.

11 (Laughter.)

12 MR. ESH: Basically, we're going to

13 outline for you what we think the requirements should

14 be, why we think the requirements should be that, and

15 how with somebody satisfy these requirements. Part of

16 that is going to be, I think Chris McKenney tried to

17 indicate earlier, in our guidance document. We put a

18 lot of effort into developing our guidance document

19 and outline. 

20 If NRC was doing a review, here's how we

21 would go about it, here's how we would go about it,

22 the types information we would look for, and how we

23 would interpret that information.

24 It's important understand -- I think, this

25 is one of the things you asked right from the get go,
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1 Dr. Ryan -- you start off with something that's

2 quantitative, and at some point, you move to something

3 that's qualitative. What I'm going to try to express

4 to you here is that the information is quantitative.

5 The decision-making might move from something that is

6 valuing it as quantitative and then values it more as

7 qualitative. But ultimately, these models or analyses

8 are not going to make the decision for you. They

9 provide input to the decision-makers. 

10 The way the low-level waste regulations

11 are constructed, there's a whole bunch of things to go

12 into determining safety of that action. One of them

13 is the technical analyses, but there are all sorts of

14 other requirements that go and, I think, have been

15 very effective. 

16 So I'll talk about hazard and risk, and I

17 think is a big difference between hazard and risk in

18 this problem. That's a good thing because that means,

19 from when Part 61 was developed, hazard, especially

20 from the short-lived activity, is being managed very

21 well. And you know, whether the long-lived activities

22 being managed well, I think probably is, too. Our

23 requirements that we're putting forth provide a common

24 metric for everybody. I'm going talk about those

25 things.
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1 So, key concepts on slide three, "Low2 Level Waste Hazard Versus Risk," I'm going to talk in

3 detail about the inventory a little bit and then some

4 delays in these systems from a barriers and transport

5 perspective. I have a slide on the generic waste

6 qualification system -- I'm not sure how familiar all

7 the Committee members are with it -- and then the

8 inadvertent intruder issue, which we've talked about

9 some.

10 Slide four, please.

11 "Low-Level Waste Hazard Versus Risk."

12 Basically, a large percentage, whether it's 90 or some

13 other higher number, of the hazard comes from the

14 short-lived isotopes. We've heard that discussion a

15 lot: all the inventory is gone at 500 years. A lot

16 of the inventory is gone at 500 years. That's the way

17 the system was constructed, to make sure that the

18 system could contain all the short-lived activity

19 because the short-lived activity is such that it has

20 a high specific activity. If you lose a little bit of

21 it, it can cause a risk, so you have to be pretty

22 certain that you keep that material in the system in

23 order to protect public health and safety.

24 Then, in the analyses, especially for

25 61.41, what you see is, most of the risk is driven
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1 from the long-lived isotopes. So that's what comes

2 out in the ground water, or if you have a erosion

3 concerns, or maybe corrosion followed by air pathway.

4 What you see is that the long-lived isotopes are what

5 drives the wrist, specifically in 61.41.

6 So when we're talking about a technical

7 requirements in, say, 61.42 and 43, those are kind of

8 driven by the first bullet, the short-lived isotopes,

9 whereas 61.41 and 44 are driven more by the risks of

10 long-lived isotopes. 

11 So you have to understand, there are

12 different things that drive risk in these problems.

13 Therefore, the low-level waste requirements have

14 different requirements to tackle each of those risks.

15 Next slide, please.

16 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Before you go on,

17 Dave,

18 MR. ESH: Yes?

19 MEMBER SKILLMAN: For the portion that

20 is a hazard, cobalt 60 is, what, 5.2 years? Cesium,

21 strontium, and tritium are all approximately 30. Were

22 those isotopes chosen because that is their half-life,

23 or were they chosen for different reason?

24 MR. ESH: That I listed them here? 

25 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Yes. What set those
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1 four apart, that you have them --

2 MR. ESH: They're on the slide as just

3 examples of the short-lived isotopes that we see in

4 the different analyses of driving the risks from the

5 short-lived isotopes. 

6 MEMBER SKILLMAN: So these are the

7 prominent species that come forward when you do this

8 analysis.

9 MR. ESH: Yes, and basically, when the

10 regulation developed, they made their best guess about

11 the inventory that they expected was going to be in

12 the facilities.

13 They made these different waste streams

14 and different isotopic lists for each of those streams

15 and then did estimates of volume, and they basically

16 did a summation over all those streams and all those

17 isotopes and came up with kind of a generic inventory

18 that they thought would be in a low-level waste

19 disposal facility, "they," meaning NRC, so, us.

20 So then NRC took that inventory and did an

21 analysis in the FEIS in the draft EIS and the final

22 EIS, in the early 1980s, to develop basically the

23 structure of her regulatory reporting requirements.

24 So they considered short-lived isotopes and long-lived

25 isotopes. They analyzed them somewhat differently to
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1 try to provide protection from the short-lived

2 isotopes, and try to provide protection from long3 lived isotopes.

4 I'm not sure if I answered your question

5 fully. 

6 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Well, I think you did;

7 just one other follow-up.

8 MR. ESH: Okay. 

9 MEMBER SKILLMAN: These were the hazard

10 come basically from the fission process from a light

11 water reactor. 

12 Is there another set that comes from a

13 different process?

14 MR. ESH: Well, part of the reason we're

15 doing the rulemaking is, when the initial regulation

16 was developed, there were estimates about what the

17 inventory would be, and that's kind of hard-wired into

18 the whole regulatory structure and other requirements.

19 Now, as we move forward, other waste

20 streams have come into being that people want to

21 disposal of as low-level waste, so depleted uranium,

22 blended waste, and some of the new medical technology,

23 of developing isotopes for medical procedures. You

24 can envision that you might generate special amounts

25 and quantities of certain isotopes in those processes.
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1 And then, also, if in fact they went to reprocessing

2 fuel cycle, you'd generate different isotopes from

3 that type of waste than you would from what comes out

4 of the traditional light-water reactor operation.

5 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I think it's a fair thing

6 to say there's got to be some kind of balance between

7 -- well, cobalt is not a fission product, of course;

8 it's an activation product.

9 MR. ESH: It's irradiated, yes.

10 CHAIRMAN RYAN: It's screaming hot for a

11 relatively short period of time, so it's an

12 operational/management question. And once you get it

13 "in the ground" or in its disposal configuration, it's

14 probably not a huge long time you're really worried

15 about it. In 50 years, it's pretty much done.

16 MR. ESH: Yes, in my experience, I can't

17 remember ever seeing technical analyses were cobalt-60

18 was the driver of the risk.

19 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So I think it's not only

20 does a little bit of -- you know, there's a little bit

21 of how you got to handle it in an operating

22 circumstance at a licensee's facilities to get it

23 ready to be an honorable. Those tend to be buried

24 based on the operational risks of physically handling

25 those materials. 
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1 And the forward-looking part is, how do I

2 have requirements for waste form, waste packaging,

3 disposal technology, and transportation technology?

4 As David said, all of that has to be balanced into

5 some kind of program that addresses all those

6 component risks in sequence, if you will, to the

7 endpoint. 

8 And I appreciate David's thoughtful way of

9 trying to explain that the metrics of thinking about

10 risk. It certainly evolves as the material goes

11 through a process to ultimate disposal. 

12 Is that a fair summary?

13 MR. ESH: Yeah, sure.

14 Chris, did you have a comment? 

15 MEMBER McKENNEY: I just wanted to also

16 add that along with the operational, there's an

17 institutional control period, again, and the short18 term waste form in the interior varies because, like

19 the cobalt-60 that can disposed of in Class C, at

20 Class C levels, an irradiated hardware can be up to

21 like 20,000- to 60,000 r per hour at the point of

22 disposal. So making sure it's isolated is important

23 because you still need almost 500 years to get that

24 down to where it's fairly innocuous.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Cobalt-60? 
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1 MEMBER McKENNEY: Well, at 20,000- to

2 60,000, that's half -- yeah -- half is 10,000 r per

3 hour, then half again. And at 20,000- to 60,000 r per

4 hour, you need a little bit more time than 50 years.

5 MR. ESH: But at 500 years, you're at 100

6 half-lives. That's a lot.

7 MEMBER McKENNEY: Right. It's very

8 innocuous, dealt with. But I'm just saying that it's

9 a combination of operations and the institutional

10 control, which is why the system does work for short11 lived.

12 MR. ESH: Yeah.

13 So let's go on to slide five --

14 MEMBER SKILLMAN: You answered my

15 question. 

16 MR. ESH: Okay. 

17 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Thank you.

18 MR. ESH: Let's go on to slide five.

19 We showed some of the Committee members

20 this slide before, about the low-level waste inventory

21 analysis. 

22 Basically, we took some information that

23 we had on inventories in low-level waste facilities,

24 and we did a hypothetical calculation of, if you

25 wanted to get that inventory down to a level where
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1 you'd meet, say, a 25 millirem standard, how much

2 reduction do you need in that material? So it's

3 trying to address this issue of, is the material

4 inherently riskless? Okay? 

5 Some of the isotopes are disposed of below

6 the level you already need to meet.

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Just for everybody's

8 benefit, the dashed line across the page, kind of

9 below that is 'low risk'.

10 MR. ESH: Yes, or it would already meet

11 the standard. 

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: That would meet the

13 standard, okay.

14 MR. ESH: As disposed, it automatically

15 would meet the standard because it's at such

16 concentrations. 

17 But in most facilities and for many

18 isotopes, you need some reduction out of the system in

19 order to meet the standard. So our approach is about

20 what analyses you need to do to ensure you achieve

21 that reduction.

22 As you can see, on the X-axis here, it's

23 going out in half-lives. There are a lot of isotopes

24 disposed of, in our four operating facilities, that

25 are long-lived and aren't inherently riskless. So, at
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1 500 years, you aren't automatically going to meet

2 standard. You have to do an analysis what is the risk

3 from that inventory that you put into your system.

4 So the main point of our rulemaking is,

5 then: What analyses or requirements you need to

6 ensure to achieve this? Conceptually, I think that's

7 a good point for the Committee to understand.

8 So, if we move on the slide six, then,

9 "All existing low-level waste facilities contain

10 sufficient inventory that could result in unacceptable

11 radiological risk." This is for 61.41, primarily. In

12 some cases, you need many orders of magnitude of

13 reduction. 

14 The Commission direction, which we talked

15 about earlier, was to perform a limited-scope

16 rulemaking so it would operate within the framework we

17 have, then, what you would need to do within that

18 framework to specify additional technical requirements

19 and develop guidance. As I indicated, we spent an

20 awful lot of time developing the guidance, and we look

21 forward to talking with you about that in the future.

22 I'm proud of the work that my coworkers have done on

23 that. 

24 So, if I look at the Commission direction,

25 it's, change what you need to what don't go crazy, and
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1 provide the requirements to determine if public health

2 and safety is protected. Like I said, we really put

3 a lot of effort into the guidance because some of

4 these things are not amenable to specifying words in

5 a regulation. They're too detailed and too

6 complicated to write regulatory requirements that

7 would necessarily get people to do what you think they

8 need to do. 

9 You need to put the principle or the main

10 idea in the regulatory requirement and then, in the

11 guidance, specify the various approaches that somebody

12 could do to achieve that requirement, and that's one

13 of the approaches we take.

14 MEMBER SCHULTZ: David, just a quick

15 question. There's another step that goes past the

16 guidance, and that is, how do you get it into a

17 license condition?

18 MR. ESH: Yes. 

19 MEMBER SCHULTZ: And then, the operator's

20 use of that licensing condition. So have you thought

21 about that or addressed that the guidance?

22 MR. ESH: No. I don't think we've

23 addressed that in any detail in the guidance. That's

24 a good point. 

25 MEMBER SCHULTZ: You know, if you get
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1 guidance that says, if you use these kinds of words to

2 describe this implementation, which is what the

3 guidance should help people do, it might be helpful to

4 think about whether or not you can point agreement

5 states or whoever the regulator is to -- this should

6 be addressed in the license condition.

7 MR. ESH: Yes, sure. 

8 MEMBER SCHULTZ: Or it could be crafted

9 using something like that, just to point folks in the

10 right direction.

11 MR. ESH: And I think that is a very

12 useful and worthwhile avenue for the agreement states

13 to impose what they see fit in their systems and for

14 their stakeholders, and it gives them some

15 flexibility. But it is a mechanism that they can

16 ensure, if there's something important to them, that

17 it happens for their particular facility in the

18 licensing. 

19 MEMBER SCHULTZ: Yeah, or it could be

20 something that's very particular to a given site for

21 some reason.

22 MR. ESH: Yes. 

23 MEMBER SCHULTZ: So, you know, that gives

24 him a lot of flexibility. But if you recognize that

25 in the guidance, that probably would be helpful to
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1 everybody.

2 MR. ESH: Yes. A lot of the challenges

3 with this problem is because you're dealing with

4 things that are in multiple dimensions, and you're

5 trying to make requirements that are one-dimensional.

6 So we have variability in inventories and

7 site characteristics and half-lives and a variety of

8 things. And then you're trying to make a requirement

9 that applies to all of those, but it's really maybe

10 unfair to ask that. So you can't necessarily do the

11 reduction and make that simple requirement that's

12 going to apply to all the cases.

13 That's why, if we look at the low-level

14 waste regulation overall, my personal opinion is, if

15 we weren't limited in this limited-scope rulemaking,

16 I would have loved to change the waste classification

17 system to separate out long-lived waste from short18 lived waste. And you could make special requirements

19 for short-lived waste that are different than the

20 requirements for long-lived waste. 

21 So, if you have a waste stream like

22 depleted uranium, which is not necessarily a short23 lived concern at all but poses a pretty large long24 lived concern, you could make special requirements for

25 that waste stream. But in the low-level waste
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1 classification system as it exists right now, all the

2 waste classes, the short- and long-lived, are mixed

3 together throughout the classes, so it makes it really

4 cumbersome to try to do that. We still tried to do

5 that in our revised language, which we'll talk to you

6 about in the next meeting, for how we handle the need

7 for someone to do the performance analyses. So was

8 still tried to do that. But it's not easy; it's a

9 little bit messy, how you do it. 

10 We did have an extensive stakeholder

11 interaction, and they basically said don't limit the

12 technical requirements to the particular waste streams

13 initiated it best, meaning depleted uranium and

14 blended low-level waste. 

15 We have had some stakeholders after that

16 express that opinion though: Do we limit it just to

17 those waste streams? But the majority was, don't

18 limit it to the waste streams. We think that's smart

19 because, number one, the majority of our stakeholders

20 didn't want it. It's very difficult to do, as I was

21 trying to express in a technically sensible way. And

22 we end up at the same place we are now, potentially.

23 So, if there's a new waste stream we aren't

24 anticipating right now in this rulemaking, then we

25 have to go back, and the new waste stream that has
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1 somewhat different characteristics, well, we now have

2 to add it into the rulemaking process. My personal

3 opinion is I would like to get out of the regulatory

4 business and move on with other regulatory business.

5 So let's move on to slide --

6 MEMBER SCHULTZ: Dave, before you move on

7 -- 

8 MR. ESH: Yes? 

9 MEMBER SCHULTZ: The discussion you had on

10 the second bullet suggested to me that you wouldn't be

11 able to achieve the request of the stakeholders in the

12 third bullet. In other words, the prescriptive waste

13 forms that currently exist may prevent the proposed

14 analysis process to achieve not limiting the

15 requirements of waste streams. 

16 MR. ESH: Yeah, it's definitely a

17 balancing act of how we develop requirements that we

18 think are going to work for the waste streams that

19 came into being that initiated the process, and future

20 waste streams, while still operating within the

21 structure of the existing regulation without modifying

22 it substantially. And that's where this intruder

23 issue comes into play. 

24 MEMBER SCHULTZ: Right.

25 MR. ESH: Now, the "intruder" part of the
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1 whole analyses is one of the four Subpart C

2 performance objectives. It's fundamental to the

3 regulation. We felt, we don't have the ability to

4 remove one of the legs of the chair, so to speak. We

5 can change the length of the leg or maybe change the

6 size of the leg, but we can't remove it completely. 

7 So, that's conceptually what we were doing

8 in the rulemaking process. And I think we've achieved

9 that, but you'll have to see some of the details and

10 tell us whether you think we've achieved that or not.

11 So, on slide seven, "Delays, Barriers, and

12 Transport," this is just to communicate that in these

13 systems, there are different types of barriers, and

14 there are different types of functions for those

15 barriers. We have both engineered and natural

16 barriers, and they can reduce and delay risk.

17 So, on the left-hand side, I listed some

18 things that act as risk reduction in these problems,

19 and then on the right-hand side, things that delay

20 risk. The technical requirements must account for

21 both of these types of processes in the system. 

22 Barriers that reduce risk are generally

23 preferred over things that delay risk because, if

24 you're just shifting risk and time, eventually, the

25 risk is realized. Whereas, if you achieve a true
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1 reduction, then you can have more confidence the

2 public health and safety will be protected regardless

3 of when that risk may be realized.

4 Slide eight, please -- the generic waste

5 classification system.

6 The generic waste classification systems

7 serves a variety of functions, and I think it was a

8 good system for its desired purpose. So, when the

9 regulation was developed, they said, we think we're

10 going to have a lot of low-level waste sites, and do

11 we want to have everybody analyzing this kind of

12 hypothetical, subjective process of what we think

13 people are going to be doing and how they might

14 disturb the system? They decided, well, we think that

15 it's better done by the regulator, and the regulator

16 will do that analyses and develop limits on

17 concentrations that can be disposed, and that will be

18 imposed on everybody. So those limits provide some

19 sort of limit on the suitable concentrations for near20 surface disposal. 

21 It also constrains this issue of the

22 societal uncertainty. So, you know, we have different

23 types of uncertainties in the problem. There are

24 technical uncertainties associated with the natural

25 system for performance of engineer, those sorts of
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1 things. We also have the societal uncertainty of what

2 people are going to be doing. What do they do now,

3 what are they going to be doing in the future, and how

4 does that impact the regulatory analyses? 

5 The societal uncertainties, I think, is an

6 area where I think it's prudent to choose a

7 conservative approach based on what people do today,

8 and I think that's what the Commission did. They

9 said, look, generally, people, regardless of what may

10 happen in the future, they're going to be trying to

11 seek shelter and use resources. And if we design our

12 scenarios around that sort of philosophy, that should

13 apply in the future as well as it does today.

14 What technologies they may have a

15 billable, whether the solve cancer or whether they

16 have better protection systems to know they're exposed

17 to radioactivity, all those sorts of things are beyond

18 our capability today to say what impact they are going

19 to be in the future. 

20 So this approach limits speculation about

21 the component of the problem. It goes both ways. If

22 you open up the part of the problem, I've dealt with

23 stakeholders who have very specific and extreme views

24 about future land use and activities that may be based

25 on personal experience. You know, one of their
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1 relatives does such and such, and they live within X

2 of the facility. And it's hard to dispute that sort

3 of activity. 

4 Of course, you have to put in context.

5 Well, how many people do that? This is where you're

6 driving up the probability. What's the probability of

7 that particular behavior in action? I don't think

8 it's fruitful to open up that area of analysis because

9 it's very subjective and people have very strong and

10 different opinions. 

11 The regulatory approach that NRC has come

12 up with is, let's choose something that we think is

13 reasonable, conservative, and is robust for regulatory

14 decision-making. Ultimately, I think some of the

15 confusion is derived from, this is not a prediction of

16 the future; it's a regulatory analysis to justify that

17 a decision from a safety standpoint. And those two

18 things can be divergent.

19 So risk in the future might be quite

20 different than the regulatory safety decision and the

21 information that goes into it. That's what we want to

22 try to communicate the Committee here, is the purpose

23 of this type of analysis. It's a regulatory analysis.

24 It's not a prediction protection of the future.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yes, I think that's a very
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1 important point. Thank you for articulating it well.

2 MR. ESH: As I said, there's a `combined

3 long- and short-lived isotopes' in the waste

4 classification system that causes some challenges now

5 for how we would develop requirements. 

6 The downside using the generic waste

7 classification approach is there are embedded

8 assumptions in the system. So there are embedded

9 assumptions about inventory; there are embedded

10 assumptions about future activity of the people. 

11 If you read the comments on the original

12 draft EIS and FEIS -- I don't remember which national

13 lab it was -- one of the national labs basically said,

14 we see that you've developed classification tables for

15 the humid site. People say, it's very conservative to

16 use a humid site and apply it to all. It is for some

17 pathways and some behavior; it's not, for other

18 pathways and other behavior. 

19 So, if you're talking about resuspension

20 of plutonium in a dry climate, that's a lot higher

21 than it is in a humid climate. And so that issue

22 comes into play when you try to reduce something

23 complicated into something more simple. I think the

24 system that's been done is very effective for the

25 inventory, but that's the issue of why we're doing the
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1 rulemaking, that the inventory that was analyzed then

2 is now different.

3 So our approach is, well, how would we do

4 that today? NRC could have done an analysis and came

5 up with new tables, but then it's still being

6 constrained by our assessment of a generic

7 representation for all sites. 

8 Instead, we go with the ability to do the

9 WAC approach, or this site specific analysis for the

10 intruder, more specifically, which is, take into

11 account your actual conditions at that site, and land

12 use and behaviors and everything else, and develop

13 what you think is representative of your specific

14 site, instead of being driven by the decisions that we

15 make in some sort of generic scenario by the

16 regulator. 

17 I think that is a good approach and it

18 will work very well, but as I said, it requires you to

19 have good oversight of the evaluation and the analysis

20 and that appropriate detail went into that analysis to

21 begin with.

22 CHAIRMAN RYAN: One part of that I think

23 is very important, too, David -- correct me if you

24 disagree -- I think it's fair to put in the regulation

25 somewhere along the line -- all right, let's say we've
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1 got a new segment. There's got to be a modeling

2 effort that will get the regulator, whether it's

3 through an agreement state, to say, yes, this is okay;

4 we can proceed. 

5 What about the ongoing requirement that as

6 a site continues to do monitoring and all that sort of

7 stuff, they can build the body of evidence that can

8 become decades long in terms of the ability to better

9 protect what they first thought, and say, we're on

10 track to being where we thought we'd be, or, we need

11 to make these adjustments based on these new findings

12 from the data that we now have. 

13 Is that something you've built in?

14 MR. ESH: Yes, that's part of the process

15 right now. If you look at Part 61, at closure, it

16 basically says, considerable all those things that

17 you've learned, whether it's monitoring data or

18 technical analyses or whatever, and factor those into

19 your closure, design, and decision, basically.

20 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yeah. I think the real

21 option for the guidance to do that in the guidance

22 document might be to make sure you've captured the

23 depth of what you just said and all the things that

24 back it up. 

25 MR. ESH: Yes, in our guidance document,
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1 we are much more focused on the front-end regulatory

2 analysis than on the back-end parts of the process.

3 That was driven by, what do we need to put on the

4 front end, based on the new waste streams, to ensure

5 that the appropriate analysis done? Rather than, on

6 the back end of the process, what could be done better

7 to improve the back end of the process? 

8 We did change a few things there, like

9 requiring the analysis at the end --

10 Right, Chris?

11 MR. McKENNEY: Okay.

12 Chris McKenney -- as we'll discuss in

13 June, there is more of an emphasis, even in our

14 previous NUREG-1573, which is a performance assessment

15 rule on waste. 

16 In 2000, we did note that this is an

17 iterative process, meaning that as you get through,

18 you need to review the program, review your

19 assessments and say, are you still within the

20 envelope? Can you make a better estimation? And

21 there would be an expectation that they could, if they

22 got better data, make a new performance assessment,

23 which, the way the ruling is, they could take more

24 waste, take more inventory, either concentration or

25 inventory, and take advantage of that. Or, if other
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1 information becomes available, they need to reassess

2 their performance assessment because something isn't

3 working as it should. 

4 That also should be triggered by their --

5 one is the fact that in Part 20, of course, there's an

6 annual review in the radiation protection, and the

7 envelope which your performance assessment as part of,

8 should be part of the review of saying, do we have new

9 information that says we need to either question or we

10 can come in for amendment to do a revisal.

11 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Thanks.

12 MR. ESH: So the most important part of

13 the slide, though, are the last two bullets. So, if

14 there's anything that you remember from what I say

15 today, it's the last two bullets that I want people to

16 remember. 

17 The generic waste classification system

18 doesn't, and was never intended to, ensure that you

19 will meet 61.41. And not all isotopes important for

20 61.41 are necessarily reflected in these tables of

21 61.55. Because it was driven by the analysis of the

22 intruder for 61.42, that concept is important to

23 understand. 

24 There's always been the expectation in

25 Part 61 that you will do an analysis to demonstrate
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1 that you can meet 61.41. That's an analysis that's

2 basically a modeling or a projection or whatever you

3 want to call it, but it's some sort of forward-looking

4 assessment of what radioactivity can you take in your

5 facility? How is it going to be transported through

6 the system? And what's the potential dose to

7 receptors to result from the transport of that

8 material? 

9 Okay, so inadvertent intruders -- slide

10 nine. 

11 This is the concept that the Commission

12 used when the intruders were put into play in the

13 regulation. Some of our stakeholders and made various

14 comments on this area, and I wanted to just talk about

15 it at a high level conceptually. so the Committee

16 understands what is assumed and what's not. It is not

17 based on the assumption of failure of society. It is

18 based on the assumption of error of the government. 

19 As somebody was talking about earlier

20 today -- I think it was Mike -- it's basically, you

21 have 100-year institutional control period, which is

22 an active institutional control. At the end of that

23 hundred-year period, you have a passive institutional

24 control period. 

25 NRC expects that that passive system is
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1 going to be effective, but not 100-percent effective,

2 because governments make mistakes. And they'll make

3 mistakes in ways like inappropriately looking at the

4 zoning plan or, you know, something about land-use, is

5 basically what it boils down to, and managing future

6 land use. And over long periods of time, you have

7 records that are destroyed, you have all sorts of

8 things like that, that can happen, so there can't be

9 assurance that that sort of passive system, where you

10 don't have a fence and people patrolling is going to

11 keep people out of that area. 

12 There was also the assumption that the

13 intruder, as 61.42 is written, is protected, it says,

14 at all times. There's no limited to time of when that

15 person is protected in the system. But conceptually,

16 they expected that low-level waste is going to have

17 limited quantities of long-lived waste and that the

18 decay hazard, as Dr. Ryan has said, is reduced

19 tremendously over the 500-year period. New waste

20 streams might not necessarily meet that description.

21 In particular, the depleted uranium stream waste

22 stream, more waste streams that are generated from

23 some of the other processes, might not necessarily be

24 waste streams with low amounts of long-lived waste. 

25 So the issue becomes, how do you assess
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1 that part of the problem? That's where the

2 inadvertent intruder comes into play in the site3 specific intruder analysis. The inadvertent intruder

4 concept, and the way it goes about, it relieves

5 licensees of financial responsibility after the

6 institutional control period. So they develop a fund,

7 as you're well aware, and they use that fund to do

8 closure activities. But then, ultimately, the site is

9 given to state and federal ownership, and license are

10 off the hook.

11 If you want to go to an approach of longer

12 institutional control, then I think that has financial

13 impacts for your assurance fund and things like that.

14 Or, if you wanted to go to a perpetuity-type approach,

15 which is the Commission in the past has said does not

16 support or isn't reasonable in developing the approach

17 that they did here originally in Part 61. 

18 That isn't to say that the necessarily

19 change that position now, but those are alternatives

20 that we can considered in the process. That is because

21 there wasn't at the time, and I don't think there is

22 still is, an adequate basis for long-term robustness

23 of passive control issues.

24 This should say "passive," I think, not

25 "active," on the fourth bullet down.
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1 The concept for the intruders was that the

2 intruders were on unlikely, albeit possible. Not

3 expected; unlikely, albeit possible. So, while you're

4 right that there is a conditional probability of one,

5 we're going to assume, for intrusion, the fact that we

6 are applying the 500-millirem dose limit the NRC did

7 in developing the classification tables, and which

8 we're proposing in the rulemaking process, implies a

9 probability of five percent. 

10 If you draw an imaginary line at the edge

11 of the buffer zone and you put a public receptor at

12 one side of the buffer and you move the receptor to

13 the other side of the buffer zone, if you think the

14 probability is one that they're going to be inside the

15 buffer zone, there's no reason to set the dose limit

16 at 25 on one side of the line and 500 on the other.

17 The limits should be the same if, in fact, you think

18 that than expected behavior. 

19 So, conceptually, that what's done with

20 the intruder, and we're not moving far away from that,

21 except, as I indicated, we want to allow people to do

22 that in a site-specific way now that takes into

23 account things like the depth of the waste, the

24 barriers that are present, the materials that they

25 have, the site-specific environmental conditions. And
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1 all those things that go into that type of evaluation.

2 It is still a regulatory analysis. It's

3 not projection of the expected future. It's a

4 regulatory analysis to make a safety decision, and

5 that's an important distinction that I think needs to

6 be understood. 

7 So, slide 10, please.

8 The low-level waste technical analyses --

9 the requirements must apply -- and there are a couple

10 of important points here. They must apply to all

11 sites and inventories. 

12 The low-level waste disposal sites have

13 vastly different inventories, engineered barriers,

14 natural barriers, and environmental conditions. The

15 approach that we took is that the technical

16 requirements have to be established for the most

17 challenging inventories and site conditions or else we

18 can't ensure that health and safety will be protected.

19 So, if you said, well, I have a site that

20 has all short-lived waste and, therefore, they should

21 only analyze for 500,000 years, I would agree with

22 that. Technically, that makes sense. Why wouldn't

23 you do that? But, if we put 500 or 1,000 years into

24 the regulatory requirement and somebody comes along

25 with large quantities of long-lived waste, well,
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1 there's no bets at all that the dose results, in these

2 types of analyses, that they get in 500 or 1,000 years

3 will in any way be representative of what they get in

4 the period after 1,000 years and, say, 10,000 years.

5 Generally, the engineered system and the

6 radionuclide transport in the groundwater system can

7 get you delays of at least 1,000 years in many cases.

8 But for a lot of for a lot of systems, and especially

9 for a humid site, they don't get delays past 10,000

10 years. So, if you want to see what the risk is, the

11 risk usually occurs after a thousand, not before a

12 thousand, for 61.41 in particular. 

13 The approach we took was to specify the

14 requirements that would ensure that the challenging

15 sites in inventories are, that public health and

16 safety is protected for them, but in the guidance

17 document and the analysis, allow somebody to do

18 something that's simpler and more straightforward when

19 they have a low-risk condition. So, if they have a

20 low-risk inventory at long times, sure, the

21 requirement says analyze for 10,000 years. 

22 But if I was a licensee, I'd go in there

23 and say, look, my inventory is gone; what's the point

24 of me estimated that? And as a regulator, I would

25 say, there's really no point in that. But there's no
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1 pain to projecting the numbers at that point if the

2 risk is low or zero. The risk is going to come out of

3 the analysis based on there being no inventory there.

4 So it's like a nuclear version of Occam's

5 razor. So, when we have this issue of having two

6 competing decisions, and one is not necessarily much

7 different than the other, we'll err on the side of

8 protectiveness or safety, and that's what we're

9 attempting to do with these regulatory requirements.

10 So we think the best approach is to risk-inform the

11 technical analyses.

12 So, if we could go to slide 11, and this

13 is what I want to convey to you -- I know the

14 Committee probably don't like the fact that I'm saying

15 what we're doing is risk-informed, but that's the

16 argument that I'm going to try to make. But we do a

17 lot of things in this revision that I believe are

18 risk-informed.

19 Now, we aren't abandoning the intruder

20 performance objective, which I think is one of the

21 hang-ups of the Committee with the whole approach.

22 MEMBER ARMIJO: It's mine, yes.

23 (Laughter.)

24 MR. ESH: We aren't abandoning that

25 because, as I said, we were given direction for a
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1 limited scope. We think it's one of the fundamental

2 components that they put in their analysis originally,

3 and we don't feel like we have the ability to move

4 away from that. There are a diversity of opinions,

5 and some people understand or agree with why it's

6 there in the approach that it serves, including many

7 of the staff. 

8 But putting that to the side, the rest of

9 it, I would say, are examples of how we are trying to

10 be risk-informed in this process. So the tiered

11 approach to the analysis time frames, it's trying to

12 work with the uncertainties and the problems while

13 still trying to ensure that appropriate analysis that

14 appropriate analyses of done for the more risky waste,

15 especially for 61.41.

16 We are, in the proposed revisions,

17 allowing for site-specific technical analysis rather

18 than generic waste classification. We're trying to

19 still avoid what I would call unnecessary speculation

20 about the societal uncertainty component. Maybe it's

21 a lot like the rulemaking; you go around and around

22 and around and you end up at the same place anyway. 

23 But the higher dose limit for the intruder

24 scenario, if we weren't being risk-informed, we would

25 set the probability of one to the intruder and say,
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1 use the same dose limit for the intruder. 

2 The site stability is based on the impacts

3 to 61.41 and 42 not and some abstract concept about,

4 like, dimensional change at the facility, or

5 structural change, because we don't think it is

6 reasonable for somebody not to tie changes in the

7 stability and structure of the system to how it may

8 impact the public health and safety. So, as we wrote

9 the requirements, that's how we tie it in, and we

10 explain it in the guidance. 

11 And then one area of the regulation that

12 the Committee probably hasn't talked a lot about, but

13 we've gotten some good comments from stakeholders on

14 it, was 61.50, Site Suitability Characteristics. What

15 we decided to do there was to say the site suitability

16 characteristics are only exclusionary, the

17 hydrological ones, for 500 years because, basically,

18 if you're having hydrological problems within the

19 first 500 years of your facility, you're likely to

20 have very big problems after 500 years from those

21 processes.

22 But the other things --

23 CHAIRMAN RYAN: What would be the limits

24 of those? I can understand a meandering stream or

25 river or something that's --
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1 MR. ESH: Well, to put it more simply, the

2 issue is this: The site suitability characteristics

3 have something like, the facility may not be in the

4 location of the 100-year floodplain. How would

5 somebody demonstrate that over thousands of years,

6 whether you're in a 100-year floodplain or not? It's

7 based on things like you just sited, how rivers move

8 and all the geomorphology that goes on. I think that

9 would be almost impossible to demonstrate. 

10 You should be able to demonstrate it for

11 500-year period. I think that's credible to

12 demonstrate based on all the science I know about

13 geomorphology and the programs available and what not.

14 But after that, if it doesn't impact public health and

15 safety, it shouldn't be exclusionary. 

16 That's the approach we took, and an

17 example for you of what we decided to do there.

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I guess what I'm reaching

19 for is, would that kind of analysis suggest that

20 engineered barriers or engineered aspects of the

21 disposal system would be credited? 

22 MR. ESH: Yes. Certainly after, for

23 hydrological characteristics, after 500 years. We

24 intend for this to be smart and performance-based. If

25 you can credit any engineered barrier for whatever
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1 period of time, you're free to credit that in your

2 analysis. 

3 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. That's the answer

4 to my question.

5 MR. ESH: Yes.

6 And then also, as you are well aware, in

7 the dose modeling area, we recommend moving away from

8 something that's quite dated at this point and doing

9 something that we said people can do any way in other

10 analogous programs. 

11 So, Analysis Time Frames -- I have, I

12 guess, three -- 

13 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So just to make sure

14 everybody is on the same page right now one, that's

15 basically using the more updated ICRP models for

16 internal radiation protection analysis. 

17 MR. ESH: Yes. That's right.

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: That's really very focused

19 on the internal part because all the radionuclide

20 stuff has been updated. 

21 MR. ESH: Yes.

22 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. 

23 MR. ESH: Slide 12 -- Chris?

24 MR. McKENNEY: Actually, because of the

25 way we're writing the rule, if there were to be a
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1 change in the external assessment process, they could

2 be able to take advantage of that as soon as the new

3 federal guidance report came out. 

4 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay.

5 MR. McKENNEY: So, the way the rule is set

6 up, it's not stuck on a specific federal guidance

7 report anymore.

8 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Ah, okay, so that's the

9 tie.

10 MR. McKENNEY: They can update their

11 assessments to take account of the latest science.

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Thanks. That's great. 

13 MR. ESH: So slide 12 -- Analysis Time

14 Frames -- is a summary of the international

15 experience. 

16 We went out and tried to find as much

17 literature as we could on the subject. And the bottom

18 line, as you can imagine, is there is a variety of

19 different approaches, but they have a common theme to

20 them. They usually do one of the things I've listed

21 on the subtexts under "approaches included." 

22 Some countries will do long-term analyses.

23 Some countries will just say, go to peak, whenever

24 that is. And others will set regulatory defined

25 limits on the near-surface disposal of long-lived
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1 alpha, especially. So they say we're going to limit

2 how much long-lived you can take, and once we do that,

3 then you can analyze for a short period of time

4 because we've placed a limit on what the risk may be

5 for the long-lived component. 

6 If you're not going to place a limit on

7 what the risks can be for the long-lived component,

8 then my opinion is you at least have to do an analysis

9 looking out sufficiently long to see what the risk is,

10 from that component. 

11 Some --

12 MR. WIDMAYER: Hey, Dave?

13 MR. ESH: Yes? 

14 MR. WIDMAYER: Sorry. Can you tell us

15 what the bases are for those countries placing a limit

16 on the long-lived alpha? I mean they must have done

17 some sort of analysis to come up with a --

18 MR. ESH: I don't know how detailed the

19 analyses are, because it's very difficult -- 

20 MR. WIDMAYER: Do they have ranges all

21 over the place, or are they -- 

22 MR. ESH: They're kind of condensed in,

23 like, the 4 E to the -5, 4 E to the -6 Becquerels per

24 kilogram, I think; I forget the units. It's in the

25 paper; we can talk about it. But basically, it's not
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1 clear how they derive those values. 

2 You know, is it a case of herding

3 behavior, where somebody came up with one and then the

4 next guy is doing his regulations, and he says, they

5 have that, so let's make it about that. So I don't

6 know. We couldn't find sufficient detail to see

7 specifically how those numbers were derived. But the

8 fact of the matter is that they do set them, and some

9 people, instead of setting the number like that, they

10 just say, no near-surface disposal. 

11 So some countries put all their waste,

12 even the most benign waste, deep because what's the

13 primary mechanism for people who are trying to manage

14 risk from different types of waste? It's disposal

15 depths. High-level waste, geologic repository;

16 intermediate waste, intermediate depth; more benign

17 waste, near-surface. 

18 So, if you have waste that you think is

19 kind of intermediate-level waste or kind of pushing

20 towards there, I would search for a site where I can

21 bury it deeper and mitigate a lot of these concerns

22 about changes to the environment, what people are

23 doing, all those sorts of things. It's a really

24 simple and effective way to properly mitigate those

25 risks. 
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1 Many of our existing facilities, though,

2 do not have sufficient depth in their locations that

3 they can take that approach. So that would be a

4 problem to use that for some existing facilities. Or

5 if we were to say, you know, if NRC was to derive, you

6 should put this type of waste at least this depth,

7 that also, then, adds a problem, just like the generic

8 waste classification system, in that value based on

9 some analyses that may not be representative for

10 another site or another condition, and we're going to

11 impose that on all. 

12 So, while it's smart from a policy and

13 technical perspective, it could also not necessarily

14 be risk-informed from a site-to-site variation and

15 inventory perspective. Our approach for analysis time

16 frames, we think, is consistent with this

17 international experience, which is kind of congealed

18 around some of these main elements.

19 Now, the domestic experience in low-level

20 waste, as summarized of slide 13, as you know, all

21 currently operational low-level waste disposal

22 facilities are in agreement states. There are

23 different interpretations of our regulations because

24 our regulations are silent on time frame for the

25 analyses. 
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1 It does mention time frames were slow the

2 things -- say, the Class-C intruder barrier, for

3 instance, or site characteristics that says `consider

4 for at least 500 years.' The institutional control

5 period is 100 years. By putting some of those numbers

6 in that are conditional for specific parts of the

7 analyses and then being silent on this other part, it

8 has led to some various, quite diverse interpretations

9 of what we expect. 

10 But for different interpretations in the

11 various agreement states, Washington used 10,000 years

12 and they looked longer in their EIS. Texas went out

13 to 50,000 years in their analyses. Both of those

14 licensed operating facilities. Utah had 500 years,

15 and now they're currently reviewing a performance

16 assessment that goes to 10,000 years. And then they

17 do something that they call a deep-time analysis after

18 that, which will look at very long-term effects at

19 that site. And then South Carolina did 2,000 years,

20 have I understand it.

21 In 2000, the NRC staff performed a

22 detailed technical analysis for low-level waste

23 disposal, looking at this and other issues in the

24 development of NUREG-1573. They basically said, look,

25 you need 10,000 years because, otherwise, you can have
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1 situations where you design a facility and you put in

2 an engineered barrier and you defer the risk for some

3 period of time, especially 500 years or maybe slightly

4 more than 1000, but then you have a big risk pop up

5 for certain inventories and designs, and that's not

6 something we want. 

7 We want to ensure that the criteria are

8 met for a reasonable time frame due to the reduction

9 to the system, and not necessarily the delays in the

10 system. Delays are good; don't get me wrong. You

11 definitely want delays. 

12 So, if I'm worried about my family or

13 future generations of my family, it's really important

14 for people to understand that even hundreds of years

15 is are very long periods of time. But from a

16 regulatory analysis standpoint, the reductions in risk

17 are much more powerful, and this is about ensuring

18 that the analysis communicates what those reductions

19 are or are not. 

20 In addition to the international and

21 domestic experience, we also considered some technical

22 things on slide 14. 

23 As I discussed earlier, we have this

24 traditional waste. The traditional waste, all of it

25 in all of the operating facilities has a long-lived
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1 component to it, and the long-lived component is the

2 driver of the projected doses for 61.41. In fact, for

3 three of the four facilities that went out longer, all

4 of their peak doses occur after 1,000 years, so the

5 peaks are larger. 

6 So, if you want to talk about risk, based

7 on what they know today and their analyses, the risk

8 is larger in the longer-term period than it is in the

9 shorter-term.

10 Now, depleted uranium is a different

11 beast. It's a much more extreme case of what I just

12 described, and it's due to the fact that it's, as

13 currently envisioned, essentially pure powdered

14 uranium, where the daughters then grow in over long

15 periods of time. 

16 The problem with it is, at 1,000 years,

17 your only capturing one one-thousandth of the impact

18 of where it ends up as those daughters build in over

19 time. At 10,000 years, you are roughly in an order of

20 magnitude. It depends on the isotopic ratio U-234 and

21 U-238, but you're roughly within an order of

22 magnitude. 

23 So our concept was, if we're dealing with

24 a system that has a lot of different types of

25 uncertainties, whether they're from performance of
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1 natural or engineered barriers, or the waste

2 characteristics themselves, we should at least be able

3 to get within an order of magnitude. 

4 We realize that there are a lot of

5 uncertainties as you go out in time, and that causes

6 challenges to the value of information, but for

7 regulatory decision-making, if we look at what's done

8 internationally and domestically, there are decisions

9 that are made using information from those time

10 frames. It's not that that information is valueless;

11 it has been used, and those facilities are licensed.

12 We think it's prudent to continue with that approach,

13 considering some of the waste streams that we were

14 told to do this rulemaking for.

15 Another example I would use for the

16 traditional waste that's interesting is, I think, the

17 ILAW facility at Hanford. Although DOE uses 1,000

18 years under DOE Order 435.1, at Hanford, they present

19 results usually that they communicate a 1,000-year

20 impact and then the 10,000-year impact. And what you

21 see is that in many cases, a 1,000-year impact is only

22 a five-hundredth or a thousandth of what you see that

23 in a period of 1,000 years to 10,000 years. 

24 So that system does a good job in pushing

25 risk out. But the magnitude of it, and whether you
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1 need to evaluate that magnitude to assure that public

2 health and safety is protected, is quite different for

3 those different time frames. We think that the

4 analysis should be done to communicate what that is,

5 and the decision should be based off that. 

6 So the guidance that we got from ACNW in

7 slide 15, or ACNW and then ACRS, was to use a two8 tiered approach, so the time at which the more mobile

9 radionuclides produce doses, and then, avoid

10 catastrophic impacts after. Consider things like teal

11 hydrology, the waste isolation technology, and other

12 controls.

13 And we really appreciated this

14 recommendation -- I appreciated it when it was first

15 generated and 1997 and then again in 2011, and I said,

16 yeah, that looks great; okay, how do we do that. 

17 So then we move to slide 16.

18 Well, when we tried to say, how do we do

19 that? What requirements will be right for this?

20 Well, when we tried to say, well, how will we do that,

21 to try to make the requirement be flexible to adjust

22 with the problem, we ran into all sorts of challenges

23 of what these things would mean. So we said, okay,

24 what are the more mobile radionuclides? How would you

25 define that? 
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1 The challenges are listed in these

2 subtexts, like, "Radionuclide A maybe more mobile at

3 one site and less mobile at the next; Radionuclide A

4 may be less mobile than Radionuclide B at one site and

5 more mobile at another. So how do you define more

6 mobile?

7 Then, in addition --

8 MEMBER ARMIJO: Dave?

9 MR. ESH: Yes? 

10 MEMBER ARMIJO: Could you give a specific

11 example of that mobility difference from one site to

12 another?

13 MR. ESH: Yeah, any isotopes. So, if you

14 look at the distribution of most of the -- usually,

15 the engineers condense the geochemistry of transport

16 down into a single parameter called the Distribution

17 Coefficient, which is kind of a linear absorption

18 isotherm for the partitioning of the material between

19 a solid and a liquid phase. It's a crude

20 representation all the complicated geochemistry that

21 can go on in some of the systems, but it's --

22 MEMBER ARMIJO: Is it a water-soluble

23 element -- 

24 MR. ESH: Yes -- 

25 MEMBER ARMIJO: -- in a dry site versus a
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1 wet site. The example would be, say, take uranium.

2 Uranium, if you look at the observed values and say

3 there's generic references of compiled KD values. The

4 one that we'll look at is the Shepherd and Thibodeaux

5 reference. The uranium KDs have been measured from

6 like 0.02 milliliters per gram up to like 20,000

7 milliliters per gram. 

8 So, at one site, uranium would be

9 effectively immobile, and at another site, it could be

10 quite mobile. It would depend on the geochemistry and

11 mineralogy and all the sorts of things. 

12 MR. GROSSMAN: An example there might be

13 if you have like a carbonated groundwater source, for

14 the uranium case. 

15 MEMBER ARMIJO: Sure, pH changes.

16 MR. GROSSMAN: Yes.

17 MR. ESH: Yes.

18 So the challenge becomes, then, you're

19 dealing with these distributions of quite variable

20 information that you're trying to evaluate. And if we

21 can't get people, just from a fundamental standpoint,

22 to do a similar analysis in this area, if we were

23 really specific about how you might go about doing

24 this, I can see we'd get even more diverse results in

25 terms of the types of analyses that were done. 
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1 And then you run into additional

2 challenges like, say, you have a site where tritium

3 comes out first, then a little bit later iodine-129

4 come so and then maybe technetium-99, then carbon-14.

5 Where do you draw the line? Which ones do you call

6 more mobile, and which ones are less mobile? And I

7 don't know. 

8 If the Committee can give us insights on

9 that as what you intended -- I think that's a

10 challenge for finding the more mobile radionuclides in

11 using this sort of approach.

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: That's a really

13 complicated question because, for sample, you could

14 have tritium in physical forms in waste that are

15 relatively immobile, where tritium is obviously, you

16 know, mobile in a liquid form -- 

17 MR. ESH: Yeah.

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: -- or a not-absorbed form,

19 or something like that. 

20 So I guess maybe we're hitting on the idea

21 that that has to be site-specific. 

22 MR. ESH: Yeah, the problem -- 

23 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So the guidance you offer

24 should be, you need to these things for any specific

25 kind of determination of the questions you just asked.
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1 MR. ESH: Yeah. My problem is I don't see

2 that, even in guidance phase, that we could put

3 something down that would lead people to interpret it

4 the same way or come up to a similar conclusion. So

5 it would be -- 

6 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Well, maybe it's not the

7 same way, but maybe it's within some range of, you

8 know, high, medium, or low sorts of thinking for

9 mobility, for example.

10 MR. ESH: Yeah.

11 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Come up with some

12 qualitative decision-making that would allow you to

13 say, okay, in this bracket, we're going to do this,

14 and in this bracket, we're going to do that. So --

15 I'm sort of thinking a lot.

16 MR. ESH: Yeah, it's even worse, though,

17 because we focus on groundwater, but there are

18 multiple pathways. So, you know, an air pathway or

19 suspension or surface water or something else. 

20 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And combinations of them,

21 yeah.

22 MR. ESH: And then colloids -- what does

23 that mean? You know, colloids have the ability to

24 move things that really don't move, quite some

25 distance in a short amount of time. And so, exactly
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1 how would that impact whether you determine something

2 is more mobile? You know, it can impact the whole

3 inventory, not just a specific isotope, or the ones

4 that are prone to form colloids. So that's the first

5 part of it. 

6 The second part, the catastrophic impacts,

7 you know, what would that be? What sort of impact

8 does the Committee feel is a catastrophic impact? 

9 MEMBER ARMIJO: Well, it certainly isn't

10 an exposure of individual to some, even fatal dose;

11 it's thousands of people, large numbers of people. 

12 That's where I get hung up on the intruder

13 assessment. It's certainly not catastrophic in any

14 sense of the word "catastrophe."

15 MR. ESH: Yes, and I would like to have

16 you with me whenever I'm getting challenged by

17 stakeholders that 25 millirem is not protective, for

18 you to explain that line of thinking that thousands of

19 people exposed to very large doses is what you mean as

20 catastrophic, and that that's consistent with the

21 Agency's mission of protecting public health and

22 safety. That seems like a very difficult discussion

23 -- 

24 MEMBER ARMIJO: Well, it is for people

25 will really moping about any kind of radiation
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1 exposure. What I'm talking about, as a regulator, is,

2 you say, what is a catastrophic exposure and impact,

3 and it's certainly not a hypothetical intruder at

4 1,000 years or 10,000 years, 20,000 years. Clearly,

5 that doesn't meet any definition of "catastrophic." 

6 So that's what we were trying to say, you

7 know, that when you do this analysis, what could

8 possibly go wrong way out in time for low-level waste

9 that could even come close to being catastrophic? 

10 You don't have a burden to protect against

11 some individual exposure of one individual. We don't

12 have a moral or an ethical or legal burden unless we

13 impose it on ourselves for our particular reasons, and

14 I don't think that's of value from a public health and

15 safety perspective.

16 MR. ESH: Yes, I understand what you're

17 saying there, but also remember, we're talking about

18 more so, 61.41 here, for the protection through the

19 61.41 performance objective, not necessarily the

20 61.42, the intruder performance objective -- 

21 So would your same line of thought apply

22 to 61.41? 

23 MEMBER ARMIJO: For you -- 

24 MR. ESH: -- because, because we didn't get

25 direction from the Committee to limit this to the
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1 intruder. This is just basically, for the time frame

2 for the analyses, this two-tiered approach, with the

3 first phase being the more mobile, and the second

4 phase, catastrophic, was to all analyses of time

5 frames. It wasn't limited to just the intruder. 

6 MEMBER ARMIJO: I think it was in the

7 intrusion, the long-term intrusion. That was my

8 thinking when we were working on this letter. 

9 But I can't envision a low-level waste

10 facility ever leading to a catastrophic impact, even

11 in 100 years or 50 years or 300 years. We'd really

12 have to be poor engineers and regulators to ever have

13 that happen.

14 MR. ESH: Well, I think the issue is, if

15 you have requirements where you could potentially,

16 based on what allowed by the definition of low-level

17 wastes, put in large concentrations of long-lived

18 isotopes into the facility, and you'd only analyze for

19 a short period of time, you can in fact have something

20 that I think some of our stakeholders would call a

21 catastrophe because you end up with very large

22 groundwater impacts over a very large area,

23 potentially. 

24 So it's a difference of opinion. I'm just

25 trying to communicate that we have stakeholders who
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1 feel that the obligation to protect is not limited.

2 The obligation to protect is what it is. So, whether

3 you take the strong anthropocentric approach to the

4 protection of future generations, or a weak approach,

5 the NRC has some obligation to protect. 

6 If you go back and look at the

7 congressional testimony around the time when Part 61

8 was developed, they talk about protecting for as long

9 as it's hazardous. They don't talk about limiting it

10 to some period of time based on the fact that future

11 generations can solve those problems. 

12 So it gets us in a little bit of an

13 uncomfortable position if we try to take that approach

14 because I don't think it's consistent with the

15 international experience. It's certainly not

16 consistent with the domestic low-level waste

17 experience, but of course, we may have driven that, so

18 that point is understood. And the technical

19 characteristics of the problem, I think, challenge

20 that approach. 

21 So that's kind of where we're coming from.

22 We're more comfortable with being where we are than

23 taking that approach. We certainly understand the

24 opinion, and we understand where you're coming from.

25 I tried to express this in some of the
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1 early meetings about, if we're going to talk about

2 risk, let's really talk about risk. What's the risk

3 that I hit a deer on the way home and I'm killed,

4 compared to my risk from 25 millirem in groundwater

5 from a low-level waste site? We deal with real risks

6 all the time, in our own lives and in our families,

7 that are much more significant than these radiation

8 risks. But that discussion went nowhere, when I tried

9 to take it. 

10 MEMBER ARMIJO: Well, it's still valid.

11 And the point is that, you know, unless we keep

12 raising that issue and saying, we really want to be

13 based on a real health and real risk, you can't live

14 in two worlds where, in one case, we deal with

15 reality, and in the other case, we elevate radiation

16 exposure in low-level waste to an extreme, when there

17 is no basis for it. 

18 MR. ESH: Yes. 

19 MEMBER ARMIJO: So the idea behind this

20 letter was just, hey, try to get it into a real-world

21 situation; what is the obligation for the regulator?

22 MR. ESH: Yes, I understand. 

23 MEMBER ARMIJO: Obviously, you know, there

24 are some people who say, hey, look, we have a duty to

25 protect any individual as far out into the future, as
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1 long as there's a miniscule possibility of any health

2 risk, and I don't believe that. 

3 MR. ESH: Well, it should be clear that --

4 MEMBER ARMIJO: I just don't that's at all

5 reasonable. 

6 MR. ESH: I mean it would be helpful if,

7 whenever you eventually write on this subject, you

8 communicate on the difference between technically what

9 you think should be done, and then the more

10 fundamental issue of, say, the policy of what NRC

11 should be doing with respect to protection of future

12 generations. 

13 On one hand, you know, we can deal with

14 the technical things at our level, but to make a

15 fundamental decision about protection of future

16 generations and, you know, the policy of that approach

17 is something that, if we got direction on it,

18 certainly, we'll implement it. But we don't feel

19 comfortable charging ahead was trying to make that

20 sort of change. 

21 CHAIRMAN RYAN: That's a very important

22 point, David. I appreciate Sam's comments, but to me,

23 you can build a mountain so high in all of this

24 thinking, you could never climb it. I think that's

25 what we're trying to avoid. 
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1 MR. ESH: Yeah. 

2 CHAIRMAN RYAN: What is technically sound?

3 What is technically reasonable? What are the kinds of

4 materials to try to manage and get some envelope

5 around it? You've described that pretty well this

6 morning so far.

7 MR. ESH: My opinion boils down to this:

8 You know, we have operating facilities that have been

9 licensed using requirements that are similar to what

10 we've propose, so it's not a hurdle that's impossible

11 to get over. Whether the hurdle should be in place to

12 begin with is a different story. But the fact is that

13 it's not something that's going to prevent licensing

14 and regulation of low-level waste sites. 

15 MEMBER ARMIJO: Dave, that's very

16 important to me because, I'll tell you, the regulation

17 seems to be getting bigger and more complicated. And

18 maybe because I'm far from being a next work in this

19 area, but there is in the in this country for low20 level waste facilities to be signed.

21 If we make the regulations so difficult to

22 meet and we prevent the signing of these low-level

23 waste facilities, then a lot of other benefits to

24 society will not be available.

25 MR. ESH: Yes, I understand. 
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1 MEMBER ARMIJO: So, you know, the question

2 is, if this is just some calculational method that you

3 can use to assure yourself, that's not a big problem.

4 But if it creates an impossible barrier

5 that you can't get over, and it can be easily

6 challenged in court or by intervenors -- like, for

7 example, I can say, I don't believe any analysis you

8 made for 50,000 years, and I will take you to court on

9 that. You can't defend that. If two different people

10 make up 50,000-your analyses, they're going to get

11 very different results. 

12 So, if you set up some hurdles that can't

13 overcome or are easily challenged by someone who

14 simply wants to stop a low-level waste facility,

15 you're not doing a service to the country.

16 MR. ESH: Yeah, I understand that. That's

17 -- 

18 MEMBER ARMIJO: That's where I'm at. 

19 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Sam, just to be fair to

20 David's presentation this morning, I think several

21 times, we talked about how this leads into decision22 making. 

23 MR. ESH: Yes. 

24 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I think that's the real

25 tough part of this, which is, how does the technical
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1 analysis you laid out and will be in the guidance and

2 the documents that will come out, how does that get

3 translated into non-science and non-regulatory

4 decision-making about "yes" or "no" on facilities, and

5 that kind of thing?

6 MR. ESH: Yes. 

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So I think there's

8 certainly something to think about there. But having

9 you all think about you can discuss that, at least in

10 part, in your work would be -- or value work. You

11 know, here's the technical part, and here's what we

12 think its best use is -- that's something to think a

13 little bit more about.

14 MR. ESH: I mean our standard is a

15 reasonable assurance that we use in evaluating those

16 sorts of things. So it's not actually -- 

17 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So what you're saying is

19 it's reasonable assurance in the context of all these

20 things we just talked about.

21 MR. ESH: It's not absolute proof. There

22 are lots of things that go into it. You know, I could

23 envision as a regulator that somebody gives me an

24 analysis that way below the limit, and I can't find a

25 reasonable assurance with it because of technical
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1 things one through 72 step into that were deficient in

2 the analysis that they did. 

3 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Right. 

4 MR. ESH: Likewise, I could find that

5 somebody that might estimate something right at the

6 limit, or maybe the above, that I can say, all things

7 considered, they have a lot of conservatism in their

8 analysis for this, that, and the other thing that I

9 could easily argue for and justify that maybe supports

10 a decision-making. 

11 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Well, that kind of

12 presence of certainty or uncertainty and how you deal

13 with it as a regulator in getting it into the

14 documentation would be very, very helpful. 

15 MR. ESH: Decision-makers are really

16 uncomfortable with uncertainty. So they do not like

17 it and they don't want it. `Tell me what the number

18 is.' For fans of The Office, it's it's like -- 

19 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Well, no, I'm not saying,

20 in the regulation or requirement. I'm saying that

21 when you make a decision about it, the decision might

22 have an analysis or a thought process about

23 uncertainty, but you're going to say yes or no at the

24 end of the day, and you're going to base it on this

25 kind of thinking and analysis. 
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1 I think that getting insights as to how

2 the material will be used and judged is a helpful

3 thing to try to figure out how to write it down.

4 MR. ESH: The modeling and analysis

5 provides input to the decision, but it does not make

6 the decision. 

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Right. 

8 MR. ESH: There's a whole bunch of things

9 that go into the decision, especially in low-level

10 waste regulation. There is defense-in-depth there. 

11 So all the waste characteristics of

12 limiting certain things that can go into the facility,

13 that's a defense in depth. You know, is it smart to

14 put chelating agents in the disposal facility?

15 Probably not. Is it smart to put a lot of liquids in

16 the facility? Probably not. So there's all these

17 things that go into providing a defense in depth, of

18 which the analysis is one of them. 

19 But the analysis, in our opinion, has to

20 look at the problem. In some cases, based on done

21 changes to the inventory over time, that problem is

22 different than when it was in 1982. So the

23 requirements need to be aligned with the types of

24 materials that are going to be disposed of. 

25 And on the bottom part of slide 16 -- just
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1 a couple more points -- for the WCS facility and the

2 projected time of the peak dose for the more mobile

3 radionuclides, the first radionuclide to the show up

4 was at 30,000 years or greater than 30,000 years. So

5 based on the direction in your letter, should they be

6 doing a 30,000-year analysis? And should some other

7 facility, if their first isotope shows up at 50 years,

8 be doing a 50-year analysis? 

9 And if, in fact, you did that, what sort

10 of unintended consequences and disincentives would

11 result in the system?

12 And that's what I'm going to talk about on

13 the next slide. 

14 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. 

15 MR. ESH: Slide 17, Site-Specific Analysis

16 Time Frames, the disposal practices and selection of

17 sites -- so licensees are for-profit entities. And of

18 course, they're stewards of the environment. People

19 laugh at me for saying that, but I think most people

20 have good intentions. They want to do the right

21 thing. They have people that live in those

22 communities. They aren't out just to make a buck.

23 But they are for-profit entities. 

24 So, if you're going to maintain to me that

25 it's much more difficult and expensive to do this
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1 longer analysis as opposed to a shorter analysis, then

2 why wouldn't they pick a site and design that would

3 allow them to do the short analysis? 

4 Then likewise, how does that ensure, from

5 a national standpoint, that our regulations and

6 policies are having people do the right thing from a

7 waste management perspective? I don't think the

8 Committee would disagree with us that they should pick

9 as good of sites as possible and do as good of

10 engineering as possible. 

11 Some of those may have very long time

12 frames that they are able to defer the risk to, to and

13 reduce the risk to, and some may have less. But the

14 overall requirement should make sure that people are

15 trying to operate with that mindset of, have I

16 demonstrated that I picked a good site? Have I put in

17 as much engineering as practical, not being overly

18 burdensome and expensive, and show that I met the

19 criteria? That's kind of a fundamental policy

20 approach that we have in our mind that probably we'd

21 run into with doing the site-specific approach. 

22 We think that defining a number and having

23 everybody work from that number, allowing them to

24 scale their analyses or the sophistication of their

25 analyses, based on the risk of their problem, is a
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1 much cleaner, smarter way to go, all things

2 considered. Because, we have some people, licensees,

3 in agreement states that are much more sophisticated

4 than others, and we have to take that into

5 consideration when we develop our requirements.

6 We do think that the Commission policy

7 regarding stability in waste isolation, you know, they

8 basically say, keep the material stable for as long as

9 you need to. And if you went to the site-specific

10 approach, then why would people have an incentive to

11 try to do that? 

12 The reality is, if you said, I put my

13 material in a site which was very unstable, which

14 allows me to analyze for shorter period of time --

15 say, as a practical example, the state-licensed and

16 NRC-licensed disposal areas at West Valley is not an

17 ideal location for a disposal facility. 

18 But in fact, that was a decision that was

19 made many decades ago, and now it's considered as part

20 of the scope of the decommissioning process of that

21 site. Who knows what the eventual disposition will

22 be. But why wouldn't you pick a site like that as

23 opposed to, you know, the NTS in Nevada, which might

24 be stable for hundreds of thousands or millions of

25 years from a geomorphic standpoint? There would be a
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1 disincentive to maybe not doing the right thing from

2 the requirements. 

3 I'm not necessarily saying it would

4 happen, but we think the requirements should be

5 aligned with the incentives we want people to choose,

6 and those would be things like choosing to the sites,

7 having stability for as long as possible, consistency

8 with the international approaches, and so on and so

9 forth.

10 So that's pretty much it for me if we want

11 a break time. 

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yes. 

13 Let's go ahead and take a 15-minute break

14 and come back at 11:00 for the last hour.

15 (Whereupon, the above-titled meeting went

16 off the record at 10:41 a.m. and reconvened at 11:00

17 a.m.) 

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay, we'll come back to

19 order, please. 

20 I've been advised that sometimes, from the

21 table, it's hard for folks in the back to hear us. So

22 maybe it's just us facing you that it's hard. So

23 we'll speak a little louder. Maybe we can be mindful

24 to speak up a little bit. 

25 So, back to you, David. Or, Christopher?
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1 MR. GROSSMAN: I've got this one.

2 STAFF EFFORTS TO REVISE PART 61:

3 SITE-SPECIFIC LOW-LEVEL 

4 WASTE TECHNICAL ANALYSES

5 CHRIS GROSSMAN, NRC STAFF

6 MR. GROSSMAN: I'm Chris Grossman, with

7 the NRC staff, so I'll be covering the rest of this

8 presentation on the technical topics.

9 The Commission's direction last year gave

10 us or items, which Mike previewed earlier today and

11 Dave has covered, the time frame part of that

12 direction, and so I'll cover two of the remaining

13 three. The compatibility, we don't plan to talk to in

14 great detail today. It's a fairly simple issue.

15 So the two that I'll be talking about our

16 flexibility to use the latest ICRP dose methodologies

17 in the PA and then flexibility for site-specific waste

18 acceptance criteria. So we'll start with the

19 dosimetry part. 

20 Slide 19. 

21 Just to reiterate, the Commission directed

22 the staff to weigh the pros and cons of allowing the

23 licensees the flexibility to use ICRP does

24 methodologies in a site-specific PA. We won't spend

25 a lot of time on that flight.
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1 Slide 20.

2 Just to give you a little context, that we

3 weren't sure of the familiarity level with Part 61 and

4 the different methodologies, so just to kind of set

5 the stage, NRC regulations are based on or derived

6 from varying ICRP methodologies over years. Part 61,

7 I think, may be the oldest methodology that draws.

8 And then it draws from ICRP 2, which is from the late

9 1950s, early 1960s. That was an organ dose approach.

10 ICRP's recommendations have been updated

11 significantly since then. There was a major revision

12 in the 1970s for 26.30, which largely formed the basis

13 for Part 20 as well as Part 60, which some of those

14 were pulled forward into Part 20 as well. 

15 And then the most recent recommendations

16 were issued in 2007 in ICRP 103. 

17 So, again, you -- 

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Again, which have not been

19 adopted in any regulation at this point; correct?

20 MR. GROSSMAN: That's correct. That's

21 correct. 

22 And ICRP 103, it's my understanding -- and

23 I haven't gotten the most up-to-date -- but in terms

24 of what we would use in the analyses, the dose

25 conversion factors, those numbers have not been
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1 developed for that yet. So ICRP 68/72 are the latest

2 dose conversion factors that would be available. 

3 The other thing to note on this slide is

4 that Commission policy in SRM SECY-01-0148 allows for

5 exemptions for current models on a case-by-case basis.

6 So that is a possibility.

7 MEMBER ARMIJO: So somebody could use the

8 ICRP 103. 

9 MR. GROSSMAN: Well, practically, no,

10 because the conversion factors have not been developed

11 yet. So the latest that would be available would be

12 68/72. When must become available, we anticipate

13 roughly a 2014, 2015 timeframe for those numbers.

14 Then that possibility would be available on a case-by15 case basis. 

16 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Just so it's clear to

17 everybody, you're not showing that fancy bullet for 72

18 in the picture. 

19 MR. GROSSMAN: No. The reason for that is

20 the bullets for the recommendations. 

21 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yeah. 

22 MR. GROSSMAN: The parameters and so forth

23 come in under other ICRP guidance. 

24 MEMBER ARMIJO: In between -- 

25 (Simultaneous speaking.) 
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1 CHAIRMAN RYAN: -- Document 72 actually

2 augments 60. 

3 MR. GROSSMAN: Thank you, Mike. I

4 appreciate that. 

5 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay, and that is what can

6 be used under the -- 

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: This is where the dose

8 factors are. That's the basis for the dose factors.

9 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay, got it. 

10 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So that's correct.

11 MR. GROSSMAN: Sorry about that. Okay.

12 Slide 21, then.

13 In analyzing this to present a proposal to

14 the Commission, we considered, obviously, Commission

15 direction. We also looked at the different

16 methodologies and how the updates had provided a more

17 realistic evaluation of radiation risks from what is

18 currently used in Part 61, which would be the organ

19 doses. 

20 The methodologies account for the radio

21 sensitivity of the organ. That's something that

22 wasn't incorporated and ICRP 2, and thus, Part 61.

23 And they consider a wider range of organ and issues.

24 The other thing that we considered was

25 public feedback, and I'll go into some of that in a
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1 little more detail in the following slides. 

2 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Chris? 

3 MR. GROSSMAN: Yes? 

4 MEMBER SKILLMAN: When you identify in the

5 first bullet, under the second big bullet, "holistic,"

6 do you mean thorough? 

7 MR. GROSSMAN: Holistic in the sense that

8 you're looking at kind of the whole body, so the

9 different organs are weighted in that system. And

10 then you take an aggregation of that risk. 

11 The methodology used in Part 61 would be

12 more, if you look at target organs in each case and

13 there's no weighting by the radio sensitivity of the

14 organ and so forth.

15 MR. McKENNEY: Basically, it's from a

16 holistic point of view. For optimization in ALARA,

17 you can make a consideration of comparing because one

18 radionuclide would focus on certain organs and another

19 radionuclide would focus on other organs. So what is

20 a 20-millirem dose to the lung versus 30 to the

21 kidneys? What is more important?

22 The ICRP methodologies, from 26 on, were

23 able to take the radio sensitivity of each organ and

24 say, what is 20 millirem to that organ, and associate

25 it into cancer risks long term, versus being fully
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1 exposed to the whole body the same amount of those? 

2 So, each organ has a different radio

3 sensitivity, so that gets taken into account.

4 Therefore, you're allowed to holistically evaluate.

5 When you have a mix of different radionuclides, you

6 can look at different things. If you were to control

7 these radionuclides, would you reduce the risk, or

8 would you just have an exchange because a different

9 radionuclide is now being realized.

10 MEMBER ARMIJO: Is it fair to say that the

11 new ICRP dose recommendations would be, are more

12 restrictive in that the -- 

13 MR. McKENNEY: No. No, it is not. 

14 MEMBER ARMIJO: That is not correct. 

15 MR. McKENNEY: No, because they take into

16 account the latest understandings of how the elements

17 move through the body, and with the latest age-based

18 models associated with it, and include the latest

19 updates on the risk associated with all that stuff.

20 So actually, they tend to get better. 

21 Now, on a radionuclide-by-radionuclide

22 basis, the allowable intake in picocuries per year to

23 a certain dose may change, and some go up and some go

24 down as the science changes, but it's not getting more

25 restrictive. In the old system, it actually was that
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1 way. It was whatever organ got 25 millirem first --

2 MEMBER ARMIJO: That was the end of the

3 line. 

4 MR. McKENNEY: -- was its stop. 

5 In the new system, because they are all --

6 almost every organ is, first of all, subfractioned.

7 So you multiply by a fraction for every organ because

8 there is no organ that is as radio sensitive as the

9 entire body. The lung is a multiplier of 12 percent.

10 The breast is 25 percent in the current model. And

11 it's not necessarily as limiting in the system. 

12 MR. GROSSMAN: Okay. 

13 Slide 22, then.

14 The options that we considered were

15 specifying a specific methodology in the regulation

16 for adopting a neutral stance where we wouldn't

17 specify, and the licensees could elect to use a

18 different methodology or the latest methodology, or to

19 address this in guidance and for the rule to be silent

20 on it. 

21 Slide 23.

22 I'll talk a little bit about the public

23 views that were received for the technical basis to

24 the develop the rule. 

25 MEMBER ARMIJO: Just to make sure I
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1 understand -- 

2 MR. GROSSMAN: Sure. 

3 MEMBER ARMIJO: -- currently, we don't

4 specify a methodology, or we do? 

5 MR. GROSSMAN: Well, it's implicit through

6 the dose requirements in 61.41. And so, because of

7 the way -- the dose currently is not a 25-millirem

8 TEDE, although it can be implemented that way if the

9 dose is actually -- I don't remember the specifics

10 from the regulation. It's 25-75-25. 

11 MR. McKENNEY: It's 25 millirem, full

12 body; 25 millirem, any other organ; and 75 millirem

13 for thyroid. 

14 MR. GROSSMAN: Right. 

15 MR. McKENNEY: And because it's listed out

16 by organ, that tells you that it's an ICRP-2

17 methodology system and that you should be using that

18 methodology with those dose limits. 

19 There's a similar issue in Appendix I of

20 Part 50. It has similar language, and of course, the

21 Commission just ruled, told the staff this last year

22 that they should go forward with updating Appendix I,

23 and also Part 20, to the latest recommendations to

24 that. 

25 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay. 
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1 MR. GROSSMAN: So back on slide 23, we

2 received both supportive and critical views. I think,

3 in this case, most of the views were supportive of the

4 approach, reflecting that it would be using the latest

5 science. 

6 Specifically, some of the views were mixed

7 between whether we should allow flexibility for the

8 licensees to elect the latest methodology versus

9 directly citing it in the regulation, which would tie

10 it then to a methodology. We received comments, I

11 think, on both sides of that. 

12 And then there was also a comment to

13 periodically revisit this in the PAs, and this was all

14 the DOE's approach for PA maintenance, where they come

15 back, and if new information becomes available, say,

16 on a five- to ten-year basis, they would reconsider

17 the analyses using the latest methodology. 

18 The critical comment we received largely

19 was around the safety significance in removing the

20 critical organ limits. They thought that was more

21 conservative approach and, therefore, should be

22 retained, than some of the more modern methodologies.

23 Slide 24.

24 The staff's proposal was to adopt a

25 neutral approach. We felt this was consistent with
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1 Commission direction through some of the policies. It

2 allowed exemption on a case-by-case basis. It allowed

3 for use of current science. There is a precedent in

4 Part 63 to using more recent methodology. 

5 Part 63, for those of you who may not be

6 familiar, is the regulation for the disposal at Yucca

7 Mountain. And also, we felt it would help minimize

8 future revisions to Part 61. So, by not tying it to

9 a specific methodology, there was flexibility for the

10 future. One of the underlying goals in all of these

11 changes was, how do we avoid tinkering with the rule

12 nonstop in the future? 

13 So that's all I have on the dosimetry

14 part. If there any questions, we can take them at

15 this time, or I can move forward to the waste

16 acceptance. 

17 MEMBER ARMIJO: Just on the issue of the

18 public view that the safety significance of removing

19 the critical organ limits was in the wrong direction

20 and being less conservative, how much merit does that

21 argument have? It will be less conservative, but the

22 question is, is it safe? 

23 MR. GROSSMAN: Right. I think, in some

24 cases, it would be more conservative; in some cases,

25 it wouldn't be as conservative. So that argument is
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1 a little mixed, in reality. 

2 And I think, as a society, we've learned

3 quite a bit about how radionuclides move through the

4 body, and I think the staff's position is that to

5 ignore that information and to use some of the more

6 modern methodologies would be bad science. 

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. 

8 MR. GROSSMAN: So that's all we would move

9 forward with, the neutral approach as a proposal. 

10 The next topic then is waste acceptance,

11 and it will be a similar format to the last one. The

12 Commission's direction was to weigh the pros and cons

13 of allowing flexibility for disposal facilities to

14 establish site-specific waste acceptance criteria

15 based on the results of the PA and intruder

16 assessment. 

17 Slide 27. 

18 I'll walk through a little bit of what

19 Part 61 is today in terms of waste acceptance. We

20 don't use that terminology in Part 61 explicitly, but

21 it's there through the requirements. So I'll kind of

22 point out how the waste acceptance is in the

23 regulation today, to bring everyone kind of up to the

24 same page. 

25 You'll see it largely through three
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1 sections of regulation -- 61.55 deals with

2 classification scheme, or system; 61.56 are the

3 requirements on waste characteristics and waste forms,

4 and then 61.68 is a provision that allows, on case-by5 case basis, alternative classification and

6 characteristic requirements. So licensees could come

7 in and request an alternative scheme to what is in

8 61.55 and 56. 

9 Fifty-five lays out the concentration

10 limits for the different classes of low-level waste.

11 So there are three classes and then, by default,

12 because low-level waste is defined by what it is not

13 -- there's also actually a fourth class that would be

14 a greater than Class C, which falls into low-level

15 waste but is generally not acceptable for near-surface

16 disposal. 

17 As Dave mentioned, one thing to note with

18 the waste classification system is that it does not

19 ensure protection of the public via the 61.13 analysis

20 for 61.41, which is the offsite releases, so there

21 needs to be an analysis, and the rule recognizes an

22 analysis to evaluate that. 

23 On slide 28, this is just a snippet from

24 61.55. We have two tables there. There's a long25 lived table, Table 1, and a short-lived table, so they
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1 consider both long-lived and short-lived

2 radionuclides. And I'll talk a little bit more about

3 how these numbers were derived from the environmental

4 impact statement in the early 1980s. 

5 The thing that's not on this slide is

6 there is what I'll term an escape hatch. There's

7 section of the rule or a statement in the rule that

8 says, basically, if they're not in the tables, they're

9 Class A by default, and this is kind of a tie back to

10 the estimate of the inventories that were assumed for

11 the original analysis. And you can begin seeing how

12 those assumptions are hardwired into the regulation in

13 some instances. 

14 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Chris, tell me if I'm

15 wrong, but my recollection is that reactor waste was

16 really where everybody was thinking, or at least fuel

17 fabrication reactor waste. And some of the other uses

18 of radioactive material really were -- I don't want to

19 say "offhandedly assumed," -- but they were assumed to

20 be covered by this blanket. And these are really

21 based on reactor considerations.

22 MR. GROSSMAN: Yeah, there were 36 or 37

23 waste streams. 

24 MR. ESH: Thirty-seven. 

25 MR. GROSSMAN: Thirty-seven in the end.
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1 And they covered the gamut of BWR- and PWR-type

2 wastes, but they also covered institutional wastes

3 from large and small facilities. So I would say those

4 are probably -- I don't know the volume off the top of

5 my head -- but for each of those. They probably

6 dominated the waste streams. 

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yeah. 

8 MR. GROSSMAN: But there were

9 considerations of other waste streams, as well, that

10 were expected. 

11 CHAIRMAN RYAN: There was not a lot of

12 detail analysis as I recall, just sort of, these are

13 covered because these are more important. 

14 Okay, thanks. 

15 MR. GROSSMAN: Okay. 

16 On Slide 29, we'll talk about a little bit

17 about how those tables were derived. 

18 They essentially did a reverse calculation

19 using three scenarios. 

20 The intruder construction scenario, which

21 is an inadvertent intruder comes on site to build a

22 residence of some sort and begin excavating into the

23 site and removes or exhumes waste, and it's deposited

24 on the surface, and so, during those construction

25 activities, they would be exposed to the waste. 
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1 There is a variant to that, which is

2 called intruder discovery scenario in which the

3 construction crew, because the waste is in a stable

4 form and it maintains that stability, it's

5 recognizable to the crew, so, as soon as the crew

6 discovers it, they back off and so your exposure

7 durations are much shorter in that case. And that

8 largely, then, forms the limits for Class B waste,

9 which is the first category of stable waste. 

10 So Class A would be kind of your unstable

11 waste and then Class B and C would be stable waste.

12 And then C takes it one step further with intruder

13 protections. 

14 So they looked at layering of the waste

15 and waste that needed to be placed deeper than was

16 assumed to have some intruder protections, so those

17 wastes then were deemed Class C wastes. 

18 The third scenario is called with intruder

19 agriculture. 

20 So these three scenarios were used to

21 evaluate radionuclides in those waste streams that

22 were considered and then to come back and calculate

23 what sort of limits we're looking at to meet a 500-

24 millirem dose limit for the intruder.

25 Another big assumption in this, and this,
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1 I think, gets to one of the questions we had earlier

2 about the institutional control period. Dave

3 mentioned this and I'll follow up on it. 

4 The intent of the rule is that there will

5 be permanent system control, but there's a recognition

6 that after 100 years, we can't guarantee that. So the

7 assumption in the analysis is that after 100 years,

8 the institutional controls are deemed ineffective at

9 limiting access. 

10 Then the analysis also recognized a need

11 for certain radionuclides that were likely to be

12 driven by site-specific analysis for water-dependent

13 pathways. That, then, formed the basis for the

14 requirement for 61.13(a) analysis, which is the

15 pathways analysis for an outside receptor. 

16 MEMBER SKILLMAN: If the institutional

17 controls were changed from 100 to 200 years or 300

18 years, would that make much of a difference? 

19 MR. GROSSMAN: Yes, I think it would,

20 mostly for your short-lived nuclides. So, depending

21 on which way you went, it could have an influence.

22 Like, some comments were on the order of 300 years for

23 an institutional control period. I think at that

24 point, you're probably looking different cesium levels

25 certainly than what we have in the tables today. 
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1 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Okay. 

2 MR. GROSSMAN: So that would be an

3 influence there. 

4 CHAIRMAN RYAN: You've got cesium and

5 strontium at 300 years that will pretty much decay a

6 pretty small amounts. 

7 MR. GROSSMAN: Yes. Intruder, yes. 

8 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And they capture a few

9 more radionuclides with that 300 years. 

10 MEMBER SKILLMAN: The reason that I ask is

11 -- 

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: It doesn't solve the

13 problem; it makes it smaller. 

14 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Yes, that's what I was

15 pointing to when Dave was talking earlier. 

16 If there is isn't a case for challenging

17 that 100 years from the perspective of requiring for

18 a site a re-up every 30 years for 60 years something

19 that's in our conscious lifetimes -- you do your

20 driver's license every two years or five years; if you

21 have a concealed weapons permit, I think it's every

22 five years, depending on what state you're in. 

23 There are other portions of our existence that require

24 us to show up, sign a paper, have our picture taken,

25 and re-up, whatever it is. 
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1 If we think we just let this go for 100

2 years and then all is forgotten, doesn't that make the

3 case for a periodic re-do? One says, I applied for

4 this site use permit, and about every 10 years, I've

5 got to certify I'm still on watch or I've transferred

6 the title for this to this gentleman, something that

7 makes it necessary to keep the institutional memory

8 alive. It seems to me that that's not difficult.

9 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I think the site, at least

10 the sites that I'm familiar with, most of them have an

11 institutional monitoring program that's going to

12 answer your question, I think, over time. It's

13 closed, and then the institutional maintenance and

14 monitoring effort kicks and that's sort of site15 specific in the sense that it's tailing that site.

16 But I don't think there's any period during that

17 institutional control where people would just not be

18 knowledgeable about what's going on. At least that's

19 the current scheme I'm familiar with. 

20 MR. GROSSMAN: The idea isn't that all is

21 forgotten on purpose after 100 years. This is an

22 assumption that is made for the purposes of

23 establishing concentration limits. 

24 MEMBER SKILLMAN: I understand that. 

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Well, one concept we
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1 thought about -- "we," meaning when I was at a site --

2 is that there's no reason to assume that at the end of

3 that first institutional control period, you have to

4 walk away. There may be information that says, well,

5 there's plenty of money in the institutional control

6 fund, and we want to watch these three little things

7 that are going on, and there's no reason you couldn't

8 continue. 

9 The way I've always looked at it, and

10 maybe it's wrong, is that the institutional control

11 period is set as the first period. Then, you know,

12 there can be a regulatory decision to decide, well,

13 that's enough or that's not enough, or what do we need

14 to do going forward? 

15 MR. WIDMAYER: frankly, the notion was

16 that the maintenance or whatever it is that you were

17 talking about wouldn't be necessary. I was the

18 thinking, was that -- 

19 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Well, I kind of got

20 back, except if you say that there is a hazard that is

21 not too far after 100 years, whether it's 200 or 300

22 because you want to let the cesium AND the strontium

23 die out, one might say the time to let go of

24 institutional controls is after that time period.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Well, but don't forget,
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1 you've got the power of groundwater monitoring,

2 surface water monitoring, erosion monitoring, and

3 every other kind of cutting the grass and everything

4 else under the sun, for a very long period of time. 

5 You can make whatever decision you want to

6 make about what to do moving forward from year 100

7 plus zero days into that next period. And it can be

8 everything from nothing to continuing doing the same

9 thing to ramping up and doing something different or

10 any combination thereof. 

11 The point is, you would be informed of the

12 information that's been gathered to make a decision

13 that makes sense. 

14 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Well, they can establish

15 a comfort level at that time with doing an analysis of

16 100 years with the expectation that the institutional

17 controls would not be lost. That was their thinking.

18 MR. GROSSMAN: I think Chris McKenney

19 wants to add something to this discussion. 

20 MR. McKENNEY: I think we're going off

21 Derek, off Derek, but this is sort of like a defense22 in-depth sort of thing, from the concept from the

23 calculation of, you're putting waste in the ground

24 someplace for it to be there over time. And if you do

25 the analysis first, it doesn't give full credit for
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1 these management processes, then again, your decay

2 risk is finite. And in case something actually were

3 to occur, you'd still have some buffer on the risk/

4 There is no intention for somebody to say,

5 it's 100 years; you've got to leave. It's that we

6 wouldn't mind that continuing for a long time, but you

7 don't want to make a decision where, because of what

8 you put in the site, you have to have perfect

9 institutional controls for 300 years. 

10 Remember, when we talked about

11 institutional controls in Part 61, we were saying that

12 that has absolutely zero chance for an intrusion event

13 because that is part of the analysis. We don't do a

14 PRA, an analysis of any risk level to the public for

15 intruding onto the site or anything like that during

16 the institutional control period. So, when we talked

17 about action on that, it's all there.

18 This is a completely different assumption,

19 which the Commission had in front of it at the same

20 time, which was versus the standard, do assume

21 perpetual institutional controls. But the Commission

22 chose at the time to go an assumption of being

23 conservative in the first place when you license a

24 facility so that you don't cause the site that you are

25 required to have perfect institutional controls for
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1 very long time.

2 MEMBER SKILLMAN: I understand. Thank

3 you. 

4 MR. GROSSMAN: Okay, moving on the slide

5 30.

6 We're still talking about Part 61 today.

7 And so 61.56 deals with waste characteristics and what

8 would be acceptable waste to be received. It defines

9 two large classes, a minimum requirement for all waste

10 that facilitate handling and then afford protection of

11 public health and safety. These would be things like

12 no cardboard boxes; minimize water. I think the

13 chelating agents is on that list. There's a list of

14 best practices, of these kinds of forms should not be

15 accepted for any waste. 

16 And then the second class are what I call

17 stability requirements. These are for wastes that

18 need to be stable, so the B and C wasted. They're

19 designed to minimize the water infiltration, which was

20 some of the initial problems that pushed the Part 61

21 forward in the first place is that some of the sites

22 were having trouble with that. And then also, to

23 limit the intruder exposures in the form of

24 recognizable and non-dispersible waste forms.

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I think there's one part
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1 that we haven't touched on very much, Chris, that fits

2 well in there, and that's engineered features of the

3 disposal system. I mean what comes to my mind is

4 Byerhoff, for example, has very thick slabs of the

5 class B and C cells that have brass plates that say

6 "Radioactive material: do not dig every" -- I forget

7 how many feet. 

8 But there's ways to at least push back an

9 intruder. 

10 MR. GROSSMAN: You're exactly right. 

11 MEMBER ARMIJO: It assumes an intruder can

12 read. 

13 MR. GROSSMAN: That's a great segue into

14 slide 31. So, thank you. 

15 (Laughter.) 

16 MR. GROSSMAN: So one of the things I hope

17 you get out of this -- and this kind of guided our

18 thinking in this waste acceptance area -- is that the

19 classification system is integral to the regulation as

20 it is today, and this graphic here kind of illustrates

21 that, and it gets to one of Dr. Ryan's points: You

22 have ties from classification to -- it's not directly,

23 it's implied throughout the other parts of the

24 regulation through a lot of the other parts of the

25 regulation, and I've listed some of the direct ties
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1 here. 

2 Once you define the class of waste, then

3 you have certain characteristics that you need to meet

4 in 61.56. Once you define the classification of the

5 waste, then you have certain segregation requirements.

6 So unstable A waste can't be put in with B and C

7 waste, which needs stability, and so you won't get the

8 infiltration issues or you minimize those. Same thing

9 with intruder barriers. 

10 As you'll see with our proposal, this

11 influenced our thinking quite a bit. We tried to

12 minimize tinkering too much with the existing

13 regulation to meet the Commission's direction. We

14 felt that if you did too much with waste

15 classification now, you've blown up a whole rule, and

16 you're maybe starting over from ground zero. So we

17 didn't want do that, and we didn't feel the Commission

18 was directed has to do that. 

19 Just to finish out today, there's also

20 waste acceptance guidance, predominantly, in two

21 guidance documents. There's a guidance document on

22 waste form from the early 1980s and then also guidance

23 on concentration averaging, which deals with how you

24 identify what class it's in, and encapsulation. That

25 is currently undergoing revision. I think it may be
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1 Jim Kennedy who's working on that, and Christian

2 Ridge.

3 Is that this summer that we're looking at?

4 MR. KENNEDY: Later this year.

5 MR. GROSSMAN: Later this year, okay.

6 Thank you. 

7 Sorry to put him on the spot. 

8 Okay, slide 33, then. 

9 To analyze the Commission's direction, we

10 looked at the direction and also some domestic and

11 international regulatory approaches as well as the

12 public feedback we received, to derive from options.

13 And on 34, then, I lay out those options

14 for waste acceptance. One was to continue with just

15 the existing waste classification system. One of the

16 things I didn't talk about is 61.58. I mentioned

17 early on as part of the waste acceptance requirements

18 of Part 61. That allows the use of alternative

19 classifications and characteristic requirements. That

20 could be used on a site-by-site basis and so we

21 thought this could be an option, under the

22 Commission's direction still, to allow that

23 flexibility but do it with the existing system

24 unchanged. We looked at that. We received comments

25 to that and as well. 
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1 The second option was to replace the

2 classification system with site-specific waste

3 acceptance criteria; so, to abandon the classification

4 system, essentially, and just go site-specific WAG. 

5 And the third one was kind of a hybrid

6 approach, which was to maintain the classification

7 system alongside flexibility for site-specific waste

8 acceptance criteria. 

9 MEMBER SKILLMAN: From your stakeholders,

10 is there any preference among the three? 

11 MR. GROSSMAN: Well, you'll see in the

12 comments -- I'll talk a little bit about that --

13 there's kind of mixed opinion about why and there's

14 lots of reasons why one versus the other, and so

15 forth. And so, if I don't answer your question there

16 -- 

17 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Okay. Thank you.

18 That's all right. Thank you. 

19 MR. GROSSMAN: Bring it back up please. 

20 MEMBER ARMIJO: But you kind of keep

21 everybody happy with the third bullet; right? 

22 MR. GROSSMAN: Yeah, it's the Three Bears

23 briefing, yeah. 

24 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

25 MEMBER ARMIJO: Well, hold it. Is there
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1 anything technically deficient with option three? 

2 MR. GROSSMAN: We don't believe so.

3 That's our proposal to the Commission. 

4 MEMBER ARMIJO: Okay. 

5 MR. GROSSMAN: You'll see it come forward.

6 Based on our analysis, we don't see anything at this

7 point, but we won't say it isn't. 

8 MEMBER ARMIJO: Thank you. 

9 MR. GROSSMAN: Some of our goals, then, in

10 selecting one of the options or proposing one of the

11 options to the Commission -- it's theirs to select,

12 ultimately -- was to ensure protection of public

13 health and safety consistent with the mission, look at

14 risk-informed, performance-based regulatory processes

15 to the extent that we can incorporate those, provide

16 flexibility for the WAC, per the Commission's

17 direction -- that's obviously a prime goal here -- and

18 minimize disruptions to the existing framework so that

19 we're not "blowing up" Part 61 and starting over. 

20 MEMBER ARMIJO: I just want to make sure

21 that I -- let's assume that the rule gets written and

22 it's got a number of new things in it. Do the

23 existing sites that are currently operational, will

24 they have to comply with this? Will they have to do

25 a re-analysis to be in compliance with the new rule?
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1 Or is there something equivalent to --

2 MR. GROSSMAN: There is, in fact, that, in

3 Part 61. And so the intent is that but all licensees,

4 existing and prospective, would be doing the analyses.

5 They would all have to do them eventually anyway

6 through the closure analysis, but that's the intent of

7 the way our proposal is set forth. 

8 MEMBER ARMIJO: So it would impact the

9 existing operating low-level waste facilities, whether

10 they were through an agreement state or under direct

11 NRC control. 

12 MR. GROSSMAN: Yes, so the way that would

13 work is, assuming the Commission went forward with the

14 proposal and implemented it, the agreement states

15 would have three years to write conforming

16 regulations. Then there would be some time for the

17 licensees to develop their WAC or whatever, whatever

18 approach they took, as you'll see. I haven't gotten

19 to the approach yet, exactly. 

20 But there would be some time for that to

21 happen. 

22 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Mike?

23 MR. MCKENNEY: Let the record recognize

24 Larry Camper. 

25 MR. CAMPER: Larry Camper, Director of
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1 Division Waste Management and Environmental

2 Protection.

3 The simple answer to your question is yes,

4 and it's one year after the state has its implementing

5 regulations in place, but they'll have three years to

6 do that, in terms of our compatibility requirements.

7 But yes, it impacts them all. 

8 MR. GROSSMAN: Now, along that line, Mr.

9 Armijo, as we mentioned -- I think Mike may have

10 mentioned earlier in his talk -- most of these sites

11 are actually developing waste acceptance plans, which

12 you'll see -- well, we don't talk to those examples,

13 but we certainly look at those, and we feel they align

14 pretty well with the requirements. So most of the

15 sites would be are going to be a long way to meeting

16 that. And again, some of it depends on which option

17 they select. 

18 Okay, moving on to slide 36, here's where

19 I talk about the viewpoints. I've got a slide of

20 viewpoints that are generally supportive of the

21 flexibility for site-specific waste acceptance

22 criteria. And the next slide then talks about

23 critical viewpoints. 

24 Stakeholders who were supportive believe

25 that this would allow a recognition of the
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1 improvements that have been made in the engineering

2 and site selection and facility design from the

3 environmental impact statement and its assumptions

4 that originally developed the rule. 

5 There were some mixed views on the types

6 of scenarios that the public felt should be

7 considered. Some felt that they should be limited to

8 hypothetical scenarios, all of the intruder scenarios

9 that were used in Part 61. And others argued that it

10 should be only site-specific scenarios. So we heard

11 both sides of that -- even if they were supportive of

12 site-specific WAC. 

13 There was some concern about abandoning

14 the classification system, and this is a little quirk

15 maybe with US legislation. That long, garbled acronym

16 is the Low-Level Radioactive Policy Amendments Act of

17 1985, and it lays out federal and state

18 responsibilities low-level waste. 

19 The quirk here is that it ties the

20 dividing line between federal and state to Part 61.55.

21 It ties it back to a regulation, and that created a

22 little bit of a wrinkle, not necessarily

23 insurmountable if you wanted to move away from the

24 classification system. But we thought it certainly

25 would create confusion if you abandoned the
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1 classification system, about whose responsibility is

2 the waste then? 

3 We don't think that banning it in the

4 regulation would change the legislation because that's

5 not how things work. But it could lead to some

6 confusion among generators on this, among the disposal

7 sites about that, unless there was some clarity. So

8 we received a lot of comment on that, as a concern

9 about abandoning classification in that option. 

10 There were some comments about 61.58 and

11 the case-by-case allowance for alternative

12 requirements. Some of the concerns that we had in

13 that regard were that they may create some

14 transboundary issues, so you might have some different

15 sites operating on different requirements and the

16 implication that might have at a national level for

17 commerce, so to speak, in terms of the movement waste

18 and so forth in the country. 

19 And there were some mixed views on the

20 waste acceptability requirements. Some were happy

21 with some of the requirements currently in Part 61,

22 which tend to be a little more prescriptive, like you

23 shall not have waste with a certain amount of liquids,

24 and so forth. And some thought they should be

25 performance-based, where, whatever I can demonstrate,
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1 I'm allowed to do, essentially. 

2 So we heard both sides, even if they were

3 supportive, that, in some cases, you might need to

4 keep some of that prescriptiveness, and in some cases,

5 you may need -- some people don't, but that should be

6 opened up for consideration. 

7 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Chris, at the next to

8 last bullet, 61.50, transboundary concerns, you

9 mentioned movement of waste in the country. Does that

10 suggest that could be 49 CFR impact, transportation

11 regulations or 10 CFR 71, which is fuel? 

12 MR. GROSSMAN: I don't foresee anything to

13 the transportation issue. It's more of you have a

14 kind of a different playing field for different states

15 in terms of -- and the generators in those states --

16 and what can I do with my waste? And so that was kind

17 of the issue, versus having a kind of stable national

18 framework of, I have a consistent requirement across

19 the country, and I know by generate this waste that

20 there is a disposal option at some point for it. 

21 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Thank you. 

22 MR. GROSSMAN: That's more what the

23 transboundary deals with. 

24 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Thank you. 

25 MR. GROSSMAN: That's jargon from our
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1 compatibility criteria. I apologize for using that.

2 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Okay. 

3 MR. GROSSMAN: So slide 37, then, we get

4 into some of the critical viewpoints from people who

5 were generally not supportive. Or, in some cases,

6 they were supportive, but they had some major concerns

7 beyond what I identified previously. 

8 Dr. Schultz had a question earlier with

9 Mike about the agreement state comments, and this is

10 an example that I can point to. The first two bullets

11 were specifically agreement state comments. 

12 The first bullet was also made by people

13 who were parties outside the agreement states.

14 Basically, this would create a resource burden on the

15 agreement states in the sense that they would have to

16 then evaluate the waste acceptance criteria. It's

17 maybe a more complicated process and involved more

18 resources on their part. That being said, I think,

19 overall, the agreement states were generally

20 supportive of that flexibility, but they wanted to

21 note these concerns. 

22 The second was the potential impact on

23 state laws. The example I can give there is from the

24 state of Utah. The state of Utah was concerned about,

25 they have a law on the books about limiting disposal
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1 of Class A waste in the state, and they were concerned

2 that this might be an end run around that legislation,

3 so they expressed those concerns as kind of a critical

4 viewpoint here. 

5 Some of the other stakeholders expressed

6 concern about the negative effects on public

7 confidence, and this was largely, you know, the public

8 was kind of invested in Part 61. They went through

9 the rulemaking and began to understand how it was

10 developed and so forth. And there's some acceptance

11 of the limits that have been imposed by it and that

12 they were afraid -- I think the sentiment was there

13 was some fear that if you're doing this in each state,

14 it's hard to follow and keep up with, and maybe the

15 amount of public would be not as high as it might have

16 when it's done at the federal level. 

17 Some stakeholders expressed viewpoints

18 which have emphasized conservatism rather than

19 maximizing capacity, in their words, and they felt

20 that this was an attempt to maximize the capacity. 

21 There were some concerns about perverse

22 economic incentives to maximize capacity at the

23 expense of safety. 

24 And then the complexity and lack

25 transparency of the analyses was another comment that
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1 we received, and this is related back to that negative

2 effect on public confidence. 

3 Some stakeholders viewed these analyses as

4 black boxes, and very complicated and hard to for the

5 average member of the public to follow. 

6 Slide 38.

7 Then we get our proposal, so ta-dah.

8 What we've done in the proposal is we

9 replaced 6158, which was the option for alternative

10 classification and characteristic requirements with a

11 waste acceptance criteria section. We felt this would

12 basically obviate a need for those alternatives

13 because it allows the licensee to do this through the

14 rule. 

15 There are three components of waste

16 acceptance, the primary one being the criteria -- so,

17 what's acceptable at this disposal facility and how

18 you develop that -- and the second being

19 characterization methods the facilities would need to

20 identify what parameters and what level of uncertainty

21 in characterization would be needed to demonstrate

22 that the criteria are met. A third would be a

23 certification program, basically someone to certify an

24 administrative process that this waste meets the

25 acceptance criteria. The idea would be that this
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1 would apply to all licensees, this we mentioned

2 earlier. 

3 We adapted this approach heavily from the

4 Department of Energy's approach in DOE Order 435.1.

5 I think it's a good example of the approach that's

6 been used domestically, so we adopted it where we

7 thought it would be useful and relevant for Part 61.

8 And generally, it's consistent with the international

9 approaches, which vary quite a bit from the current

10 Part 61, where you specify concentration limits to

11 fully site-specific. So it's kind of a Three Bears

12 approach. It certainly fits in that range. 

13 Slide 39, I'll go through it quickly. I

14 don't want to take too much time, I've gone on too

15 long already. 

16 We reach those three legs of the stool. 

17 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I would ask you to just --

18 MR. GROSSMAN: Okay.

19 So, you've got -- this is where

20 flexibility comes in. You've got to approaches. You

21 can rely on the 61.55 concentration limits, or you can

22 develop your WAC from the 61.13 analyses, which are

23 the four analyses, to demonstrate the four performance

24 objectives. You also need to specify acceptable waste

25 form characteristics, container specifications and
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1 restrictions, and prohibitions. 

2 Slide 40 gets into the characterization

3 methods, and again, here, identifying parameters and

4 what's the acceptable uncertainty. That section of

5 the regulation also specifies minimum characterization

6 information, such as the dates samples were taken, the

7 weights of samples, those basic things that you have

8 to have. 

9 Slide 41, then, talks about the

10 certification program, and these are administrative

11 procedures to ensure that the waste is acceptable. So

12 you're looking at who are the appropriate authorities

13 to certify the waste is acceptable for disposal,

14 identifying any documentation that need to be

15 developed and maintained to support that decision, and

16 then approaches for maintaining certification once the

17 waste has been certified; how do you ensure that, from

18 the time it's shipped to receipt at the disposal

19 facility, that that certification is still intact.

20 Quickly, on slide 42 -- this is my last

21 slide -- this will result in some accommodating

22 changes because we've essentially taken with

23 classification as central to the ruling and made waste

24 acceptance now central to the ruling. Waste

25 classification is a subset of waste exceptions if you
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1 can visualize that. 

2 So waste classification has ties around

3 the rules. We needed to generalize those ties, and

4 that's what these largely revolve around, is making it

5 more for the waste acceptance; so, if you chose the

6 61.13 route of developing site-specific WAC, how these

7 parts of the regulation would apply to you in that

8 case. 

9 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Any thoughts about moving

10 Appendix G to Part 61? 

11 MR. GROSSMAN: Yeah -- 

12 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

13 CHAIRMAN RYAN: -- Part 20. 

14 MR. GROSSMAN: We didn't think about that

15 specifically, but there was some thought above, for

16 the approach of abandoning the waste classification

17 system, of potentially putting it there if we too were

18 to abandon, but the proposal wasn't something we were

19 moving forward with necessarily. 

20 CHAIRMAN RYAN: It just seems odd that

21 that requirement is holding up our -- 

22 MR. McKENNEY: The real reason is that

23 Part 61 applies to the land disposal facility, and

24 that's why it starts, for the purposes as that applies

25 to Part 61, the Part 61 facility, while Appendix G
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1 applies to all people who produce waste. 

2 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Right. 

3 MR. McKENNEY: So, because Part 20 applies

4 to all licensees. That's why -- and it's all about

5 shipping. 

6 So, unless it go put in transportation, it

7 could be put there, but it wouldn't belong in Part 61.

8 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So it really doesn't

9 belong and 61 or 20. Is that what you're telling me?

10 (Laughter.) 

11 CHAIRMAN RYAN: It's fine where it is, but

12 it's just kind of a -- 

13 MR. GROSSMAN: We figured that was beyond

14 the scope of limited -- 

15 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. 

16 MR. GROSSMAN: So that's all I have. 

17 Are there any questions? 

18 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Thanks, Chris. That was

19 a good presentation.

20 MR. GROSSMAN: Dr. Ryan, in Andrew's

21 presentation, he's actually going to go through those

22 changes in the rulemaking language. Do you want to

23 skip that? 

24 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I want to let Andrew to

25 have some time to make his comments. 
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1 MR. CARRERA: I can make a really quick.

2 STAFF EFFORTS TO REVISE PART 61:

3 TIME LINE

4 ANDREW CARRERA, NRC STAFF

5 MR. CARRERA: Thank you, Dr. Ryan, ACRS

6 members. My name is Andrew Carrera, and I'm the

7 project manager for the Part 61 rulemaking. And

8 naturally, as a PM, none of my team members likes me,

9 so they only gave me five minutes to cover what is

10 here. 

11 (Laughter.) 

12 MR. GROSSMAN: I tried to give you zero.

13 (Laughter.)

14 MR. CARRERA: And, you know, the committee

15 asked me to cover my materials up to December 2012.

16 So my goal is to provide you with a high level of

17 awareness of the proposed ruling which will be put

18 out. And in June's meeting, will go into the weeds of

19 how we adjusted this language based on stakeholders'

20 comments.

21 So we received the request from the

22 Commission to proceed forward with the proposed

23 rulemaking, and the staff revised the regulatory basis

24 document to support the rulemaking. A team of

25 multidisciplinary staff was assembled, composed of
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1 representatives, obviously, from across the NRC as

2 well as the representative from the agreement states,

3 Mark Yeager, who is from South Carolina.

4 The rulemaking team developed the purpose

5 of the rule, and that's to specify site-specific

6 technical analysis requirements, permit development of

7 criteria of waste disposal, as Chris just covered, and

8 better align the requirements with current health and

9 safety standards. 

10 We developed the preliminary proposed

11 rule, which was published on regulations.gov for

12 public comments in December 2012. 

13 And slide number four is a summary of the

14 centerpiece of this language. It contains site15 specific analysis of requirements for performance

16 assessment, intruder assessment, long-term analysis,

17 but it's also performance period analysis and updated

18 technical analysis. 

19 The staff is also proposing waste

20 acceptance, which Chris just covered. 

21 The staff also proposed other supporting

22 changes to facilitate the implementation of proposed

23 requirement, adding new definitions in concept to

24 Appendix G, which is 10 CFR Part 20, and also allow

25 the use of up-to-date ICRP recommendations. 
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1 So I'll quickly go over the actual ruling,

2 which is offered as 61.41. This is a current

3 regulation, and we're proposing to revise it to

4 incorporate the time components into this layer of

5 this section, the compliance period and the

6 performance period. The compliance period would be

7 covered in revised 61.40 1(a), which points back to

8 the performance assessment requirement and 61.13(a)

9 instead of (b). 

10 The second part of 61.41 is proposed to be

11 (b), which we added, a long-term performance analysis

12 which has -- we proposed ALARA's lowest achievable

13 metrics to dose analysis. 

14 Section 61.42, protection of inadvertent

15 intruder -- similarly, we proposed, we wanted to

16 incorporate the time components into this section. 

17 Section 61.42(a), we've pulled the 500-

18 millirem dose limit out of the table and we put it

19 into this section. 

20 Section 61.42(b) -- similarly, we have a

21 performance assessment requirement with an ALARA

22 metric associated to it. 

23 The long-term analysis or performance

24 period analysis -- this analysis applies only to land

25 disposal facilities that have long-lived wastes that
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1 contain alpha-emitting radionuclides with average

2 concentrations exceeding 10 per gram, a radionuclide

3 with average concentration exceeding one tenth value,

4 at table 1, as necessitated by site-specific

5 conditions. 

6 Slide number eight, waste acceptance --

7 I'll skip that. It was covered in greater detail

8 previously. 

9 Slide number nine, contents of application

10 for closure -- well, currently, we don't have the

11 requirement to do all these internal analysis of

12 exposure, and we'd like to have that incorporated into

13 the revised analysis, into application proposal. 

14 Slide nine -- this is my last slide. We

15 also proposed other changes, supporting changes, and

16 new definition, concentrated intruder assessment, low17 risk waste, et cetera. And also, in Appendix G for 10

18 CFR Part 20, we also propose a revision to Section 2

19 and Section 3 of that appendix. 

20 And that's all I have. 

21 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Good.

22 Any questions for Andy?

23 (No response.) 

24 MR. CARRERA: The final piece -- I hope so

25 far, we've answered some of your questions that you
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1 had earlier. 

2 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yes. You have. 

3 MR. CARRERA: Good. It's been a very

4 informative discussion. We appreciate your time. 

5 Looking forward, we're scheduled to have

6 one more subcommittee discussion in June. 

7 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Yes. 

8 MR. CARRERA: And we'll close the loop

9 with you on the remaining, the rest of the story as

10 votes have developed, and then full committee of ACRS

11 in July. 

12 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay. ACRS. 

13 MR. CARRERA: Maybe it leads to a letter.

14 That's up to you guys to decide. 

15 CHAIRMAN RYAN: I would say -- 

16 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

17 MR. CARRERA: Okay. And in July, same

18 month, we'll probably submit to the Commission the

19 proposed rule for its consideration. 

20 If the Commission approves, we will issue

21 for public comment, in the Federal Register notice and

22 all that, later in calendar year 2013. Early in 2014,

23 we'll have public interactions on receiving comments,

24 which will finally lead, finally, to a final

25 rulemaking by end of 2014. 
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1 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Just so you're familiar

2 with our procedure -- I'm sure you are -- we have a

3 meeting in July. We will be preparing the letter at

4 that July full committee meeting.

5 MR. CARRERA: Yes. 

6 CHAIRMAN RYAN: So that will be concurrent

7 with that week. 

8 MR. CARRERA: Yes. Right. 

9 Well, thank you very much. 

10 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Thank you.

11 Thank you all. Look at a few minutes for

12 any questions. 

13 Steve? 

14 MEMBER SCHULTZ: No questions, just a

15 comment. From what I've heard today, the work was

16 done to try to get engagement with, with the agreement

17 states, especially the sited agreement states, but

18 there was not a huge response to date, in 2012 at

19 least. Perhaps there's been more information that's

20 been developed in 2013 that we can talk about in June.

21 Silence doesn't mean agreement to the

22 proposals. I still feel there might be a lot of

23 concern among the agreement states related to the

24 proposal, so I hope that engagement is continuing to

25 see how that information might be developed. 
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1 Then again, maybe we'll hear it. Maybe

2 you've got more information that your present in June,

3 and we'll look forward to hearing that.

4 MR. LEE: This is Mike Lee of the staff.

5 We understand from past experience, the

6 agreement states usually wind up becoming more vocal,

7 the closer we get to issuing rulemaking for public

8 comment. 

9 MEMBER SCHULTZ: That's what I expect.

10 MR. LEE: We've already begun to hear from

11 some of them. So silence is not intended as implied

12 consent, and we expect to hear a lot from them in the

13 near future.

14 MR. ESH: And I would even say -- this is

15 Dave Esh -- I would even say that silence is a

16 mischaracterization. 

17 MR. LEE: Yes.

18 MR. ESH: So we have received feedback

19 from agreement states. The problem is this process

20 has been pretty long with lots of steps. So we've

21 heard from them at different steps, so it depends on

22 which step of the process, what we may have heard. 

23 In the areas I'm responsible for, they've

24 given some very good feedback that in some cases has

25 caused us to change rule language and things like
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1 that. So with the agreement-state regulators, it's

2 not like they've been unresponsive, but they are

3 selectively responsive. But their feedback has been

4 good. 

5 MEMBER SCHULTZ: That's important. 

6 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Real quickly, I'd add,

7 Steve, just as an example of the low-level waste

8 forum, which met in Charleston, South Carolina just a

9 week ago, and had a very good participation by the NRC

10 staff. And that's, you know, really the state

11 representatives who were there at that meeting. So

12 that was a very positive interaction. 

13 MEMBER SCHULTZ: Okay. 

14 CHAIRMAN RYAN: It's right along the lines

15 that you were asking about. 

16 MEMBER SCHULTZ: For this year's meting.

17 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Low-Level Waste Forum

18 Meeting. 

19 MEMBER SCHULTZ: Good. That's important,

20 especially in the area that you've described, that

21 you're getting feedback specifically on that, and I

22 appreciate this. That, I'm sure, has been helpful for

23 you.

24 That's all I have. 

25 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay.
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1 Let's see; Sam? 

2 MEMBER ARMIJO: Yes. I just wanted to ask

3 -- and maybe it's in the rule the way you've got it

4 structured -- is there any way to separate depleted

5 uranium from low-level waste in this rule in such a

6 way that -- it seems to me it's confusing everything,

7 and it appears to put requirements on the whole

8 community when it's a very special type of waste,

9 especially for this long-life issue. 

10 Is there, in the regulations that you're

11 currently writing, is there a way to separate that and

12 make that a special case? And if you don't have, do

13 you -- or if you have it in just one location in your

14 facility, you could treat it in a very different way

15 and assess it in a very different way and the rest?

16 Is that built into your regulations, or is that your

17 intent?

18 MR. ESH: This is Dave Esh.

19 At this point in time, we didn't intend

20 that. As I explained in our presentation, we

21 considered it. The feedback from stakeholders was,

22 don't do that.

23 MEMBER ARMIJO: Why? 

24 MR. ESH: Because, they basically said,

25 you may have new waste streams in the future that look
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1 and smell similar to this waste stream, that if you

2 want to get some stability to the regulatory

3 environment with requirements that are going to be

4 able to take any waste stream that may have those

5 sorts of characteristics, and have the analysis done

6 for them.

7 And as I sat in my talk, sure, depleted

8 uranium is a much bigger step technically than

9 traditional low-level waste, but you still have this

10 issue with traditional low-level waste as to how much

11 long-lived radioactivity is in it, and is it safe or

12 not? That still applies, whether it's traditional

13 low-level waste or depleted uranium. 

14 MEMBER ARMIJO: Right.

15 MR. ESH: The other issue that you'd run

16 into if you tried to specify something for depleted

17 uranium is something Dr. Ryan has talked about many

18 times in the past, and I agree with him

19 wholeheartedly, which is quantity matters. 

20 People focus on concentrations. But, say,

21 I want to take 1,000 pounds of DU counterweights.

22 Well, I'd have to be really careful about how I wrote

23 that DU rule, so to speak, or DU requirements that

24 from a risk perspective, I wasn't drawing people into

25 it that I don't intend.
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1 MEMBER ARMIJO: Yeah.

2 MR. ESH: And all those things considered,

3 we reviewed it and said, look, the issue is probably

4 better handled by putting in the requirements that

5 apply for the traditional low-level waste that might

6 have long-lived radioactivity for the depleted uranium

7 and then explain very clearly in our guidance document

8 how people should be smart about how they do these

9 analyses and justify their analyses. 

10 It's not like in some cases, you might

11 need a primary school analysis for your site. And in

12 other cases, you might need the equivalent of the PhD

13 analysis. You know, you have to structure what you

14 need for the problem, and we think specifying the

15 requirements that capture all of those but then

16 allowing some people the flexibility in what they do

17 to show how they meet them is probably the right way

18 to go. 

19 MEMBER ARMIJO: And quantity being one of

20 the things that would scream out.

21 MR. ESH: Quantity being one of those

22 things. So, if I'm a licensee and I say, look, I have

23 long-lived isotopes, but I only have this amount, and

24 it's limited to these quantities and concentrations,

25 my problem is much problem is much simpler than the
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1 guy over here who really wants to take a lot of long2 lived waste. 

3 CHAIRMAN RYAN: And I guess, David, I may

4 have put words in your mouth. It's much easier to

5 revise guidance or amend guidance than it is to revise

6 or amend a rule. We can handle those case issues, I

7 think, more straightforwardly than you could by trying

8 to make a comprehensive rule. Is that right?

9 MR. ESH: Yes. And I'm excited that we

10 did not even intend to -- we need to make requirements

11 that we believe are adequately protective for any low12 level waste that people want to dispose of. But if

13 you made a special rule for depleted uranium, you

14 might do some things different than we have in this

15 regulation because we can be more specific for that

16 particular problem. So depleted uranium is unique in

17 that you get this radon problem over time, and the

18 radon problem can be pretty lard.

19 So, in our home, many of us deal with

20 radon in our homes, and it's driven by concentrations

21 in the environment surrounding our homes. It's many,

22 many orders of magnitude lower than what you have

23 here.

24 Mike likes to bring up the example of the

25 Fernald facility, where they disposed of some radium-
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1 and thorium-based waste in the silos there. And

2 they're estimated to have created some pretty large

3 doses some pretty large distances away from the

4 facilities before remedial action were put into place.

5 We have to deal with those sorts in the rulemaking

6 process, too.

7 I understand the comment. We did think it

8 through thoroughly, and we think this is the best

9 approach to go with. 

10 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Dick.

11 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Four comments:

12 First, excellent presentation -- thank you

13 for a very thorough and comprehensive presentation

14 today.

15 Second, I'm with Dr. Armijo on DU. I've

16 spent time at two field plants, and I see that forest

17 of exit containers setting on the back lot. And I'm

18 not talking hundreds; I'm talking thousands. And I

19 know that for the LES application, the greatest

20 concern by the public was, what's going to happen to

21 all that stuff? That's what we're talking about here.

22 So it seems to me that the magnitude, in

23 terms of kilograms of waste and curies of waste,

24 deserves its own treatment. And if that were

25 extracted from 61 through its own rule or its own
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433

1 portion, then maybe some of the other issues that

2 you're dealing with would not be as complex. So it

3 seems to me that there may be some value to

4 considering that.

5 I have a difficult time grasping an

6 intruder at 10,000 or 5,000 years. I really don't

7 know what I'll be doing the day after tomorrow, or I

8 think I know. I'm not trying to be facetious. It

9 just seems like that is such an extension of our

10 thinking that we may be on thin ice, and I don't know

11 how to resolve that really, but it certainly causes me

12 pause.

13 And finally, I want to thank Derek for

14 doing a very good job in dealing with SR homework

15 packages and reading materials.

16 MR. WIDMAYER: I'm going to write that

17 down.

18 (Laughter.)

19 MEMBER SKILLMAN: Because you really did

20 get us prepared.

21 MR. WIDMAYER: Thank you. 

22 MEMBER SKILLMAN: And I thank you. 

23 MEMBER ARMIJO: I just want to go back.

24 I may have -- 

25 (Simultaneous speaking.) 
171

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1 MEMBER ARMIJO: -- bridge line.

2 MEMBER SKILLMAN: I really thought you

3 guys did a really good job. 

4 MEMBER ARMIJO: I did, too. I think

5 intruders as archeologists or grave robbers. That's

6 what got to the pyramids. This is sort of our

7 pyramid. And I really couldn't care less about what

8 happens to those guys. But I don't have a problem

9 with an assessment of an intrusion event, albeit

10 unlikely. 

11 But to kind of put flesh and bones on an

12 intruder, a human being or group of human beings, far

13 out into the future, it gets so artificial that I just

14 can't accept it. Whereas, in today's world, we say

15 this is how we're going to assess this site, we're

16 going to just assume there's an intrusion event, and

17 what would happen? A what-if. That, I could live

18 with. I mean, you put in some conservatisms, and

19 you're done with it.

20 And I got the impression that's what you

21 actually are thinking about; I'm not sure. Maybe it's

22 semantics.

23 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Maybe it's a

24 recommendation. 

25 MEMBER ARMIJO: Maybe the label is
172

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1 intrusion assessment rather than intruder protection.

2 It gets across the reality of what you're doing as

3 opposed to someone in the public saying, this stuff is

4 so dangerous that we have to worry about human beings

5 somehow wandering onto this area and getting harmed,

6 and it's so unrealistic, so unlikely, and everything

7 else. 

8 But as a conservative engineer, you do an

9 assessment of a what-if in the licensing process, you

10 put it to bed, and you're done with it. 

11 MR. LEE: The NRC deserves credit for

12 first introducing the intruder analysis to the waste

13 management community, so I think it would be hard for

14 us to walk away from it right now because, again, it

15 represents an acute situation.

16 We're looking at way to try to make it

17 more realistic. With that being said, we were kind of

18 -- 

19 MEMBER ARMIJO: But it's clearly a policy

20 issue. I just think it's language in your rule that

21 will make a big difference in the way that it's

22 perceive, even though you do nothing different.

23 MR. LEE: Yeah, and segueing into the

24 policy issue, again, the direction from the staff was

25 to try to come up -- the staff was to develop a
173

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1 regulation that is a one-size-fits-all. We weren't

2 given a direction to develop a DU-specific rule, even

3 though that might in some quarters be viewed as a

4 better way of dividing and conquering the issue. 

5 But given the limitations we have right

6 now, we're trying to make it fit within the Part 61

7 context. You're certainly free to make that

8 recommendation to the Commission. 

9 CHAIRMAN RYAN: All right, I'd like to

10 open the bridge line from any participants on the

11 bridge line.

12 Are there any questions or comments from

13 participants? I assume the bridge line is open.

14 (No response.)

15 CHAIRMAN RYAN: Okay, hearing none, we

16 will move to adjourn. 

17 Thank you very much.

18 (Whereupon, the Subcommittee was adjourned

19 at 12:07 p.m.)

20

21

22

23

24

25
Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal 

(10 CFR Part 61)

Deborah Jackson, Deputy Director 

Division of Intergovernmental Liaison and Rulemaking

Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental 

Management Programs

Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards 

Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Nuclear 

Materials Subcommittee 

April 9, 2013
Why are we here 

today:

2

• Provide update of Part 61 rulemaking

• ACRS briefing

 Subcommittee (December 2009, June 2011, and August 2011)

 Full Committee (March 2010, July 2011, and September 2011)

• ACRS 2011 Comment Letter

 Four recommendations 

 Staff’s responses
Commission Directions: 

• SRM-SECY-08-0147 and SRM-SECY-10-0043

Require site-specific analysis for disposal of large quantities of DU, specify criteria 

needed for analysis, develop supporting guidance, and incorporate blending issue 

into the existing rulemaking for DU.

• SRM-COMWDM-11-0002/COMGEA-11-0002

1. Allowing licensees the flexibility to use ICRP dose methodology;

2. A two tiered approach that establishes a compliance period that covers the 

reasonably foreseeable future and a longer period of performance that is not a 

priori;

3. Flexibility for disposal facilities to establish site-specific waste acceptance 

criteria based on the results of the site’s performance assessment and intruder 

assessment;

4. A compatibility category...that ensures alignment between the States and 

Federal government on safety fundamentals, while providing the States with 

the flexibility to determine how to implement these safety requirements.

3
Today’s topics and 

presenters:

4

Topic Presenter 

Disposition of Earlier ACRS 2011 Comment

2012 Public Outreach Initiative

Mike Lee, DWMEP

2012 Regulatory Basis Document: Options Considered and 

Staff‘s Proposed Approach

Dave Esh and 

Chris Grossman, 

DWMEP

2012 Preliminary Proposed Rule: Summary of Preliminary 

Proposed Rule Language

Andrew Carrera, 

DILR

Current Status and Next Steps Aby Mohseni, 

DWMEP
Disposition of Earlier 

2011 ACRS Comments

Michael P. Lee

Division of Waste Management and Environmental 

Protection

Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental 

Management Programs

Mike.Lee@NRC.gov, (301) 415-6887

Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards

Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Nuclear Materials 

Subcommittee

April 9, 2013
Background & Context

• Rulemaking direction initially provided in 

SRM-SECY-08-0147 (March 18, 2009)

• ACRS letter dated September 22, 2011

– Reflects series of earlier 2011 meetings

– Committee issued four recommendations

• Staff response dated November 3, 2011

2
ACRS 2011 

Recommendation #1

3

Recommendation 10 CFR Part 61 should not be amended in accordance with 

the staff’s recommendations.

Staff

Response

The staff’s draft proposed rule is consistent with Commission 

direction for a limited scope Part 61 rulemaking in SRM-SECY08-0147.

Implementation Staff proposed new explicit performance assessment and intruder 

analysis requirements consistent with earlier Commission 

direction.
ACRS 2011 

Recommendation #2

4

Recommendation Implementation guidance for 10 CFR Part 61 should not 

specify an a priori period of performance.

Staff

Response

The staff agrees and did not originally specify a longer-term 

performance period. However, the staff believes that it is 

important to specify a compliance period in the rule. 

Implementation Consistent with earlier stakeholder feedback (and Commission 

direction), staff originally proposed a requirement for calculation 

of peak dose within 20,000-years. In the December 2012 version 

of the draft rule text, the staff is now proposing 10,000

years for the length of the time of compliance.
ACRS 2011 

Recommendation #3

5

Recommendation The approaches in Recommendations 1 and 2 are equally 

applicable to the disposal of depleted uranium as well as 

other LLW.

Staff

Response

The staff agrees that development of a risk informed, 

performance based LLW site assessment methodology using 

realistic characterizations of disposed radioactive materials; the 

features, events, and processes that can disrupt disposed

waste; natural and engineered barriers; environmental transport 

mechanisms; and subsequent human exposure scenarios is 

appropriate for DU and other LLW.

Implementation See 2011 edition of proposed rule text.
ACRS 2011 

Recommendation #4

6

Recommendation Compliance with performance objectives of the disposal 

system after the institutional control period ends, as well as 

the possible doses to hypothetical intruders, should be 

evaluated considering the natural features, events, and 

processes for a given site for a period of time 

commensurate with the risk for a specific facility and site.

Staff

Response

The staff agrees. The staff believes that it has developed a 

proposed rule that considers the natural features, events, and 

processes for a given site for a period of time commensurate with 

the risk for a specific facility and site

Implementation See 2011 edition of proposed rule text.
2012 Public Outreach 

Initiative

Michael P. Lee

Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection

Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental 

Management Programs

Mike.Lee@NRC.gov, (301) 415-6887

Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards

Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Nuclear Materials 

Subcommittee

April 9, 2013
2012 Commission Direction

• Seek stakeholder feedback on four expanded 

regulatory requirements

• Staff initiatives

– Issued Federal Register notices

– Both participated in and hosted public meetings

– Contacted NRC Agreement States 

2
2012 Public Outreach 

Efforts

3
Letters ... 

~200 comments

• Council of Radiation 

Control Program 

Directors

• Council on Radionuclides 

and 

Radiopharmaceuticals

• EnergySolutions

• Electric Power Research 

Institute

• Norman Eisenberg

• NSF Environmental

• Heal Utah

• Health Physics Society

• LLW Forum

• Nuclear Energy Institute

• Neptune & Associates

• Howard Pope

• State of Utah

• State of Texas

• State of Washington

• Waste Control Specialists

4
Written Comment 

Distribution

• TOC/POP Definition* 20%

• “Other” 10%

• Waste Classification Tables 10%

• Site-Specific Performance Assessment 9%

• ICRP* 9%

• Compatibility Issues* 9%

• Disposition of Depleted Uranium 8% 

• WAC* 6%

• Human Intrusion 6%

• Duration of Institutional Controls 5%

5

Approximately 200 comments, questions, and suggestions submitted

Percentages are approximate and do not total 100%
Response Summary

• Generally no disputing need for rulemaking

• Differing views on scope and details

• Not all Agreement States expressed an opinion 

– Budget constraints

– Some limited comments

• Extend duration of active institutional control period to 300 years

• States should not be compelled to receive depleted uranium

6
Commission Direction

Proposal #1

7

Commission

Proposal

Allowing licensees the flexibility to use ICRP dose 

methodologies

Stakeholder

Response

The majority of stakeholders expressing a view on this topic at the 

2012 public meetings were mostly in support of this Commission 

proposal

Agreement 

State

Response

Those Agreement Sates expressing a view on this topic were mostly 

in support of this Commission proposal.

Preliminary

Staff

Observation

Allowing licensees the flexibility to use more up-to-date ICRP 

recommendations would align with past agency practice
Commission Direction

Proposal #2

8

Commission

Proposal

Implement a two-tiered approach to performance assessment 

that establishes a compliance period that covers the 

reasonably foreseeable future and a longer period of 

performance that is not defined a priori

Stakeholder

Response

The majority of stakeholders expressing a view on this topic at the 

2012 public meetings were mostly in support of this Commission 

proposal

Agreement State

Response

Not all Agreement States expressed an opinion on the merits of a 

two-tiered approach proposed by the Commission at this time. 

Comments received thus far are mixed.

Preliminary

Staff

Observation

Staff have previously advocated the adoption of a two-tiered 

approach to the conduct of a LLW performance 

assessment
Commission Direction

Question #2 (continued)

• Two-tiered approach ...

– General support

– Time of Compliance concept

• Mixed responses

• “Foreseeable Future” term undefined

• <1000 yrs; 1000-10,000 yrs; >10,000 yrs

– Period of Performance concept

• Should not be defined in regulation

• Technically challenging

• Questionable decision-making value

• Shouldn’t be based on dose to receptor

9
Commission Direction

Proposal #3

10

Commission

Proposal

Flexibility for disposal facilities to establish a site-specific WAC 

based on the results of a site’s performance assessment and intruder 

analysis

Stakeholder

Response

The majority of stakeholders expressing a view on this topic at the 2012 

public meetings were mostly in support of this Commission proposal.

Agreement State

Response

For those Agreement States expressing a view on this topic, most were in 

support of this Commission proposal. However, in voicing their support, 

some States acknowledged the need to verify that the waste generators 

complied with the disposal sites’ WAC (a new burden). 

Also, some of the Agreement States cautioned against the NRC 

compelling them to accept large quantities of DU.

Preliminary

Staff

Observation

In practice, most Agreement States already impose 

some form of a site-specific WAC 
Commission Direction

Proposal #4

11

Commission

Proposal

A compatibility category for elements of the revised rule that 

ensures alignment between States and the Federal 

government on safety fundamentals while providing the States 

with some flexibility

Stakeholder

Response

The majority of stakeholders expressing a view on this topic at the 

2012 public meetings were mostly in support of this Commission 

proposal so long as it does not introduce some unintentional 

completive advantage

Agreement State

Response

Some Agreement States expressed concerns about maintaining 

flexibility in implementation of new requirements.

Preliminary

Staff

Observation

This comment is noted.
Miscellaneous Comments

See SECY-13-0001

12

Updating the existing waste concentration tables at §61.55 

to reflect the latest ICRP dose conversion factors and 

methodologies

Staff has current direction to 

begin to address in FY2015

Revisiting the current regulatory basis for the duration of 

100-year active institutional control period

Should revisit this issue in 

context of any §61.55 table 

update in FY2015

Revisit earlier assumptions concerning the minimum 

reporting requirements for certain isotopes cited in the Part 

20 Appendix G LLW shipping manifest

Staff agrees. Held its first public 

meeting in March 2013

Developing criteria for the disposal of greater-than-class C 

LLW

DOE must first address GTCC 

disposition through its NEPA 

process

Developing clearance criteria for low-activity radioactive 

waste

In 2005, Commission decided to 

defer any decision on LAW
10 CFR Part 61: 

2012 Regulatory Basis

David Esh 

Christopher Grossman 

Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection

Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental 

Management Programs

david.esh@nrc.gov, (301) 415-6705

christopher.grossman@nrc.gov, (301) 415-7658

Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards 

Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Nuclear 

Materials Subcommittee 

April 9, 2013
2

Main Topics

• Key concepts

• Site-specific LLW technical analyses

• Analysis timeframes

• Dose assessment – ICRP recommendations

• Waste acceptance
3

Key Concepts

• LLW - hazard vs. risk

• Inventory 

• Delays – barriers and transport

• Generic waste classification

• Inadvertent intruders
4

LLW – Hazard vs. Risk

• > 90% of the hazard from short-lived isotopes:

– Co-60, Cs-137, Sr-90, H-3

• > 90% of the risk (61.41) from long-lived isotopes:

– Tc-99, I-129, C-14, Cl-36, U-isotopes, Np-237

 Risk Hazard
5

LLW Inventory Analysis

1.E-03

1.E-02

1.E-01

1.E+00

1.E+01

1.E+02

1.E+03

1.E+04

1.E+05

1.E+06

1.E+07

1.E+08

1.E+09

1.E+00 1.E+02 1.E+04 1.E+06 1.E+08 1.E+10

Reduction Factor to achieve 25 mrem

Half life (yr)

Barnwell

Clive

Richland

Beatty

Sr90

Large

Quantities

DU

U238 Th232

Increasing

Challenge

Blended

Sr90
6

Inventory Analysis

• All existing LLW facilities contain sufficient inventory that 

could result in unacceptable radiological risk (61.41).

– Many orders of magnitude reduction needed for some isotopes

• Commission directed the staff to:

—Perform limited rulemaking to require a site-specific analyses 

prior to the disposal of significant quantities of depleted uranium 

and blended waste.

—Identify technical requirements of the site-specific analyses.

—Develop guidance.

• Extensive stakeholder interaction -> do not limit technical 

requirements to these waste streams
7

Delays – Barriers and 

Transport

• Engineered and natural barriers reduce and delay risk

Reduce Delay

Release from wasteform Resistive barrier failure

Solubility limits Waste package 

Dilution during transport Sorption – transport

Dispersion Site control

Technical requirements must account for both types.
8

Generic waste classification

• Limits concentration suitable for near-surface disposal

• Constrains societal uncertainty 

• Embedded assumptions – inventory, waste disposal

• Combined short- and long-lived isotopes

• Focused on inadvertent intruder protection (61.42)

• Does not ensure that 61.41 will be met

• Not all isotopes important for 61.41 are reflected in 

Tables 1 and 2 of 61.55
9

Inadvertent Intruders

• Not based on assumption of failure of society

• Based on the assumption of error of government

• Relieves licensees of financial responsibility after the 

institutional control period

• No adequate technical basis for the long-term 

robustness of active controls

• Commission assumed intruders were unlikely albeit 

possible

• Conditional probability of 1; intruder dose limit implies a 

probability of 5%.
10

LLW Technical Analyses

• Technical requirements must apply to all sites and 

inventories.

• LLW disposal sites may have vastly different:

– Inventories

– Engineered barriers

– Natural barriers

– Environmental conditions

• If technical requirements are not established for the most 

challenging inventory/site, public health and safety will 

not be protected.

• Best approach is to risk-inform the technical analyses.
11

Regulatory Requirements -

Technical Analyses 

• Tiered approach to analysis timeframe.

• Site-specific technical analyses vs. generic waste 

classification.

• Avoid unnecessary speculation about societal 

uncertainties.

• Higher dose limit for intruder scenario.

• Site-stability based on impacts to 61.41 and 61.42 

performance objectives.

• Site-suitability characteristics only exclusionary for 

hydrological characteristics for 500 years.

• Dose modeling (ICRP)

Risk

-informed
12

Analyses Timeframes -

International

• Staff performed an extensive review of international 

experience – different approaches used.

• Approaches included:

– Long-term analyses (numerical or general (e.g. ―peak‖))

– Regulatory-defined limits on near surface disposal of long-lived 

– Prohibition of near surface disposal

– Multiple

• The staff recommended approach is consistent with the 

international experience.
13

Analyses Timeframes –

Domestic LLW

• All currently operational LLW disposal facilities are 

located in Agreement States.

• Different interpretations of NRC regulations:

– Washington: 10,000 years (longer in EIS)

– Texas: Analyses to 50,000 years

– Utah: 500 years, 10,000 years for uranium (under review)

– South Carolina: 2,000 years 

• In 2000, NRC staff performed a detailed technical 

analysis of a LLW disposal facility at a humid site and 

recommended 10,000 years (NUREG-1573).
14

Analyses Timeframes -

Technical

Traditional Waste

• All current LLW disposal 

facilities contain long-lived 

waste.

• Long-lived waste is the 

driver of projected doses 

for 61.41.

• Three of four facilities 

project peak doses to occur 

after 1,000 years for 61.41.

Depleted Uranium

• At 1,000 years, only 1/1000th

of the potential impact would 

be assessed.

• At 10,000 years, 

approximately 1/10th of the 

potential impact would be 

assessed.

• Second tier captures the 

other 9/10th.
15

Site-specific Analyses 

Timeframes

• ACRS 2011 (based in part on ACNW 1997):

– Two tiered approach:

1) Time at which more mobile radionuclides produce 

peak dose to designated receptor

2) Avoid catastrophic impacts after

– Consider geohydrology, waste isolation technology, 

other controls
16

Site-specific Analyses 

Timeframes

• What are more mobile radionuclides? How to define?

– Radionuclide A may be more mobile at site 1 and less mobile at 

site 2

– Radionuclide A may be less mobile than radionuclide B at one site 

and more mobile at another site

• What are catastrophic impacts?

• Why not list waste characteristics?

• For WCS the projected time of peak dose from the more 

mobile radionuclides was > 30,000 years.

• Material can be transported in many different pathways.
17

Site-specific Analyses 

Timeframes

• Disposal practices and selection of sites.

• Commission policy regarding stability and waste 

isolation.

• Consistency with international approaches.

• ALARA – national.

• Obligations to future generations regarding protection 

from waste disposal.
DOSIMETRY 

18
Commission Direction

Provide an expanded proposed rule...which 

includes the following issues, along with staff’s 

analysis of the issues and stakeholder feedback 

and the pros and cons of the specific revisions:

• Allowing licensees the flexibility to use ICRP dose 

methodologies in a site-specific performance 

assessment for the disposal of all radioactive waste.

SRM-COMWDM-11-0002/COMGEA-11-0002

19
Context

• NRC regulations 

based on various 

methodologies

• Commission policy1

presently allows 

exemption for current 

methodology

1 SRM-SECY-01-0148

ICRP 2

1959

ICRP 26

1977

ICRP 60

1990

ICRP 103

2007

20
Staff Analysis

• Commission direction

• ICRP methodologies

• Updates provide holistic evaluation of radiation 

risks

• Account for radiosensitivity of the organ

• Consider a wider range of organs and tissues

• Public feedback

21
Options Considered

• Specifying ICRP methodology in 

regulation

• Adopting ICRP methodology-neutral 

approach

• Address in guidance

22
Public Views

• Supportive:

– Directly cited vs. flexibility

– Periodically revisit PA dosimetry

• Critical:

– Safety significance in removing critical organ 

limits

23
Proposal

• Adopt ICRP methodology-neutral 

approach

– Consistent with Commission direction

– Current science

– Precedence: 10 CFR Part 63 approach

– Minimize future revisions to 10 CFR Part 61

24
WASTE ACCEPTANCE 

25
Commission Direction

Provide an expanded proposed rule...which 

includes the following issues, along with staff’s 

analysis of the issues and stakeholder feedback 

and the pros and cons of the specific revisions:

• Flexibility for disposal facilities to establish site-specific 

waste acceptance criteria based on the results of the 

site’s performance assessment and intruder 

assessment.

SRM-COMWDM-11-0002/COMGEA-11-0002 26
10 CFR 61 Today

• Existing “waste acceptance” requirements 

include:

– 61.55 – Waste classification

• Allowable concentration limits; Class A, B, C.

• Total activity limits site-specific and derived from 

61.13(a)

– 61.56 – Waste characteristics

– 61.58 – Alternative classification and 

characteristics

27
Waste Classification

Long-lived Short-lived 

28
Waste Classification

• Derived from NUREG-0782 analysis

– Inadvertent intruder scenarios

• Intruder-Construction

• Intruder-Discovery

• Intruder-Agriculture

– 500-mrem Dose limit (implies 5% likelihood)

– Ineffective institutional controls after 100 yr.

– Recognized need for site-specific analysis for 

water-dependent pathways

• 61.13(a) analysis

29
Waste Characteristics

• Minimum (all waste)

– Facilitate handling

– Protection of public health and safety

• Stability (stable waste)

– Minimize water infiltration

– Limit intruder exposures (recognizable, nondispersible)

30
Waste Classification is 

Central

Classification

Characteristics 

61.56

Segregation 

61.52(a)

Intruder 

Barriers 

61.52(b)

31
Waste Acceptance 

Guidance

• Waste form

• Concentration averaging and 

encapsulation

32
Staff Analysis

• Commission direction

• Domestic and international regulatory 

approaches

• Public feedback

33
Options Considered

• Continue with existing waste classification 

system

• Replace classification system with sitespecific WAC

• Maintain classification system with 

flexibility for site-specific WAC

34
Goals

• Ensure protection of public health and 

safety

• Risk-informed, performance-based 

regulatory processes

• Provide flexibility for site-specific WAC per 

Commission direction

• Minimize disruptions to existing Part 61 

framework

• Minimize resource burdens

35
Supportive Viewpoints

• Recognizes improvements

– site selection, facility design, and disposal methods

• Mixed views on scenarios 

– hypothetical vs. site-specific

• Some concern about abandoning classification

– LLRWPAA: Federal-State Responsibilities

• 61.58, case-by-case

– Transboundary concerns

• Mixed views on waste acceptability requirements

– Performance-based (not prescriptive)

36
Critical Viewpoints

• Additional resource burden on Agreement 

States

• Impact on State law

• Negative effects on public confidence

• Emphasize conservatism rather than 

maximizing capacity

• Economic incentives

• Complexity and lack of transparency of 

analyses

37
Proposal

Waste Acceptance

Criteria

Characterization 

Methods

Certification 

Program

38

• Apply to all licensees

• Adapted from U.S. DOE

• Consistent with international 

approaches
Waste Acceptance 

Criteria

• Allowable limits

– 61.55 concentration limits or

– 61.13 analyses

• Acceptable wasteform characteristics and 

container specifications

• Restrictions or prohibitions

39
Waste Characterization 

Methods

• Identify parameters and acceptable 

uncertainty

• Minimum characterization information

40
Waste Certification 

Program

• Administrative procedures to ensure waste 

is acceptable for disposal 

– Designate authority

– Identify documentation and records

• Characterization

• Shipment

• Certification

– Approaches for maintaining certification

41
Accommodating 

Changes

• LLW Manifests – App. G to10 CFR Part 20

• Concepts – 10 CFR 61.7

• Standards – 10 CFR 61.23

• Performance Objectives – 10 CFR 61.42

• Labeling – 10 CFR 61.57

• Operations – 10 CFR 61.52

• Records – 10 CFR 61.80

42
10 CFR PART 61 Preliminary Proposed Rule 

Language

Andrew Carrera 

Division of Intergovernmental Liaison and Rulemaking

Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental 

Management Programs

Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards 

Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Nuclear 

Materials Subcommittee 

April 9, 2011
Working group

Office Working Group Members

FSME/DILR/RB-A Andrew Carrera, Gary Comfort

FSME/DILR/RB-B Robert MacDougall

FSME/DWMEP/EPPAD Priya Yadav, Mike Lee, 

FSME/DWMEP/EPPAD Christopher Grossman, David Esh

FSME/DWMEP/ERB-A Stephen Lemont

ADM/DAS/RADB Anthony DeJesus

OGC Lisa London, Sarah Price, Tison Campbell

NRR Shawn Harwell

OIS Kristen Benney

NMSS Timothy McCartin

Agreement States Mark Yeager (South Carolina)

2
Purpose of the Rule

• Specify site-specific technical analyses requirements.

• Permit development of criteria for waste disposal based 

on the results of these analyses.

• Better align the requirements with current health and 

safety standards.

3
Preliminary Amendments 

to Part 61 Regulations 

(Dec. 2012)

• Site-Specific Analyses: 

1. Performance assessment

2. Intruder assessment

3. Performance period analyses

4. Update technical analyses

• Waste acceptance

• Other Supporting Changes:

1. Adding new definitions and concepts

2. Implementing changes to Appendix G to 10 CFR Part 20

3. Allowing the use of up-to-date ICRP recommendations

4
Site-Specific Analyses: 

Performance Assessment

• § 61.41 Protection of the general population from 

releases of radioactivity.

Revised requirements:

§ 61.41(a)—Added requirement to demonstrate compliance through 

analyses that meet the requirements specified in §61.13(b).

§ 61.41(b)—Added requirement to demonstrate that reasonable effort 

should be made to maintain releases of radioactivity from a disposal 

facility to the general environment as low as reasonably achievable at any 

time during the performance period. Compliance with this paragraph must 

be demonstrated through analyses that meet the requirements specified in 

§61.13(e).

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Site-Specific Analyses: 

Intruder Assessment

• § 61.42 Protection of inadvertent intruders.

Revised requirements:

§ 61.42(a)—Added annual dose of 500 mrem and requirement to 

demonstrate compliance through analyses that meet the requirements 

specified in § 61.13(b).

§ 61.42(b)—Added requirement to demonstrate reasonable effort should be 

made to maintain exposures to any inadvertent intruder as low as 

reasonably achievable at any time during the performance period. 

Compliance with this paragraph must be demonstrated through analyses 

that meet the requirements specified in § 61.13(e).

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Site-Specific Analyses:

Long-Term Analyses

• § 61.13 Technical analyses.

New requirements:

§ 61.13(e)—Added requirement for analyses that assess how the disposal 

facility and site characteristics limit the potential long-term radiological 

impacts, consistent with available data and current scientific understanding. 

The analyses shall only be required for land disposal facilities with longlived waste that contains alpha-emitting radionuclides with average 

concentrations exceeding 10 nCi/g or radionuclides with average 

concentrations exceeding one tenth of the values listed in Table 1 of §

61.55, or if necessitated by site-specific factors including engineering 

design, operational practices, and site characteristics. The analyses must 

identify and describe the features of the design and site characteristics that 

will demonstrate that the performance objectives set forth in §§ 61.41(b) 

and 61.42(b) will be met.

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Waste Acceptance:

• § 61.58 Waste acceptance.

New requirements:

§ 61.58(a)—Added requirement for waste acceptance criteria to be 

developed from the technical analyses required by either § 61.13 for 

any land disposal facility or the waste classification requirements set 

forth in § 61.55 for a near-surface disposal facility.

§ 61.58(b)—Added requirement for waste characterization.

§ 61.58(c)—Added requirement for waste certification.

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Site-Specific Analyses:

Updated Analyses

• § 61.28 Contents of application for closure.

New requirement:

§ 61.28(a)(2)—Added requirement to submit revised analyses for §61.13 

using the details of the final closure plan and waste inventory.

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Other Supporting 

Changes:

• § 61.2 Definitions and § 61.7 Concepts.

New definitions and concepts: 

Compliance period, intruder assessment, long-lived waste, performance 

assessment, waste acceptance, and implementation of dose methodology.

• Appendix G to 10 CFR Part 20.

Revise requirements: 

Section II, “Certification,” and

Section III, “Control and Tracking.’

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Current Status and 

Next Steps

Aby Mohseni, Deputy Director

Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection

Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental 

Management Programs

Aby.Mohseni@NRC.gov, (301) 415-6686

Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards

Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Nuclear Materials 

Subcommittee

April 9, 2013
Current Plans ....

• Second ACRS Subcommittee briefing: June 2013

– Discuss rule text and guidance document currently in 

concurrence

– Changes reflect Commission’s 2012 SRM

– Focus on changes made in response to December 2012 public 

comments

• ACRS Committee briefing: July 2013

– Anticipating Committee letter report

• Draft rule text and guidance document

 due to Commission: July 2013 

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Next Steps ... 

• If Commission approves of rulemaking package ...

– Publish in Federal Register later in calendar year (Fall/Winter 

2013)

– Conduct public meetings in 2014 (locations and dates yet to be 

determined)

– Deliver final rulemaking package to Commission in late calendar 

year 2014

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