Official Transcript of Proceedings

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Title: Disposal of Low-Level Nuclear Waste

Joint NRC/DOE Workshop

Docket Number: (n/a)

Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Date: Friday, March 4, 2011

Work Order No.: NRC-753 Pages 1-267

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1 JOINT DOE/NRC WORKSHOP ON

2 DISPOSAL OF LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE 

3 + + + + +

4 Hyatt Regency Phoenix

5 122 North Second Street

6 Regency A Ballroom, First Floor

7 Phoenix, Arizona 85004

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9 FRIDAY

10 MARCH 4, 2011

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12 8:30 A.M.

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1 CONTENTS

2 Introductions ......................................3

3 Status of DOE Order 435.1 Updates .................21

4 Break

5 Status of DOE Order 435.1 Updates

6 (cont.) .....................................67

7 Public Participation ..............................68

8 Lunch

9 NRC Presentation of Examination of

10 10 CFR Part 61 Revisions ...................113

11 Break

12 Joint DOE/NRC Panel Discussion ...................218

13 Public Participation .............................255

14 Adjourn

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

2 (8:30 a.m.)

3 MR. CAMERON: Good morning. Good morning 

4 everyone.

5 My name is Chip Cameron and it is my 

6 pleasure to serve as your facilitator for today's 

7 meeting. And I'd like to welcome you to a joint 

8 Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

9 public meeting on low-level waste issues, the update 

10 of DOE Order 435.1, and the possible revision of the 

11 NRC's Rule 10 CFR Part 61. And as your facilitator 

12 I'll try to help you all to have a productive meeting 

13 today. And I just want to briefly go over some 

14 meeting process issues with you so that you'll know 

15 what to expect today. I want to tell you a little bit 

16 about the format we're going to be using, some simple 

17 ground rules to help us all have a productive meeting 

18 and an agenda overview for all of you.

19 And in terms of format, we're going to 

20 have a more or less a town hall format where we're 

21 going to have presentations by the Department of 

22 Energy staff this morning and then presentations by 

23 the NRC staff this afternoon; and we're going to have 

24 a discussion period on both of those sets of 

25 presentations, and then we're going to have a joint 
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1 DOE/NRC panel discussion towards the end of the day.

2 And we have guests on the phone through 

3 the WebEx system and they are going to be able to see 

4 the slides and are going to be able to hear everything 

5 that is said by the presenters and all of you in the 

6 audience.

7 In terms of ground rules for today's 

8 meeting, I would just ask you to wait until all the 

9 presentations by the Department of Energy staff are 

10 completed, or the NRC staff in terms of this 

11 afternoon, before we go to questions and comments; and 

12 that way you'll have a complete picture of what the 

13 Department of Energy and the NRC are doing.

14 When we get to the discussion period, if 

15 you have a question or a comment, just signal me and 

16 I'll bring this cordless microphone to you. We also 

17 have standing mics out here in the audience for your 

18 convenience, but I'll try to get to you with this 

19 cordless. And if you could, just please introduce 

20 yourself to all of us. 

21 And I would ask that only one person speak 

22 at a time for two important reasons. One is so that 

23 we can give our full attention to whomever has the 

24 floor at the moment and also so we can get what I call 

25 a clean transcript. We do have a court reporter today 
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1 and it is Tina Ihrig is with us, and there will be a 

2 transcript of today's session. It's the Department of 

3 Energy's record of the meeting, of what transpired 

4 today, it's the NRC's record, and it's your record of 

5 the meeting. And I will let you know how that can be 

6 accessed and how that will be available to anybody 

7 that wants to see the transcript.

8 Try to be concise, as usual, in what you 

9 say when we get to discussion. We have a lot of 

10 people in the audience, which is great, and we have 

11 people on the phone and I just want to make sure that 

12 we give everybody the opportunity to speak today. 

13 And when we get to the discussion period, 

14 I'm going to start with all the people in the room 

15 here in Phoenix, and then I'm going to go to all of 

16 you on the phones to hear your comments and questions. 

17 And I'm sorry to have to sort of segment it that way, 

18 but that will make it a little bit more efficient and 

19 peaceful.

20 In terms of the agenda, one note is that 

21 the agenda that was on the NRC meeting notice website 

22 has been revised since it has been posted. And I'm 

23 going go through this agenda very quickly for you, but 

24 the most important thing is we are going to be running 

25 until 5:30 this afternoon and I think the original NRC 
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1 agenda had us finishing at 5:00.

2 Okay. And so we're going to start --

3 we're going to start out this morning with DOE, and it 

4 is going be all DOE all morning. And we're going to 

5 start with Bill Levitan, who is the director of the 

6 Office of Environmental Compliance at the Department 

7 of Energy in the EM office. And Bill is going to kick 

8 it off for us. And then we are going to go to Marty 

9 Letourneau, who is the project lead for the DOE Order 

10 435.1 update, and Marty will introduce all of his 

11 colleagues that are going to be talking after him. 

12 And at that point we are going to take a 

13 coffee break, then we're going come back and we're 

14 going to open it up for discussion to everybody here 

15 in the room and the phones. And I'm going try to 

16 create some discussion threads as much as we can so 

17 that the discussion is a little bit more coherent than 

18 it usually can be at some of these sessions. So we'll 

19 go to someone for a comment and I might ask if anybody 

20 else has anything to say on that particular issue 

21 before we move on to the next issue. And we will go 

22 to the phones, the people on the phones before we 

23 finish up. 

24 And we are going to break for lunch at 

25 11:45, coming back at 1:00 and then we're going to go 
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1 to the NRC portion of the meeting. And that's going 

2 to start with Larry Camper. And I'll introduce Larry 

3 when we get to this afternoon's session. We have a 

4 keynote address by Charlie Miller from the NRC that is 

5 similar to the keynote from Bill Levitan. This 

6 morning we're going to go through a series of NRC 

7 presentations and we'll take a coffee break, then 

8 we'll come back for discussion.

9 There are some cross-cutting issues 

10 between the update of the DOE Order and NRC's 

11 consideration of changes to Part 61. So we're going 

12 have everybody up on the stage from DOE and the NRC 

13 for a panel discussion at the end of the day. That's 

14 scheduled for 4:15. And primarily we're going to try 

15 to address those cross-cutting issues. What are the 

16 implications for the NRC from the DOE update and vice 

17 versa? If we hear questions like that throughout the 

18 day, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put those in 

19 the so-called parking lot so that we'll come back to 

20 those at the end of the day.

21 And I do have to make a required safety 

22 announcement here and it just consists of the fact 

23 that our emergency exits are over here on this side of 

24 the room where the exit signs are. If you go through 

25 either one of those exits, you go to the right and 
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1 there's a door that leads out to the street. Okay.

2 And I just thank you all for being here.

3 Are there any burning questions about the agenda or 

4 anything at this point before we go to Bill to lead 

5 off? Okay, great. 

6 So I'm going to ask Bill Levitan to come 

7 up, director of the Office of Environmental 

8 Compliance. And Bill, are you going to use the --

9 MR. LEVITAN: Can everybody hear me? 

10 MR. CAMERON: Good.

11 MR. LEVITAN: Wow, I can hear me. 

12 Good morning, everybody. As the first 

13 speaker of the morning that's sort of almost mandatory 

14 to make sure everybody's awake and listening. 

15 First of all I want to thank Gregory Suber 

16 and Mike Lee, for putting this together. I really 

17 appreciate the efforts they put in, all the nice 

18 arrangements, Phoenix's finest back there to help us 

19 along too. So I appreciate you being here as well. 

20 Frank Marcinowski was going to be the 

21 keynote speaker but he fell ill earlier this week and 

22 so his plans changed. And since I was out here and 

23 going to be making some opening remarks anyway, this 

24 is a combination of opening remarks and keynote. And 

25 they are remarks; I'm not very good at formal 
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1 speeches, so we'll just go on. 

2 The first thing I'm curious about is how 

3 many people were at the session yesterday afternoon? 

4 Oh, maybe I should ask how many people weren't at the 

5 session yesterday. No, that's okay. And then how 

6 many people on Wednesday were at the session that 

7 Marty led on DOE Order 435.1? Okay, fewer people. 

8 Well, we're going to cover a lot of that same ground, 

9 so I'm glad to see that a lot of you here weren't in 

10 that session on Wednesday, because we really do look 

11 forward to have your input as we raise issues, as we 

12 move through DOE Order 435.1.

13 A lot of you may not know me. I was in 

14 consulting for 16 years, in environmental consulting, 

15 working mainly NEPA and CERCLA. But it's interesting 

16 because in the NEPA and CERCLA world you do risk 

17 assessments, which is my background. Came to DOE, I

18 did a lot of stuff in various places for Hanford and 

19 then in the front offices. And then two years ago I 

20 took over this office of Environmental Compliance and 

21 pretty much got immersed in DOE Order 435.1

22 performance assessments. And to me it was just like, 

23 wow, this is just like -- the risk assessments are the 

24 types of analyses we do in NEPA. So I have a fair 

25 familiarity with the processes. 
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1 But it is very interesting, especially 

2 sitting through yesterday's discussions and also some 

3 activities I had been in over the last two years, what 

4 a tight community this world of low-level waste 

5 disposal performance assessment is. And it was pretty 

6 clear to me yesterday many of you know one another and 

7 you sort of know your views on things and obviously 

8 there are good professional differences that are being 

9 aired. And so I appreciate that and look forward to 

10 actually having all of you give us the feedback.

11 One thing, just to go over a 

12 little bit of the history --

13 And I'm just going to -- Marty's going to 

14 be using this presentation, so I'm just going to skip 

15 to a few slides. 

16 On this slide if you notice our original 

17 radioactive waste management Order, which maybe some 

18 of you -- we were talking about geezers yesterday, so 

19 maybe some of you were around in 1988 when the 

20 original radioactive waste management Order was 

21 issued.

22 It's interesting if you think about 1988, 

23 because EM was then formed in 1989. And think about 

24 the status of radioactive waste management at DOE at 

25 that time. We had a lot of legacy TRU (transuranic 
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1 radioactive waste) and a lot of legacy low-level 

2 radioactive waste, in some cases unsafe conditions.

3 We had radioactive waste in the tanks. And we all 

4 know about the tanks at Hanford. 

5 I think we've forgotten about one of our 

6 big successes, which was the burping tanks if you 

7 remember. And C-106, I think it was, was the high8 heat tank. And so that Order went in, EM was formed 

9 and lo and behold, here we are today. WIPP is 

10 operational. TRU waste is moving there in good order. 

11 Low-level waste is being disposed of. The tanks at 

12 least for now are in a somewhat safe configuration. 

13 And when you look across the complex, Hanford, we've 

14 emptied six tanks, Savannah River we've closed two 

15 tanks and emptied two to four more. I don't know 

16 where we are on those other two. Oh, we're up to six.

17 And West Valley, of course, those tanks 

18 are emptied and the waste has been vitrified. DWPF is 

19 operating. In Idaho we've emptied most of the tanks, 

20 11 of the 15. So we've made a lot of progress with 

21 this Order. And then of course 11 years later when we 

22 updated that Order, changed the number to DOE Order 

23 435.1 and here we are now 11 years later looking to 

24 update it again. 

25 I'm just going to skip a few slides here 
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1 to the complex-wide review. What we did was -- I 

2 think you're familiar with the complex-wide review, if 

3 not Marty will talk about it in more detail. But 

4 basically this was where we went out over the last 

5 year and a half or so and pulsed all of our sites to 

6 see how they were doing Rad (radioactive) waste 

7 management -- and you can see the three types of Rad 

8 waste forms -- as well as how DOE Order 435.1 was 

9 working for them or not working for them. 

10 And basically you can see here the 

11 results. And Marty will probably go into it in a 

12 little more detail. But if you add up all of those 

13 numbers, you'll see that the BP is best practices and 

14 AIs are areas for improvement. And it comes out that 

15 we had 62 best practices and 118 areas for 

16 improvement. And so the idea is let's take those 

17 issues and roll them into what we're now doing in 

18 terms of revising DOE Order 435.1.

19 We've done this -- this is now the third 

20 workshop that we're doing on this Order. The first 

21 one was nearly a year ago out in Portland and that was 

22 basically the team, the writing team getting together, 

23 getting organized. And then the second workshop was, 

24 about six months later or so, where the team had 

25 gotten pretty much into their writing assignments, 
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1 there were cross-cutting issues to deal with. And now 

2 here we are where the Order itself and the rewrite of 

3 the Order has made a lot of progress. And I 

4 really want to make it clear that we want to get input 

5 from you here in this room and a lot of you, 

6 obviously, coming from the Rad Waste Management 

7 Conference have areas of expertise that are very 

8 helpful to us, but also for those that are on the 

9 phone, to also get your input as well. 

10 The DOE Order is a DOE-wide Order. We 

11 have NNSA, Science, Nuclear Energy, and of course EM 

12 that are producing and managing radioactive waste. 

13 But I'm going to get a little parochial 

14 here because I'm with the Office of Environmental 

15 Management and I think we have a particular interest 

16 in this Order and a particular need to have an update 

17 and to follow it because, frankly, compliance is what 

18 drives the EM program. 

19 And in my office, which is the Office of 

20 Environmental Compliance, not only are we the owner, 

21 if you will, for the DOE Order -- we're the ones that 

22 are responsible for its maintenance, responsible for 

23 ensuring its implementation across the Department --

24 but we also worry about other laws and regulations. 

25 And in particular, as you are all well aware, CERCLA, 
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1 RCRA, NEPA, NESHAPS recently for those who are 

2 familiar with what's happened at SPRU. So we've cut 

3 across a lot of regulations. 

4 So for me it's a little bit schizophrenic 

5 because on the one hand we're sort of the regulator of 

6 DOE Order 435.1 and on the other hand we're the 

7 regulated under CERCLA, RCRA, and NESHAPS. So to me 

8 it's very interesting when you start comparing, say, 

9 CERCLA requirements and risk assessment and decision 

10 making versus under our own authorities of DOE Order

11 435.1. 

12 And I tell a story that my staff has heard 

13 me say many times and maybe some of you who've worked 

14 with me have heard it. And I think -- I don't know 

15 when the first time they had the conference here in 

16 Phoenix; maybe it was three years ago? Yeah, three 

17 years ago. I was sitting in a session and it was on 

18 the Hanford Deep Vadose Zone and we had the Washington 

19 State regulator up there who was worried about RCRA 

20 and they're talking about stuff coming down from the 

21 tanks, you know, going down towards the groundwater in 

22 the Deep Vadose Zone. And so he's talking about it 

23 from a RCRA perspective.

24 And then we have one of our folks giving a 

25 presentation and he's talking about it from a CERCLA 
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1 perspective, you know, about the waste around the tank 

2 farms in the central plateau, for those of you that 

3 are familiar with Hanford. And I look up there and I 

4 think to myself, you know, a technetium atom doesn't 

5 know the difference between RCRA, CERCLA, Atomic 

6 Energy Act, DOE Order 435.1, NEPA, for those who are 

7 familiar with the tank closure waste management, or 

8 for that matter Part 61. I mean, it just doesn't. It 

9 moves and it does what it does.

10 And I think that's a very important thing 

11 to remember, because here we're going to be in the 

12 morning, NRC is going to be in the afternoon. But 

13 really what I'd like you to do as you're sitting 

14 through both of these sessions, because we'll be doing 

15 it as well, is listening to -- we'll be listening to 

16 the comments for NRC and I know NRC will be listening 

17 to the comments you give us on DOE Order 435.1. 

18 Because what we want to strive to do is really try and 

19 align those things as closely as we can within our own 

20 authorities. 

21 And we do have a common basis, both of us 

22 and in fact everybody in this room and everybody who's 

23 listening in. And I know yesterday we were talking 

24 about the safety case. From my perspective, the way I 

25 term it, and maybe it's because I come from a CERCLA 
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1 background but what we're both interested in is 

2 protectiveness to the public health and the 

3 environment. I mean, that is our common goal in these 

4 Orders and that's what RCRA tries to get at. So let's 

5 -- you know, that foremost needs to be kept in mind.

6 And how do we go about that? Well, in our 

7 world of Rad waste management, whether it's 10 CFR 61 

8 or DOE Order 435.1, we are using the term a lot, risk9 informed performance-based decision making. Okay, so 

10 what does that mean? Because in the CERCLA world and 

11 the RCRA world it's really about the standards base, 

12 as you know. And we have five CERCLA cells throughout 

13 our complex that accept low-level waste as well as 

14 remedial waste, which contains low-level waste, and we 

15 have to build that in accordance with CERCLA, which 

16 means RCRA, which means liners and the whole -- and 

17 RCRA caps and all of that. So that's the standards 

18 base. Here we look at performance base. So there's 

19 some of the schizophrenia that we have. 

20 The term is risk-informed. So people need 

21 to keep in mind as we go through all this, well, what 

22 does risk mean? Risk means a lot of different things 

23 to a lot of different people. I take it as it's a 

24 word you find in Webster's dictionary. You go in 

25 NUREG-1757 (“Consolidated Decommissioning Guidance”) 
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1 and there's a definition on risk-informed. So let's 

2 think about what risk means in terms of protectiveness 

3 to public health and the environment. And then you 

4 add the term informed to it, well, what does that 

5 mean? Well, it means for us that while risk is 

6 certainly a factor in consideration of our decisions, 

7 it's really not the only factor. And that's one of 

8 the reasons we're here is because we want to be 

9 informed by all of you, by our public, to make sure 

10 that what we end up doing in DOE Order 435.1 -- and I 

11 don't want to speak for NRC, but I'm sure they feel 

12 the same way, because we talk a lot -- is that once 

13 again we're going to be protective of the environment 

14 and public health.

15 Then you think about performance-based. 

16 Well, I've talked about that. I mean for us, and I 

17 think there was a good discussion on it yesterday, you 

18 know, to look at the whole system from when this thing 

19 is ultimately closed. Let's start with the cap, the 

20 waste form, the inventory, what's underneath, whether 

21 it's an engineered barrier or whether it's a natural 

22 system, and then all the transport, phenomenon that 

23 occur during that transport. So that's one thing that 

24 I think that we really in the Rad waste management 

25 area have a real good leg up on in terms of 
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1 protectiveness, as opposed to, say, CERCLA or RCRA for 

2 that matter. 

3 In terms of risk-informed, sometimes I 

4 hear the use of the term "educate" by especially the 

5 academics or the people who are the practitioners of 

6 it; "We need to educate the public." Well, I think we 

7 need to be very careful when we use that word 

8 "educate" because we don't know all the answers. We 

9 don't know how our communities feel. We don't know 

10 how differing professional opinions believe things 

11 are, although there are obviously a lot of differing 

12 opinions here. So I think it's important that when 

13 you think about risk-informed the fact of the matter 

14 is we also need to be informed and educated, as well 

15 as us educating as we are going out and doing these 

16 types of sessions, such that we speak in plain English 

17 so people can understand what we're trying to get at 

18 so they can then help us as we move forward. 

19 The other thing to think about -- and I 

20 always ask this, the NRC knows I've asked this on some 

21 of the issues we've had -- is the big question, "So 

22 what?" A lot of times you get into these very intense 

23 discussions, but then you take a step back and you say 

24 well, so what? Because our computing power is getting 

25 to the point where we can model things to who knows 
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1 how many decimal places. But does that really matter? 

So what? You know, we're down here and 10-6 2 is way 

3 up here. And so that's another thing to constantly 

4 think about is the so what?

5 As I mentioned too when it comes to 

6 modeling -- and I was very interested in hearing the 

7 discussion yesterday -- is, you know, the modeling can 

8 only do what the data supports the model to do. And I 

9 was at a meeting a few weeks ago and they were talking 

10 about this advanced computing. And from a CERCLA 

11 perspective I know that sometimes Darcy's law is good 

12 enough, and you can just do it right on a laptop. 

13 Well, you can do a lot of things on a laptop now, but 

14 you can just do simple equations on a laptop. So 

15 that's another thing to keep in mind as we work 

16 through this. 

17 And then I have one final thought. We, 

18 DOE and EM, have a mission, and you've all heard the 

19 mission. But let me put it in financial terms and in 

20 temporal terms. That is let's pick on high-level 

21 waste. High-level waste is about $60 billion for us 

22 to clean up more or less, 50 to 60. With these 

23 enhanced tank-waste strategies, maybe we can bring it 

24 down. But that's 34 percent of our total life cycle 

25 cost of our program or in our to-go cost it might be 
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1 up in the mid-40 percent so that's a lot of money.

2 We also have milestones that we've 

3 committed to with our stakeholders, our regulators, 

4 the people who live in the cities and towns around our 

5 sites. So if you look at Hanford, we're going to have 

6 a waste treatment plant up and operational 2019. We 

7 want to have a C tank farm closed in 2019. 

8 What are you laughing for, Pam? We'll do 

9 it.

10 We have at Savannah River, we're going to 

11 have two tanks closed in 2012, commitment. Another 

12 two tanks closed the year after. And then tanks 

13 closed years after that. So we're on a schedule. 

14 We're using taxpayers' dollars to get this work done. 

15 So for me there's really a sense of urgency to get on 

16 with it.

17 And it was -- once again, going back to 

18 yesterday. Where's Roger and John? Yeah. Yes, this 

19 is a very dynamic field, we're always in transition. 

20 It's been since I worked with John Tseng 

21 back when I first came to DOE in 1994 or whenever that 

22 was, have always been in transition. And sometimes 

23 you've just got to say, yes, we're going be in 

24 transition, let's move on, let's get on with it with 

25 the information that we have today and the best 
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1 knowledge that we have today. 

2 So in closing I just ask that you keep 

3 that in mind, that you will help us get on with it, 

4 such that we can take care of our business and 

5 complete our mission. So thank you very much. 

6 Do I ask for questions, Chip? 

7 MR. CAMERON: Well, let's get everybody 

8 else on -- -- and then we'll go back for questions, 

9 comments, and I'm sure people are going to want to 

10 talk to Bill about some things. But we'll get that 

11 when we go to the entire DOE panel. 

12 And I just had a short announcement before 

13 we go to Marty Letourneau. If the people on the 

14 phones could just make sure that their phones are 

15 muted. I guess that some clicking noises are still 

16 coming through, so if you could just make sure and 

17 mute your phones. Thank you, Bill.

18 And Marty, I'm turning it over to you. 

19 MR. LETOURNEAU: Most of you have heard 

20 the history discussion of DOE Order 435.1 many times 

21 already, so I'm just going to go over a few key 

22 points. I want to get to the four core team members 

23 who are leading the effort to update DOE Order 435.1 

24 and I want to make one clarification.

25 Bill used the words "revision" and 
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1 "rewrite," and I use the word "update." And I do that 

2 purposefully because I don't believe we are rewriting 

3 or revising DOE Order 435.1 as much as we are trying 

4 to update it and make some improvements to it. We're 

5 not looking to start over with a clean sheet of paper, 

6 we're not throwing out the structure that we have 

7 right now. We think that the DOE Order 435.1

8 structure works very well. And I think that's one of 

9 the lessons that we've learned through the complex10 wide review that we've completed. So just keep that 

11 in the back of your mind. When we get to the 

12 discussion of each of the chapters and what we're 

13 thinking right now, realize that there may not be as 

14 many changes in some places as you thought there might 

15 be.

16 So as Bill said, it looks like we're on an 

17 11-year cycle here. DOE Order 435.1 was issued in 

18 1999 and the real genesis of DOE Order 435.1 was 

19 looking back at what was in place prior to that, DOE 

20 Order 5820.2A and the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety 

21 Board recommendation 94-2. That nomenclature means 

22 that it was the second recommendation issued by the 

23 Defense Board in 1994. They had gone out and looked 

24 at a number of our sites, looked at how low-level 

25 waste was being managed, looked at what was in 5820.2A 
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1 and came to the conclusion that things were a little 

2 bit light and could use some improvement. And you can 

3 see here from the slide what some of their issues 

4 were.

5 The key thing here though is that one of 

6 the first things that we did in response to the 

7 Defense Board's recommendation was to go out and do a 

8 complex-wide review of our low-level waste ES&H 

9 management vulnerabilities. And because the Defense 

10 Board was looking specifically at low-level waste, we 

11 were looking specifically at low-level waste when we 

12 were conducting the complex-wide review.

13 What was found was, yes indeed, the 

14 Defense Board was right. There were definitely areas 

15 for improvement in our low-level waste management 

16 practices. And they were also right that 5820.2A was 

17 a little bit light. It was about yea big, there was 

18 not a lot of backup documentation, there was not a lot 

19 of guidance, there was not a lot of explanation of the 

20 technical basis for the requirements. Where did they 

21 come from? Why did they say what they said?

22 So we started working on DOE Order 435.1

23 in 1996 and we were focusing on four specific 

24 chapters, one for general requirements and then one 

25 for each of the waste types. At that time if you're 
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1 thinking about it, you know 1995, 1996, that was the 

2 time when the Department of Energy was implementing 

3 the integrated safety management system way of 

4 controlling work, defining work, and safety of work at 

5 our sites. And we looked at that process and said, 

6 you know, that's not a bad way to think about how to 

7 construct the Order.

8 So we tried to mirror these five steps and 

9 document what we were doing with respect to each of 

10 these steps in DOE Order 435.1. And if you look at 

11 the technical basis document that accompanies DOE 

12 Order 435.1, you'll see that each of these steps is 

13 represented. The key thing now is for the feedback 

14 and improvement portion of this process, that's really 

15 where we are now, 11 years later. 

16 So we decided that doing a new complex17 wide review would be the perfect place for us to start 

18 if we were going to do an update to DOE Order 435.1.

19 But instead of focusing on ES&H vulnerabilities and 

20 focusing only on low-level waste, we focused on how is 

21 DOE Order 435.1 working? And of course we focused on 

22 all of the waste types. 

23 So we spent about a year developing a 

24 self-assessment tool that the sites could apply. It 

25 was more of a survey tool than an assessment or a 
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1 compliance audit tool. But we had our four core teams 

2 already established for general requirements, high3 level waste, transuranic, and low-level waste. And 

4 each of those teams worked with each of the sites in 

5 preparing their responses to the survey tool. And we 

6 were really looking for two things, as Bill said: 

7 one, best management practices and two, areas for 

8 improvement. So we really wanted to see both. What's 

9 been working well? What has a particular site done 

10 that is working so well that we should share it with 

11 all the other sites or even include it in the guidance 

12 or even include it as a requirement in an update to 

13 DOE Order 435.1? And second, what things haven't 

14 worked so well? What things did we not get right or 

15 do we need to make some adjustments to as an area of 

16 improvement? 

17 So the complex-wide review was completed 

18 this year. It has been posted on the EM Website. We 

19 have some CDs of it in the back of the room, but it is 

20 available electronically on the website.

21 One of the key things here as Bill 

22 identified, the best management practices and areas of 

23 improvement, is the total overall response that we 

24 got. We received responses from every site and from 

25 every program office within DOE that manages 
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1 radioactive waste.

2 Some of the key findings that he had, I'm 

3 just going to cover a few of them here and then we'll 

4 let the core team leads cover for their respective 

5 chapters. First of all, DOE Order 435.1 has been 

6 successful. We've made significant progress in 

7 radioactive waste management. Bill highlighted some 

8 of the progress that we've made. 

9 Second, the LFRG, the Low-Level Waste 

10 Disposal Facility Federal Review Group, has improved 

11 the consistency of our performance assessments and 

12 composite analyses and the reviews of those. 

13 Third, there are new requirements out 

14 there that did not exist when DOE Order 435.1 was 

15 written that need to be incorporated into an updated 

16 DOE Order 435.1. One of the obvious examples is the 

17 3116 legislation.

18 Fourth, there is still a need to identify 

19 paths to disposal for some wastes that currently do 

20 not have a path to disposal. And the best example is 

21 non-defense TRU.

22 Five, there is an opportunity for us to 

23 clarify definitions. Some of the definitions are 

24 things that are embedded in other definitions which 

25 have never been explained, such as the Nuclear Waste 
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1 Policy Act definition of high-level waste. What are 

2 fission products in sufficient concentrations? What do 

3 we mean when we talk about classified material?

4 Sixth, there is an opportunity through the 

5 update to DOE Order 435.1 to help our program offices 

6 and our site managers better understand their 

7 responsibilities and implement their responsibilities 

8 with respect to radioactive waste management and 

9 especially in the oversight area.

10 Seventh, improved implementation of other 

11 DOE Orders or outside regulations. We received a 

12 number of comments that there's still confusion of how 

13 DOE Order 435.1 and CERCLA work together or of how DOE 

14 Order 435.1 and RCRA work together.

15 And finally, we received many comments 

16 from our sites about our exemption process for use of 

17 offsite non-DOE commercial disposal facilities. 

18 So these were the key findings that we got 

19 out of the complex-wide review and that we're 

20 incorporating into our effort to update DOE Order 

21 435.1. 

22 I want to introduce each of our core team 

23 leads and they're going to address their portions of 

24 the update effort, but I also want to give a brief 

25 overview of what DOE Order 435.1 does in case you are 
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1 not completely familiar with it.

2 As I said, there are four chapters, one 

3 for general requirements, and then one for each of the 

4 waste types. Each of those chapters provides the 

5 basic management requirements and that goes from

6 generation through characterization, certification, 

7 treatment, storage, and disposal.

8 The thing that we often are most concerned 

9 about when we talk about these requirements is 

10 disposal, but I want to make sure that everybody 

11 understands that there are significant portions of 

12 each of these chapters that address all of the 

13 upstream activities.

14 Now, with respect to disposal, in the 

15 high-level waste chapter, disposal of course is 

16 dictated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. There's not 

17 much that we can say there other than what is 

18 legislated to us. And as we know now, things have 

19 changed a little bit with respect to geologic 

20 repository. Are we going to be able to create the new 

21 answer for disposal in the high-level waste chapter of 

22 DOE Order 435.1? No. No not even going to try. It's 

23 not our role.

24 Transuranic waste, the WIPP Land 

25 Withdrawal Act provides us with the definition and 
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1 provides us with the rules of the road for disposal of 

2 transuranic waste at WIPP. Is there much other that 

3 we can say in the transuranic waste chapter about 

4 that? No, not really. We have a lot of good 

5 information about how to package it and how to 

6 maintain it and how to get it there, but when we're 

7 given an answer there's not much we can say that 

8 changes that legislated answer.

9 In low-level waste we don't have a 

10 legislated answer, so in the low-level waste chapter 

11 we've created a process that implements our Atomic 

12 Energy Act authority with respect to disposal and is 

13 based on preparing a site-specific performance 

14 assessment at the disposal facility, which helps us 

15 identify site specific waste acceptance criteria that 

16 allow us to identify what can be disposed in what 

17 concentrations and quantities at any given site.

18 Once we've prepared that performance 

19 assessment, it becomes the basis for our disposal 

20 authorization statement, which we will refer to as our 

21 equivalent of a license. But as we were talking about 

22 the safety case concept yesterday, the performance 

23 assessment is not the only answer; we also have a 

24 composite analysis, a monitoring plan, a preliminary 

25 closure plan, a maintenance plan, and then annual 
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1 summaries. And those items collectively, those six 

2 pieces are what provide our authorization. 

3 So we're going be talking about all of 

4 that today. There are definitely things that we can 

5 do and that we're planning to do in the high-level and 

6 transuranic waste chapters in terms of updating and 

7 improving our requirements. A lot of the changes are 

8 going to be in the low-level waste chapter, because 

9 that's where we have most of our flexibility authority 

10 without legislative answers. But we do have a lot of 

11 changes also in the general requirements chapter and 

12 we're going to try to cover all of those.

13 So to that end, I'd like to introduce 

14 Linda Suttora, who is our general requirements core 

15 team lead. And Linda works in the Office of 

16 Environmental Compliance at DOE Headquarters. And 

17 I'll let her tell you a little bit more about herself. 

18 MS. SUTTORA: Okay. So I work for Bill 

19 Levitan in the Office of Environmental Compliance and 

20 I have about 20 years of experience on and off in the 

21 Rad waste management business. I have worked for DOE 

22 from 1991, and before that I was at EPA. And then 

23 I've done stints at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

24 and at NOAA, where I was trying to bring my marine 

25 biology background to back into life, but that didn't 
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1 work for me. I got too bored, I needed the excitement 

2 of DOE and wondering where the waste was going to go.

3 So I'm head of the general requirements 

4 chapter. I started working -- I actually helped write 

5 the original DOE Order 435.1, and in fact, I was even 

6 on some previous attempts at redoing 5820.2A. It 

7 never happened. So I've got a little bit of history 

8 with the project.

9 And on the general requirements -- and I 

10 don't know what slides made it in here. Okay.

11 So in this general requirements chapter 

12 you'll see the most significant difference from the 

13 previous version of DOE Order 435.1 -- or the current 

14 version; I keep calling it the previous version, but 

15 it's still in effect. The current version of DOE 

16 Order 435.1. The main thing that we've done is 

17 removed stuff that's repetitive. 

18 So if something -- one of the things that 

19 we'll talk about is the new Order on Orders. There's 

20 a new Order at DOE called DOE 251.1C, which tells us 

21 how to write Orders. And that sounds kind of silly, 

22 but in effect it makes things more consistent. If you 

23 are a reader of Orders and you have to comply, you 

24 know exactly what section is going to be where and you 

25 can flip to that instead of the current way where 
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1 everything is random and you don't know what's going 

2 on, so you flip open an Order and have to read the 

3 whole thing. So in essence it's a very nice feature, 

4 to have an Order on Orders. 

5 But one of the things it required was some 

6 streamlining, so in the new Order you will not see a 

7 whole long laundry list of 20 items of other 

8 requirements that also apply to this Order with the 

9 understanding that we'll probably put it in guidance 

10 so you don't have to go reinvent and try to remember 

11 that RCRA or CERCLA or whatever else, or ALARA or 

12 pollution prevention and waste minimization and those 

13 kinds of things. There won't be a mention of those in 

14 the Order itself, so you won't have to, you know, plow 

15 through that until you get to get to the actual 

16 requirements.

17 Another change as required under 251.1C is 

18 that we at the end of the Order have what we call a 

19 contractor requirement document and that will be 

20 theoretically, the intent. There haven't been a whole 

21 lot of new Orders through, so we don't know how it's 

22 going to work yet. The intent is that that contractor 

23 requirement section will get pulled out of the Order

24 and put into every new contract. And so things will 

25 not get forgotten or, you know, misrepresented in 
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1 different contracts, that they will all say the same 

2 thing for the same kind of work. So that hopefully 

3 will work out well. Again, we haven't seen it too 

4 often because we're one of the first new Orders out 

5 the door. 

6 And as Marty already mentioned, we'll be 

7 throwing some new things that hadn't existed before. 

8 Such as the Office of Legacy Management didn't exist 

9 when the current Order was written in '99, so we have 

10 to include references to them and how we're going to 

11 do things like long-term stewardship. And also, the 

12 National Defense Authorization Act of 2005, Section 

13 3116 is new and we have to include that. 

14 And we also are -- as I said, we're 

15 consolidating. Where something is mentioned -- like 

16 corrective actions is mentioned in general 

17 requirements and then each of the waste type chapters. 

18 We are pulling it out of the waste type chapters and 

19 putting it into only general requirements, saying this 

20 is the standard. If you have to do corrective 

21 actions, you're going to have to change things in this 

22 change control section. So we're avoiding 

23 duplication.

24 So it's going to look very different than 

25 what you see right now. If you pulled up the Order
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1 right now, and I have it on my iPad, so if at a break 

2 anybody wants to see what the Order looks like right 

3 now, you're not used to it, I can show that to you.

4 If you look at the Order right now, it's a 

5 big long laundry list of things, twenty different 

6 requirements, twenty different references to other 

7 requirements. It's going to look very different and 

8 at least that's the draft we're proposing. We want 

9 comment, obviously. Anything I say, it looks like 

10 this now, that doesn't mean that's what it's going to 

11 look like when it hits the world in the end. 

12 So one thing that we recognized was while 

13 we had a whole laundry list of requirements, we didn't 

14 give each individual -- we gave them as individual 

15 items, not as a combined unit, this is how you plan 

16 for waste, this is how you plan for generation, this 

17 is how you generate, this is what you should do in 

18 order to treat, store, or dispose. We have them just 

19 as this big laundry list of items. 

20 And so what I've done is -- and my team 

21 has done -- and let me tell you, I have a fabulous 

22 team of folks. We started out with, like, five, but 

23 because we did a lot of consolidation and coordination 

24 across the other waste site chapters, I just kept 

25 stealing more and more people from the other waste 
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1 type groups. So because we've changed so 

2 significantly, my group has grown from I think five to 

3 fifteen or so. 

4 So what we did was make it much more of a

5 strategic planning effort. The individual waste type 

6 stuff has the individual things that you have to do 

7 for that specific waste type, but general requirements 

8 is more administrative, it's more strategic planning, 

9 it's more "this is how you plan a program." So in the 

10 current Order you will see a requirement for a 

11 complex-wide program plan. But that has come in and 

12 out of favor and come in and out of the way things are 

13 done, and it's kind of a sub requirement under a sub 

14 heading. Well, it's going to be a major heading now.

15 The complex-wide -- we have a complex-wide plan for 

16 each waste type.

17 Right now we have a national TRU program, 

18 it's working very well. People know what their 

19 allowable quantities for disposal, how they're going 

20 to dispose. It's worked as a very coordinated 

21 cohesive group. And it was mentioned in the complex22 wide review as why can't we have a low-level waste 

23 national program? Why can't we have a high-level 

24 waste national program so we truly understand how to 

25 coordinate across the sites? And so we are taking 
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1 that to heart and we have written in a section 

2 requiring the corporate boards, which are not a 

3 required entity but have been working very well, that 

4 the corporate boards lead a program for the low-level 

5 waste and the high-level waste, very much like the 

6 transuranic waste program right now. 

7 We also -- one thing that is new -- I 

8 believe it's new. Things are written so difficult for 

9 me to read in the current Order that it's not clear. 

10 When this current Order was written, EM owned all the 

11 waste. Now, over time, it's been evolved where the 

12 Office of Nuclear Energy owns their waste, NNSA owns 

13 their waste. And we want to make sure that all those 

14 folks understand how much that means, because it's not 

15 clear to some other folks, and mentioned in the 

16 complex-wide review, that they fully understand the 

17 implications of owning that waste. So we'd like their 

18 office -- we call them PSOs, Program Secretarial 

19 Offices. That's EM, NE, NNSA, Science. That they 

20 have a program office plan where they identify how 

21 they're going to coordinate their waste movement from 

22 pre-generation to generation and treatment and then 

23 usually dumping it on EM for disposal. So there's 

24 that understanding of what that means to own 

25 radioactive waste. 
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1 And also there is in the current Order, a 

2 requirement for a site-wide program plan. Well, 

3 actually it doesn't say plan, it just says program, I 

4 believe. And we're requiring that to be a much more 

5 coordinated plan. And the reason for that, again, 

6 changes since 1999 when the current Order was issued 

7 is it that back then each major -- particularly the 

8 major sites had a single M&O (or management and 

9 operating) contractor. And so how they coordinated 

10 their waste streams, the generation, treatment, 

11 disposal, was done all under the same umbrella 

12 organization, same contractor. However, now at some 

13 of the big sites, most of the big sites, we have 

14 multiple contractors. And we want to make sure the 

15 waste being generated by one contractor has been 

16 planned for, if it's being disposed by a different 

17 contractor, and how they coordinate across the board, 

18 and when they generate waste how they store it. Maybe 

19 they should be consolidating storage of the same type 

20 waste in one area. They may not be. They may not be 

21 required to be. And so we want to make sure that that 

22 is coordinated well. So the site-wide management 

23 program is actually a much bigger deal now in the 

24 draft Order than it is in the current Order. 

25 And, again, all of these strategic plans -
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1 - we call it a graded approach where if you're a small 

2 science organization with one little lab, your site3 wide RAD waste management program is not going to look 

4 like Hanford's site or, you know, Savannah River's 

5 site-wide waste management plan. It might be a page. 

6 It might be this guy talked to this guy and he makes 

7 sure everything is signed off; we know what's 

8 happening. And, you know, they reference, we have a 

9 Rad waste management basis. So everything is done in 

10 a graded approach, we don't expect the documents to 

11 fill bookcases. We expect documents to reference the 

12 appropriate other documents that will make sure that 

13 everything is coordinated and we have control over our 

14 waste fully.

15 The other -- so there are a few areas 

16 where we have insisted that certain organizations --

17 we don't identify organizations to do oversight for 

18 auditing purposes, but we do require audits to be done 

19 and to be verified on a regular basis, particularly 

20 for using off-site treatment or disposal facilities.

21 One other modification to improve the 

22 Order is we have recognized that where there's any 

23 sort of change control requirements, that change 

24 control be identified. How are they going to do 

25 change control? How are they going to modify who is 
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1 in charge of what? That is to be documented and 

2 updated on a regular basis.

3 And finally, one of the big -- one of the 

4 major comments on the complex-wide review is that we 

5 really press for this one-touch philosophy, meaning 

6 you don't keep rehandling and rehandling waste if you 

7 don't need to. You should characterize it up front; 

8 keep it where it's going to be until it's ready for 

9 disposal. Don't keep moving it around, don't keep 

10 reopening cans. In other words, it goes back to the 

11 strategic planning concept, make sure you know what 

12 you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and 

13 then you will only touch it once. 

14 So the third major part of the strategic 

15 planning effort is that we have a requirement for a 

16 radioactive waste management basis in the current 

17 Order. What I have come up with, with my team is a 

18 much more strengthened radioactive waste management 

19 basis. In some places the radioactive waste 

20 management basis has been very, very -- considered 

21 unimportant and it is a very small document that 

22 doesn't really say anything. And what we want to do is 

23 make sure that the radioactive waste management basis, 

24 which is very much like a safety basis document, has 

25 all the information for that facility or major 
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1 operations or major activity. And within the current 

2 Order, there's a laundry list of twenty things you 

3 should do. Have a WAC, or waste acceptance criteria. 

4 You have a, you know, a couple of generator 

5 requirements, you have some closure requirements, it 

6 talks about defense and depth; it's just one of the 

7 laundry list. What we've done consolidated, basically 

8 the laundry list of requirements and organized it. 

9 It's just reorganization so that they fit into a 

10 slot.

11 And so that when you have a facility or 

12 operations -- for example, let's say you have the 

13 Defense Waste Processing Facility and they are 

14 processing -- that facility processes the high-level 

15 waste from the tanks and turns it into glass logs.

16 The Rad Waste Management Basis will anticipate the 

17 volume of waste it's going to deal with on a regular 

18 basis, it will anticipate and describe which 

19 organization is responsible for what part of the 

20 transfer of the waste from one place to the other, 

21 what manager is responsible for signing off on what, 

22 what the safety basis is, all other documents that 

23 have to do with how that waste is going to be 

24 transferred from one place to the other, how the glass 

25 logs are transferred to the storage facility and how 
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1 the facility is going to be maintained and stored. 

2 And if you are go doing D&D and you're out in the 

3 middle of the field, you may not be able to anticipate 

4 everything, but at least there is a process developed 

5 and identified that identifies who's responsible for 

6 making decisions, how are decisions signed off on.

7 So one of the features that is not in the 

8 current Order is what I call the pre-generation of 

9 waste. When you know you're going to be generating a 

10 waste stream you know about that way before you 

11 generate that waste stream. It's an operational --

12 it's what you do when you operate a facility; you're 

13 going to generate a waste stream. If you are a

14 science lab and you're doing an experiment you know 

15 you're going to generate a waste stream from that.

16 Before you generate the waste you have to 

17 anticipate that and plan for it. And if you're going 

18 to generate a waste -- if you know you're going to 

19 generate a waste that has no path for disposal under 

20 the current treatment and disposal system we have now, 

21 you must inform headquarters, you must have it signed 

22 off and approved to generate that waste stream by the 

23 field element manager and you have to notify 

24 headquarters for your own program, if you're in 

25 science, let's say you're a science Program Secretary 
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1 Officer, and EM because we keep the data management 

2 system.

3 So it goes back, before you start doing 

4 anything, you anticipate what you're going to do. You 

5 anticipate how that waste will be stored, you 

6 anticipate how it will be treated, and you anticipate 

7 how it will be disposed. It comes back to that one8 touch philosophy; don't do anything unless you know 

9 anticipate what you're doing.

10 And so there you go; I talked about the 

11 waste with no path forward to disposal. 

12 And when you generate the waste, you're 

13 not just going to randomly characterize it, you're 

14 going to characterize it with intent. The intent is 

15 how it will be treated, how it will be stored, how it 

16 will be disposed. It all goes back to strategic 

17 planning. I've been reading a book by the Dalai Lama 

18 and everything is mindfulness and being enlightened 

19 and you have to just plan and do nothing random, no 

20 surprises.

21 And the other thing under generation is we 

22 have this -- we've spent a lot of time in the past 

23 week talking about blending and we have a section --

24 again, I keep saying we have a section. All this 

25 means is draft, beat me up, give me comments, I want 
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1 to know every idea that you all have about making 

2 changes to this. 

3 So the draft says plans for blending is an 

4 appropriate behavior in waste management. If you have 

5 a waste that is similar to something else, there is no 

6 reason that you have to segregate it. If you have 

7 wastes that are dissimilar but it's appropriate to put 

8 them together in the same container and it results in 

9 the blending of the low-level and another either 

10 higher activity low-level or of a transuranic or 

11 something else, if it's going to impact workers' 

12 safety or if you have to segregate it and it impacts 

13 worker safety -- and I know several folks over the 

14 course of the past week have shown demonstrations and 

15 had videos of things where we cut pieces up and 

16 segregated waste just because they were different 

17 kinds, but it could easily impact worker safety. You 

18 don't separate if it's going to impact -- particularly 

19 if it's going to impact worker safety, but also if it 

20 improves your ability to dispose of the waste there's 

21 no reason why you have to segregate. Just consolidate 

22 it, track it, monitor it, and keep the waste moving 

23 towards disposal. 

24 Also in the current Order there's a data 

25 management section. We have maintained the data 
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1 management. That is important to everybody involved 

2 that we track our waste streams upon generation and 

3 what's going to disposal. 

4 And we did -- on the complex wide review, 

5 you did ask us to improve on how we deal with 

6 classified materials. And we've had folks from the 

7 NNSA, which is, you know, the folks that deal with the 

8 classified materials, they've rewritten some sections 

9 in there to improve that. 

10 Treatment and storage. Nothing special 

11 there.

12 Disposal. What we've added in the new 

13 draft section is you characterize for treatment and 

14 storage. You classify, you do your final

15 classification, things could have changed. Separate 

16 waste streams could have been consolidated to improve, 

17 management, whatever the case may be, you don't do 

18 your final classification until it's time for 

19 disposal. So that's a new section.

20 And we've also, we were asked -- because 

21 we have an FBI lab at the Savannah River site and some 

22 other work that we do for others, we've added some 

23 words to recognize that it's not always our waste that 

24 we're taking care of.

25 And also that Section 3116 for the tank 
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1 closures for the States of South Carolina and Idaho, 

2 we've added that in there.

3 And finally, one thing that we didn't have 

4 before was -- and it's a real mouthful, Unreviewed 

5 Waste Management Question Evaluation. And what it is, 

6 is a way to track changes in business, some of them 

7 anticipated, some of them unanticipated.

8 It started out there's several places 

9 where drums were mislabeled or -- and actually in one 

10 case the drum was labeled right, but there were two 

11 labels on the drum and somebody used the wrong label.

12 Actually, they put a label and then they put another 

13 label on top of it, but the one on top of it actually 

14 became less readable over time. Because these are 

15 drums that are stored over long, long periods of time 

16 and things happen. The drum underneath was read as 

17 the one that the waste -- what was in that drum was 

18 anticipated as lower level waste. So that things were 

19 put into a disposal trench that were a higher activity 

20 than they should have put in; a higher activity than 

21 met the WAC. 

22 The site said gee, we want to figure out 

23 whether we need to dig this out, because it was 

24 discovered several months later when somebody was 

25 going through all the tracking. And they were able to 
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1 identify that the waste going into that trench was 

2 really higher than it should have gone in based on 

3 their WAC. So they went back and said if we have to 

4 dig it out, we're going to have to uncover the trench, 

5 we're going to have to send people down there, pull 

6 out the drum or a couple of drums, and that's a worker 

7 safety issue. But at the other side, is it necessary 

8 to pull that out to meet the performance assessment?

9 So we did this thing called an unreviewed 

10 disposal question evaluation, developed a process to 

11 review whether that drum needed to be pulled out 

12 because you tracked against the performance 

13 assessment. So when you did the analysis against the 

14 performance assessment, it was identified that it 

15 really wasn't -- the overall waste going into that 

16 trench did not exceed the performance assessment. 

17 So the site notified the state regulators, 

18 they told them all about what -- you know, that was 

19 for -- because it will be closed under CERCLA, so it 

20 would be in the EPA. So they notified the state and 

21 Federal regulators, they performed this evaluation and 

22 it was worked through that it was less dangerous to 

23 leave it in place and safe to leave it where it was. 

24 So we looked at that and thought well, are there other 

25 times in the operations of these huge industrial 
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1 complex facilities that we might want to do another 

2 kind of evaluation? 

3 And another event came up at Savannah 

4 River Site. In their 3116 Waste Determination it says 

5 they will have the Salt Waste Processing Facility on 

6 line by 2011 and we'll be using that facility to 

7 separate the waste and, you know, decontaminate the 

8 low activity waste before it goes off to the Saltstone 

9 Disposal Facility. And the facility said, we aren't 

10 going to have that. That was a little bit delayed, 

11 there was some problems with construction, it's not 

12 online by 2011 and won't be on line for a couple more 

13 years. However, we've already signed up to a 

14 regulatory document that says we're going to have it 

15 online by 2011.

16 Well, the Savannah River Site is using 

17 this other treatment facility, which is actually just 

18 a scaled down Salt Waste Processing Facility. It has 

19 excellent decontamination factor, they are separating 

20 the waste in a beautiful manner, they are absolutely 

21 shocked how, actually in fact, how well it was 

22 working. So they thought well, it's safe, it's not 

23 changing anything, the salt waste that is going to the 

24 Saltstone Disposal Facility has very little -- there's 

25 no high radiation and the decontamination factors are 
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1 coming in very high, but if we continue operating the 

2 way we are we're not in compliance, because we have

3 this document that says we'll be using the Salt Waste 

4 Processing Facility.

5 So an evaluation has been done. They've 

6 evaluated, they're not changing anything serious, but 

7 they're actually going on to -- they are doing the 

8 same thing they would be doing, it's just not a Salt 

9 Waste Processing Facility. 

10 So therefore when you have a change 

11 control like that, that needs to be documented. So 

12 we're adding the documentation ability for that kind 

13 of happening.

14 Let's see. Off-site disposal. Oh, 

15 there's an exemption right now required for using an 

16 off-site disposal facility. We're removing that 

17 exemption. You don't have to go through an exemption, 

18 you still have to go through a cost-benefit analysis, 

19 and you still need -- we have in the responsibility 

20 for notifying the state, conducting an audit for the 

21 off-site facility to make sure they are in compliance. 

22 And also like I said, Legacy Management has now been 

23 added to the mix. So there was a request that we make 

24 sure that all the appropriate documents were passed on 

25 to the Legacy Management office when they take over a 
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1 facility such as, you know, making sure appropriate 

2 institutional controls, monitoring plans. And also we 

3 have assumptions in the PAs and CAs and if we are 

4 going to drop a facility over to Legacy Management, we 

5 need to make sure that they understand the assumptions 

6 that were made in the PAs and CAs and carry those 

7 through; that we don't lose those. 

8 Anything else? That's it? That's all I 

9 have.

10 MR. LETOURNEAU: Thank you, Linda. 

11 As you can see, general requirements 

12 chapter has a lot of information in it, a lot of 

13 stuff. We will hold questions until we get through 

14 the rest of the presentations and then we'll get all 

15 the Core team leads up here. 

16 The high-level waste Core team lead is 

17 Joel Case from the Idaho site. Joel was not able to 

18 be here, he had another matter that he needed to 

19 attend to, but I can cover that. 

20 What I'd like to point out is that when we 

21 looked at the results from the complex-wide review, 

22 there were several key things that came to the surface 

23 with respect to the high-level waste chapter. First 

24 and foremost was the WIR, the Waste Incidental to 

25 Reprocessing process, and its relationship to the 3116 
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1 legislation and the need to reflect that in the 

2 update. 

3 There was also discussion about the need 

4 to clarify citation procedures that would allow 

5 equipment that was used in tank farms that had come 

6 into contact with high-level waste to be routinely 

7 decontaminated and shown to be able to be disposed, 

8 even if it had some residual contamination on it.

9 Recognizing the success of our 

10 interactions with regulators and stakeholders was 

11 identified as a best management practice; something 

12 that will probably be reflected in the guidance 

13 documents. And then improving the definitions of all 

14 of the waste types so that they're not based on 

15 pedigree. 

16 What we've done here is we've not tried to 

17 change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act definition of 

18 high-level waste. We recognize that Congress created 

19 that definition and we cannot change it, but there are 

20 parts of that definition that have never been parsed 

21 out or adequately defined. What are sufficient 

22 concentrations of fission products? Things like 

23 that. So we're looking at how to explain the words 

24 that are in that definition and how to understand them 

25 and provide a better way for our sites to understand 
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1 the high-level waste definition.

2 So the high-level waste core team has been 

3 reviewing the existing manual requirements to 

4 determine what could be eliminated or consolidated 

5 into the general requirements chapter. I know they 

6 have given a number of requirements over to Linda to 

7 include in general requirements.

8 They took each of the letter sections out 

9 of the chapter and assigned those to subject matter 

10 experts and they've been reviewing their proposed 

11 changes amongst their group. They have about 15 

12 people in their core team and they've been 

13 recommending those changes up to me for review. So 

14 we're looking at those right now.

15 As Linda said, everything right now is a 

16 proposed change. But one of the things that we do 

17 intend to do is that when we have vetted this 

18 adequately with all of our managers and with other 

19 folks, we are going to put the whole thing out for 

20 public comment just as we did the first time. We'll 

21 have a proposed draft, we'll publish a notice in the 

22 Federal Register and we will prepare a comment 

23 response document for any of the comments that we 

24 receive.

25 Some of the specific changes. As 
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1 indicated, there are a number of things going to 

2 general requirements. As I said, we are going to look 

3 at how to sub define, if you will, some of the terms 

4 that are in the definition of high-level waste, 

5 including the 3116 process, recognizing that the WIR 

6 (or waste incidental to reprocessing) process and the 

7 3116 process are essentially the same, and trying to 

8 reflect that in the requirements. Updates to the WIR 

9 citation process, as I mentioned. 

10 And then we've got the issue of the fact 

11 that the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste 

12 Management does not exist, but we still have high13 level waste that's being created, we still have waste 

14 that's being put into a glass form. And right now 

15 we're still following the QA requirements document. 

16 So we're trying to understand what we should say 

17 there. We're obviously not going to be solving the 

18 high-level waste disposal problem in this chapter, so 

19 we're just trying to figure out what we should say 

20 that makes sense for continued operations at this 

21 time.

22 And that is pretty much it for the high23 level waste chapter. Again, if there are specific 

24 questions, we'll address those. 

25 MR. Stroble from the Carlsbad field office 
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1 is our Core team leader for the TRU. He's moving his 

2 way up here. I'll let him tell you a little bit about 

3 himself. 

4 MR. STROBLE: Thank you.

5 I'm J.R. Stroble. I'm the director of the 

6 Office of the National TRU Program. I'm in the DOE 

7 Carlsbad Field Office. I've been associated with WIPP 

8 for over 20 years. I was a contractor for about 17

9 years, I've been with DOE for about the last three. I 

10 recently have been selected as the director of the 

11 National TRU Program, although I've been involved in 

12 everything associated with it for over ten years.

13 For the TRU portion of this update, much 

14 of the complex-wide review inputs really were rolled 

15 up into a lot of what you've already heard in the 

16 general section. So what I'm going to cover is really 

17 just the specifics to the TRU section that are not 

18 already captured in the general section.

19 From complex-wide review inputs, kind of 

20 the highlights were to provide sufficient information 

21 for the generation and disposal of classified TRU 

22 waste. That is an issue primarily because WIPP does 

23 not have a system for managing classified waste; and 

24 so if you have a transuranic waste stream and you want 

25 to dispose of it at WIPP, which is the only place to 
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1 dispose of it, then you have to find a way to do that 

2 without keeping the classification on the waste. It's 

3 a real challenge. We're working with sites every day 

4 to overcome that challenge. And although this Order

5 isn't going to necessarily solve that problem, we're 

6 hoping it will offer some guidance on how to approach 

7 that issue.

8 Next, we have been the addressing the 

9 impacts of work for others. Linda mentioned that. 

10 Transuranic waste by definition in the WIPP Land 

11 Withdrawal Act, it has to be a defense-related 

12 activity that generated it. We can't change that 

13 legislation with this Order, but we can clarify what 

14 the possible options, if any, on nondefense TRU waste 

15 are. There are no clear paths forward for those right 

16 now, but there are cases where we can work with sites 

17 individually and maybe find an alternative. It's just 

18 going to have to be dealt with on a case-by-case 

19 basis.

20 One of the key things that was in input 

21 was to provide instructions, very specific 

22 instructions, on packaging waste into a contact23 handled or a remote-handled TRU waste form so that we 

24 can incorporate that philosophy, that one-touch 

25 philosophy, from the beginning. The concept is if you 
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1 properly plan before your waste is generated, then 

2 ideally you won't have to keep touching the waste.

3 You can put it in a packaged form one time, it can 

4 make it all the way through characterization, 

5 treatment, storage, and disposal and never have to be 

6 opened again. Of course that's ideal, it's not going 

7 to work in every case. Transuranic waste is a very 

8 challenging type of waste to manage. Everyone who has 

9 dealt with it will probably speculate that once 

10 through won't work. But I'll challenge you that it's 

11 always a good way to start the plan. And if you could 

12 minimize the number of times that it has to be 

13 touched, that's really the goal. 

14 And then we needed to address the needs 

15 for dealing with problem waste streams. Problem waste 

16 streams like the ones listed as examples are at most 

17 big sites, some small sites and they have to be dealt 

18 with on a case-by-case basis too. So I don't know 

19 that this Order update is necessarily going to address 

20 those directly, but what we had hoped to do is to put 

21 a process in place to allow those to be managed on a 

22 case-by-case basis.

23 Here's some more inputs from the complex24 wide review. We've already mentioned the once through 

25 or one-touch philosophy. 
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1 The first bullet there is on records. And 

2 the concept there is to keep good records and make 

3 that part of your plan. And it's not just direct 

4 records and measurements made on the waste stream, but 

5 it's everything associated with the processes that 

6 went into generating that waste, because there is this 

7 process out there called acceptable knowledge that 

8 documents everything you might ever have known about 

9 how that waste came about. And it's important that 

10 those records are maintained all the way through the 

11 cycle from beginning to end. And carrying those over 

12 from the point of generation to any treatment that 

13 occurs, to the storage areas to the disposal area is 

14 going to be key in making it past each one of those 

15 steps. Because in just the storage area there could 

16 be four or five contractors at two or three different 

17 sites that have to store that waste for a variety of 

18 reasons. Those records need to come with that waste 

19 and be whole all the way through the process.

20 Little things like defining minimum 

21 detection limits for non-destructive assays -- not 

22 really little, they are challenging, but the purpose 

23 there is so when you get to a point of certifying the 

24 waste stream as to whether or not it's transuranic or 

25 low-level, that's key. And the rules for doing that 
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1 aren't necessarily constant from the TRU waste area to 

2 the low-level area and vice versa. So we're hoping to 

3 make those more consistent. 

4 And then last on the list is to clarify 

5 treatment requirements in the Order. And although 

6 there aren't a lot of specific treatment requirements 

7 for transuranic waste, we hope to find a process by 

8 which you define what you're going to do and how 

9 you're going to go about doing it and getting the 

10 approvals to do it. And it's really more of a process 

11 section than anything.

12 The general approach was to take all those 

13 inputs, look at the manual, the guide, the technical 

14 basis, assign team members different parts of that 

15 chapter. We proposed changes to the steering panel; 

16 we've drafted those revisions. All of those revisions 

17 have been reviewed at least once by the FPD and it is 

18 near final stage, but we still need input from this 

19 process to make sure it's heading in the right 

20 direction.

21 Some specifics are moving several items to 

22 the general requirements -- you've already heard about 

23 this from Linda; I won't go over them again --

24 eliminating a couple of requirements. Not really the 

25 elimination, but really the rollup into the general 
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1 requirements for things like corrective actions and 

2 monitoring. And here are some examples of items that 

3 are specific to the TRU chapter that will be 

4 associated with this update.

5 As I mentioned the remote-handled and 

6 contact-handled TRU waste packaging instructions will 

7 be referenced for use in the update. Right now those 

8 instructions exist in draft form and they are out for 

9 review in the form of a notice. Those instructions 

10 are very specific. They are not only specific to 

11 disposal at WIPP, but they're specific to any interim 

12 process that you might incur before disposal at WIPP, 

13 such as transfer to a consolidation site like Idaho 

14 for treatment like compacting. Or if a contract 

15 entity like the Central Characterization Project (CCP) 

16 comes to your site to take on your TRU waste effort, 

17 they can pick up what you've already processed under 

18 these instructions and take it from there. 

19 If you are at a site that already has the 

20 assistance of CCP, then you don't necessarily have to 

21 follow these instructions as long as you're following 

22 their guidance. And let me clarify everything there, 

23 CCP may be on site helping a specific program, but if 

24 there are other generator sites on that site that 

25 aren't in that program, you still have to follow the 
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1 instructions so that when it's transferred over to 

2 that program it's a smooth transfer.

3 Again, we touched on the once through 

4 philosophy. We touched on managing specific wastes in 

5 the world of classified waste. Let me just mention 

6 one other thing there. Classified waste typically in 

7 the TRU waste world is a challenge not only for 

8 information associated with it, the processes that 

9 generated the waste, but sometimes the waste itself; 

10 the physical form of it.

11 And so the recommendations are going to 

12 be, if it's a physical form issue, try your best to 

13 plan a process from the beginning before you generate 

14 the waste that would put that waste form in a state 

15 that does not have to remain classified. That's all 

16 good for a plan but it may not work out, so what do 

17 you do if you get to that point and it's still 

18 classified? We're going to have to work those on a 

19 case-by-case basis. We're doing that today. It's not 

20 a major roadblock, it is workable. But every case is 

21 unique and basically the message here is try your best 

22 to plan to take that out of the classified waste world 

23 by the time it's, you know, in waste stream form.

24 Oftentimes you can't do that as long as it's material. 

25 But there will be a point where you can transfer it 
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1 over into waste form and hopefully solve that problem 

2 somewhere along the way before you get to a point 

3 where it's ready to ship and it can't go because it's 

4 still classified. And then remove erroneous examples 

5 from the Manual. There were a lot of examples in the 

6 TRU waste section that really no longer apply. 

7 That's all that I had.

8 MR. LETOURNEAU: Okay. Our final 

9 presentation is from Frank DiSanza. He is the Core 

10 team lead for the low-level waste chapter and I'll let 

11 him introduce himself.

12 MR. DISANZA: Thank you, 

13 Marty. 

14 Since these proceedings are being 

15 broadcast on the internet, I first want to say hi to 

16 my grandchildren Brianna and Justine. Hi.

17 The low-level waste core team got input 

18 from the 29 sites that manage low-level waste. As 

19 such, these 29 sites did provide us over 100 items for 

20 consideration as far as best practices or changes that 

21 we needed to look at. I don't have time to go through 

22 all of those, so I'm going to give you just a peek at 

23 what's in there and I invite you to get a copy of the 

24 complex-wide review document and go through those 

25 items yourself. And I hope that through the 
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1 presentation you'll see where the Core team was going 

2 as far as making certain changes.

3 A little bit, maybe already discussed 

4 this, include language on the appropriate use of 

5 concentration averaging; kind of a code word for 

6 blending. Include the use of probabilistic modeling 

7 and analysis and provide guidance for the conduct and 

8 interpretation of PA sensitivity and uncertainty 

9 analysis. This is new. Something that the 

10 technicians that prepare the PAs, the probabilistic 

11 performance assessments, wanted some additional 

12 guidance, and so we're looking forward to providing 

13 that. And address CERCLA and Federal Facility Act 

14 closures as a possible alternative.

15 Clarify the exemption process. Marty 

16 already talked about that. That was the number one 

17 input that we received from across the complex. Well, 

18 maybe I've got to clarify the expectations regarding 

19 the use of liners for disposal facilities and we hope 

20 to address that adequately. 

21 Include language related to the use of the 

22 unreviewed disposal question evaluation procedures.

23 Linda talked about the unreviewed waste management 

24 question in the disposal section in chapter four. We 

25 will discuss the unreviewed disposal question 
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1 evaluation.

2 General approach very similar to what J.R. 

3 had up on the screen. Probably the most significant 

4 item, if you go down to the bottom of the bullets 

5 there, is that we do anticipate preparing a low-level 

6 waste technical standard. This technical standard 

7 will include all of the various documents that have 

8 been produced to -- or prepared to provide guidance to 

9 such groups as the groups that go out and review the 

10 performance assessments throughout the complex and 

11 those, what we are referring to as rogue guidance, 

12 will now be documented and in an official DOE 

13 document.

14 Specific changes: a little bit of a 

15 discussion already happened regarding the use of 

16 concentration averaging was passed on to the general 

17 requirements group along with the exemption process.

18 In Chapter IV for low-level waste we will also have --

19 we'll have to determine whether or not this is double 

20 accounting as far as concentration averaging or 

21 consolidation. But we'd like to say a few words in 

22 the low-level waste chapter.

23 Other examples of the new requirements for 

24 analysis performed probabilistically. The peak of the 

25 mean or the medium of the result distribution, 
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1 whichever is higher, shall be used to assess 

2 compliance with the performance objective. That is 

3 how you bring in probabilistic modeling into the 

4 preparation of your PA.

5 The PA shall include a sensitivity 

6 uncertainty analysis which shall include an assessment 

7 of peak impact with a period of 10,000 years. If the 

8 peak impact is not realized within 10,000 years, a 

9 qualitative assessment shall be performed from 10,000 

10 years to the peak. That basically answers a lot of 

11 questions that we get when we present this information 

12 to stakeholders.

13 Another example is approval of the DAS is 

14 based on reviews of certain documents and approval of 

15 these documents. That's where the approval for the 

16 sites to have an unreviewed disposal question 

17 evaluation process will -- you'll be able to find 

18 that.

19 Related to the issue where we need to 

20 clarify the expectation on liners, there's a new 

21 section on system evaluation for new facilities where 

22 the sites will have to evaluate and provide a holistic 

23 evaluation of natural and engineered barriers and 

24 their effectiveness as a unit.

25 That concludes our peek at what's going to 
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1 be new in the low-level waste section. And as Marty 

2 says, I'm available to answer questions.

3 MR. LETOURNEAU: We are actually pretty 

4 close to being on schedule here. I want to go back to 

5 one slide that I went beyond and that is our schedule 

6 slide. 

7 MR. LEVITAN: Good morning everybody, are 

8 we still awake? Okay. We're going to take a break 

9 shortly. 

10 Marty made the point and I just want to 

11 make sure that you all there and you out there across 

12 the country understand that if you look at where we 

13 are now in yellow, the public workshop. We threw a 

14 lot of information at you and I know a lot of you were 

15 taking notes, right? But I just want to emphasize 

16 that while it may sound like we've done a lot of work, 

17 and we have, this won't be the only opportunity for 

18 feedback. 

19 As Marty mentioned, if you look, we're 

20 here in February through June and the -- I guess 

21 that's gray -- those gray boxes are what we're doing. 

22 Linda mentioned about the 251.1C compliance package. 

23 That means that we're going to get a form that the 

24 Order on Orders says it should look like. 

25 But what I really want you to look at is 
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1 that October 2011 to August 2012 time frame. We 

2 obviously -- internally the DRB is our Directives

3 Review Board, but notice, particularly public. As 

4 Marty mentioned, and I want to make sure everybody 

5 understands, we're going to notice this, it's going to 

6 be out for public comment. So you'll all have an 

7 opportunity to then comment on the product as it

8 resides at that time. We'll incorporate those 

9 comments and then we'll go through the formal review 

10 process and the Directives Review Board. 

11 So I just wanted to let everybody know 

12 there will be plenty of opportunities. And then 

13 ultimately once the new Order goes into effect, we'll 

14 be doing a lot of outreach in terms of explaining what 

15 the Order requirements are. 

16 With that I guess we'll take a break. As 

17 I mentioned in my keynote, I look really forward to 

18 the next hour and a quarter after the break -- or I 

19 don't know how long the break is; you can take care of 

20 that, Chip. But to really give us some good feedback. 

21 Thank you very much. 

22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. 

23 Marty, any final words from you before we 

24 break?

25 MR. LETOURNEAU: Just one other thought, 
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1 and it's related to this concept of the schedule and 

2 the fact that we are planning on putting this out for 

3 public comment. One of the things that we were 

4 challenged with the first time, when we created DOE 

5 Order 435.1 and our general counsel is challenging us 

6 with again is, is there any, or all of this directive,

7 that is suitable for or should be promulgated as DOE 

8 regulation? And that's a question that we'll be 

9 asking ourselves and a question that we'll be 

10 addressing with them probably about the time that we 

11 are putting everything together for the Directives 

12 Review System and putting things out for public 

13 comment. So there's still a lot of discussion yet to 

14 go on. I mean, nothing is set in stone. This really 

15 is very much a drafting process that we're in right 

16 now.

17 To that end, one of the things that we've 

18 talked about is the possibility of creating a section 

19 just on waste classification. And including in that 

20 section the waste incidental for reprocessing 

21 evaluation process, the 3116 process, concentration 

22 averaging, the definitions of the waste; and that that 

23 would possibly be a suitable piece that we might look 

24 to promulgating. So just another thing to keep in the 

25 back of your mind.
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1 MR. CAMERON: And does that really say 

2 rogue guides?

3 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah, it does say rogue 

4 guides. 

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I just wanted to make 

6 sure. 

7 MR. LETOURNEAU: Rogue guides is actually 

8 a term that the directive system used to identify 

9 guidance documents that were outside of the system.

10 So if somebody put together a guidance 

11 that affects more than one program but they didn't put 

12 it through the directive system, then that would be 

13 considered a rogue guide.

14 MR. CAMERON: Great, thank you. Thank 

15 you, Marty, and thank all of the DOE staff for the 

16 presentations. 

17 And we're going to take a break now. I 

18 have 10:15 on my watch, why don't we come back in 20 

19 minutes at 25 minutes to 11:00. 

20 And I'd like to talk to the people on the 

21 phones right now if I could so that I can see if I can 

22 get the names of everybody on the phones for purposes 

23 of our discussion period. Thank you. 

24 (Recess)

25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you all for 
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1 your patience, and the coffee will be here.

2 But we have everybody up here and I don't 

3 want to try to structure this too much, but we did 

4 start out with Bill. Bill Levitan gave us some 

5 keynote ideas and he talked about risk-performing and

6 performance-based. Marty gave us overview. And then 

7 Linda talked about strategic planning general 

8 requirements. And thank you for bringing the Dalai 

9 Lama and the idea of mindfulness in, which is always 

10 great. And then we went through high-level waste,

11 TRU, and then low-level waste. 

12 I suppose I should ask first does anybody 

13 have any comments or questions for Bill Levitan that 

14 we should start out with? And I just want to remind 

15 the people on the phones, we'll be going to you. 

16 We're going to have a discussion here starting in 

17 Phoenix, then we're going go to phones, then we'll 

18 come back here to Phoenix. 

19 Anybody have anything for Bill Levitan at 

20 this point? 

21 Okay. We're going to go right over here 

22 and just please introduce yourself to us.

23 MS. LARSON: I do have a question for 

24 Bill. I'm Pam Larson from the Hanford communities.

25 So Bill, in your opening remarks this 
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1 morning, you talked about a radioactive material is a 

2 radioactive material and then all these regulations 

3 kind of swarm around and help us figure out what to do 

4 with it. And your example is technetium. 

5 So from the Hanford site we sort of feel 

6 like TRU is TRU and whether it was generated prior to 

7 1970 or after -- or 1980 -- doesn't really make any 

8 difference to us. But it doesn't look like we're 

9 addressing TRU that was generated prior to the 

10 definition. So does that ever get caught up in the 

11 Department's philosophy? Because the containers 

12 aren't very valid at this point in time that have been 

13 buried all those years.

14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Pam. 

15 MR. LEVITAN: You're referring -- yes, it 

16 has. And Christine, if you want to add anything as 

17 well.

18 MS. GELLES: No, you're good. 

19 MR. LEVITAN: Yes, it has. As you know, 

20 there have been many studies performed by outside 

21 organizations regarding the amount of -- for those of 

22 you who can't see me, I'm doing quotes -- the amount 

23 of TRU or as we say pre-'70 TRU. And so we are well 

24 aware of that. And as you're aware at Hanford 

25 specifically, we plan on dealing with that waste 
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1 through the CERCLA process. And the regulatory 

2 structure is the regulatory structure and we follow 

3 those regulations.

4 MS. GELLES: I want to build upon 

5 something you said. And Marty, please correct this if 

6 you think I'm going too far. But my view on this --

7 and I think your question is a good one and I'm not 

8 surprised that you brought it up. 

9 But because pre-1970 TRU at this point is 

10 being discussed as a potential future of remediation 

11 decision through the CERCLA process, until such time 

12 that the decision is made and the remediation 

13 undertaken and those transuranic contaminated soils 

14 are actually exhumed and packaged, they don't exist as 

15 a waste container that needs to be managed and 

16 addressed through our radioactive waste management 

17 Order. 

18 So by and large our Order is guiding what 

19 we do with wastes as they are generated or as they are 

20 in inventory today requiring treatment, transport, and 

21 disposal, not previously disposed wastes that predate 

22 the enactment of our Order.

23 MR. CAMERON: And Christine, could you 

24 just introduce yourself for the transcript? 

25 MS. GELLES: Yes. Christine Gelles, 
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1 director of Disposal Operations in EM headquarters. 

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay.

3 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah, that's correct. 

4 And what DOE Order 435.1 says right now, and we don't 

5 have any intention on changing, is that transuranic 

6 waste that was generated prior to 1970 that is in the 

7 ground now is a CERCLA activity. If as it is 

8 excavated, if that is the decision that is made, that 

9 will result in basically generation, a new generation. 

10 Any of that excavated waste will be considered new 

11 transuranic waste and will have to be managed as such, 

12 which would include packaging for certification and 

13 transportation to WIPP.

14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

15 MR. LEVITAN: And if I could just 

16 emphasize, Marty made a good point. CERCLA has a 

17 prescribed process under the National Contingency 

18 Plan, 40 CFR 300 if anybody wants to look it up. And 

19 so we don't know what the remedy will be at this 

20 point. So we're talking about exhumation, but that's 

21 just one of many considerations that will be made as 

22 we work through the CERCLA process. 

23 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Bill. And hold on to 

24 that microphone for a minute. We have one more 

25 question for you. 
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1 MR. LEVITAN: Well, one more thing that I 

2 would point out also is that where we have gone back 

3 and looked at that pre '70 waste at other sites, 

4 whether it was for excavation or for characterization, 

5 we very often find that a fair amount of that waste, 

6 in fact, was not transuranic waste and, in fact, is 

7 low-level waste. And sometimes that does end up going 

8 to the low-level waste disposal facilities instead.

9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And Ruth, please 

10 introduce yourself. 

11 MS. WEINER: I'm Ruth Weiner. I work at 

12 Sandia (National Laboratories) but I'm here on my 

13 vacation, actually. 

14 Bill, I have kind of a general question. 

15 When you clean up a site, do you look at the 

16 facilities that are on that site, any kind of 

17 facilities, and do any kind of cost benefit or risk 

18 benefit analysis to see whether the facility itself is 

19 worth cleaning up and preserving or not? Because a 

20 number of facilities are just gone, and they would 

21 still have uses; and I just wondered what kind of 

22 rationale goes into destroying a facility.

23 MR. CAMERON: And Bill, you're going to 

24 start and then, perhaps, we'll go to Marty or his 

25 colleagues. Go ahead. 
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1 MR. LEVITAN: Well, I'll give you the high 

2 level answer, which is at sites where EM, as Linda 

3 said, is the PSO, obviously these sites have been 

4 given to us because they are excess to the 

5 Department's needs. And there are facilities, I can 

6 remember one in particular in Idaho, Test Area North, 

7 which is the big hot cell, and we probably spent 

8 several years determining, because it was a very 

9 unique facility, whether there was any use for it and 

10 there wasn't. The same thing with FFTF at Hanford. 

11 We went through a long process to determine whether 

12 there was any need for it and in the end we determined 

13 that there wasn't.

14 Having said that, last week or the week 

15 before, the Department announced an initiative called 

16 the Asset Revitalization Initiative. Some of you 

17 might have heard of it as energy parks, but it is 

18 really broader than that. And right now we're just 

19 getting it started and figure out -- get a charter so 

20 we understand where we want to go. But ultimately we 

21 need to involve the communities to determine what 

22 their vision of our facilities where we are no longer 

23 going to have a mission, what their vision is. And I 

24 know Pam would probably be -- is going to be, if not 

25 already, very active for the Hanford communities. So 
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1 looking forward we have that process that we're going 

2 to be putting in place.

3 So that's from, if you will, a higher 

4 level policy perspective. 

5 MR. CAMERON: Great, thank you, Bill. And 

6 let's see if Marty and his colleague haves things to 

7 add.

8 Is this easier for you to use? 

9 MR. LETOURNEAU: I have nothing additional 

10 to add to that.

11 One thing that I would like to point out 

12 is that J.R. is going to have to leave us here 

13 shortly; he needs to get to the airport. So if 

14 anybody has any specific questions for Mr. Stroble. 

15 We probably ought to focus on those. But I can also 

16 assure you that any questions about transuranic waste, 

17 the transuranic waste chapter, WIPP, between Bill and 

18 Christine and myself, Mr. Stroble assures us that the 

19 three of us are almost as good as him. 

20 MR. CAMERON: And the emphasis on the 

21 almost. 

22 Questions for -- J.R., do you want to 

23 respond to the previous question? 

24 Are there questions for Mr. Stroble at 

25 this point? Okay. Let's go over to Sue and get her 
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1 question. And we need to be fair to the people on the 

2 phones, I may tune in with them right now, after this, 

3 to see if they have questions for J.R.

4 Sue, please introduce yourself. 

5 MS. GAWARECICI: Susan Gawarecici, 

6 executive director of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local 

7 Oversight Committee. 

8 And I just had a question about the 

9 concept of packaging the TRU waste appropriately to 

10 minimize handing the first time. I was under the 

11 impression that a facility had to go through a fairly 

12 serious review about the CCR or some project that 

13 sounds like before it could treat and ship any waste 

14 off. So how -- I mean, how does it mesh? Is this is 

15 way of getting it to a -- say from a small generator 

16 to a larger facility for treatment, or how are you 

17 envisioning this?

18 MR. STROBLE: At Oak Ridge the Central 

19 Characterization Project or CCP is currently assisting 

20 the contractor at the TRU waste processing center. 

21 And because that's a program that's certified by our 

22 office, these specific instructions would not be 

23 required at Oak Ridge because an exception in the 

24 instructions it says that if you are working with or 

25 under a certified program, then you follow that 
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1 process and not necessarily these instructions. They 

2 go hand in hand. It's the same requirements, it's 

3 just under the guidance of the certified program.

4 So if under Oak Ridge there's a generator 

5 that's not currently working with TWPC, that's going 

6 to be generating a TRU waste stream, they would have 

7 to follow those instructions or they would have to go 

8 over to the TWPC and ask for guidance. Does that 

9 answer your question?

10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And Susan, we need to 

11 get you on the transcript, so you're going to have to 

12 talk into the microphone, please.

13 MR. LETOURNEAU: Part of this also, Susan, 

14 is really the mindfulness aspect. We have spent a lot 

15 of time and money in worker dose unpackaging and 

16 sorting through drums that were not properly prepared 

17 the first time where somebody knew that they were 

18 generating the waste and said, well, okay, I'm going 

19 to put it over here, we'll get to it later. Well, 

20 when later comes we've lost a lot of knowledge about 

21 what went into that package and we end up having to 

22 rework it. And what we're trying to do is minimize 

23 that rework. 

24 MS. GAWARECICI: I completely agree that's 

25 a worthy goal, but I was just wondering about the TRU 
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1 waste with the characterization program. You know, is 

2 it going to have to be unpacked anywhere? But it 

3 sounds like -- and I'm not entirely clear on how DOE 

4 Order 435.1 treats CERCLA waste if it does at all.

5 MR. CAMERON: Do you want to provide a 

6 clarification on that general question about the 

7 uncertainty about how DOE Order 435.1 treats what 

8 Susan called CERCLA waste, Marty?

9 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah, we have had that 

10 issue for a long time; it was an issue that came up 

11 when we were first writing DOE Order 435.1. And the 

12 question was how do we meet our AEA, Atomic Energy 

13 Act, obligations if the work is being done under 

14 CERCLA? And in our analysis what we determined was 

15 CERCLA was trying to accomplish the same thing that we 

16 were, which was to identify what the right course of 

17 action would be in a given situation and ensure that 

18 the waste from cleanup got managed correctly.

19 So what we determined was that DOE Order 

20 435.1 did not necessarily have a need or an added 

21 value to what CERCLA was already doing. So DOE Order 

22 435.1 recognizes CERCLA as meeting our AEA 

23 obligations.

24 The only question we have is if under 

25 CERCLA a new disposal facility is going to be created 
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1 specifically for waste from that clean-up activity, 

2 then we do want to make sure that our performance 

3 objectives and our low-level waste requirements are 

4 being met? And we do have a process in DOE Order 

5 435.1 for a CERCLA cell to demonstrate how those 

6 performance objectives are being met?

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Marty.

8 I'm going to test the phones now for the 

9 limited purpose of seeing if anybody has any questions 

10 or remarks for MR. on TRU before he has to leave.

11 Anybody on the phones have anything to say 

12 or ask J.R.?

13 MR. DUNNING: This is Dirk with Oregon, 

14 I'm not sure if my --

15 MR. CAMERON: Dirk, just let me interrupt 

16 you just so we can get your full name for the 

17 transcript. 

18 MR. DUNNING: Dirk Dunning, State of 

19 Oregon.

20 MR. CAMERON: Great. Thank you, Dirk. Go 

21 ahead.

22 MR. DUNNING: I'm not sure that my 

23 question is for J.R., it may be for the headquarters 

24 folks. But it does involve J.R. because there's 

25 companion issues involved in when WIPP closes and when 
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1 the last of the transuranic waste is planned to be 

2 exhumed at various sites, particularly at Hanford and 

3 whether or not WIPP will remain open for the entire 

4 duration and be able to accept those wastes. 

5 The companion question is more difficult. 

6 That ties to Pam's earlier question of whether or not 

7 DOE headquarters has a basic understanding and 

8 recognition of the national security implications of 

9 leaving several hundred nuclear weapons' equivalent of 

10 plutonium in the near surface.

11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Two separate 

12 questions. Let's go to the first one. Do you need 

13 any clarification at all? 

14 MR. STROBLE: No, I think that was clear. 

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay.

16 MR. STROBLE: As far as the expected 

17 closure of WIPP or the lifespan of WIPP relative to 

18 cleanup of a site like Hanford, EM is definitely 

19 watching that and is definitely planning to minimize 

20 that issue and avoid that issue. But based on 

21 projections that you hear from many different sources 

22 there could be examples where WIPP might need to close 

23 before Hanford was all cleaned up. So it's a real 

24 issue. It's many years in the future.

25 I think when we do the next update to DOE 
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1 Order 435.1 we're going to know a lot more about where 

2 we're at with that situation, it will be 11 years 

3 closer to that situation. 

4 I'm not trying to avoid answering the 

5 question today, but it is, you know, 2011. WIPP has 

6 many more years of operation left. There's plenty of 

7 capacity left and there could be a lot of things that 

8 could happen between now and that time, such as 

9 Congressional actions, such as consent orders, such as 

10 you name it. And so it's going to change a lot 

11 between now and then. But I can tell you that EM 

12 definitely is concerned about that and is trying to 

13 plan for the future so that that issue does not exist 

14 when WIPP is ready to close up.

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And Dirk, we're just 

16 going to hold on your second question for a second and 

17 Bill Levitan is going to try to address that one. I 

18 just want to make sure that there's no one else on the 

19 phone that has a specific question for J.R. before he 

20 has to leave. 

21 Anybody else have a question for Mr. 

22 Stroble?

23 Okay. Great. Bill, do you want to talk 

24 to Dirk's second question?

25 MR. LEVITAN: Sure. Hi, Dirk.
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1 As I mentioned, the area that you are 

2 referring to at Hanford of course we're going to be 

3 looking at under CERCLA, and as I mentioned before 

4 under the National Contingency Plan process. I'm sure 

5 you're very familiar with that process. And we'll be 

6 doing the appropriate characterization, the 

7 appropriate analyses through the RI/FS process, 

8 looking at the CERCLA 9 criteria in the decision 

9 making. And of course CERCLA has a lot of public 

10 participation elements to it. And we'll work through 

11 that whole process, develop a proposed plan, which 

12 will be available to the public to discuss and then 

13 move on to the record of decision and implement that 

14 decision.

15 MR. CAMERON: And Dirk, before we're going 

16 to go -- and all of you on the phones -- we're going 

17 to go back to the audience here in Phoenix. But Dirk, 

18 do you want to do any quick follow-up for Bill on that 

19 answer? 

20 MR. DUNNING: Yes, two parts. 

21 The first is that in doing the CERCLA 9 

22 criteria, to date there hasn't been any recognition of 

23 the problem of maintaining security for 10,000 plus 

24 years; physical, actual, manned armed security over a 

25 burial ground containing hundreds of nuclear weapons' 
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1 worth of plutonium. That just isn't in the analysis 

2 anywhere so far.

3 The second is in the last decade and a 

4 half, there have been huge changes in the 

5 understanding of the chemistry of plutonium in the 

6 environment. In 2009 there was an actinide conference 

7 held at the Pacific Northwest National Lab at Hanford 

8 with actinide chemists from all over the world; and 

9 not one DOE staff was in attendance. I'm not sure and 

10 I wonder whether DOE at the national level has been 

11 following the changes in the understanding of actinide 

12 chemistry and how important that may be for its 

13 mobility in the environment so that the analyses that 

14 are done under the performance assessments, the 

15 composite analyses, the CERCLA requirements, and the 

16 RCRA requirements all take into account those hazards.

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Dirk. And 

18 we're going to go to Bill and we'll see if any of the 

19 other DOE staff has anything to add or anybody in the 

20 audience wants to add on. 

21 MR. LEVITAN: Dirk, I certainly 

22 appreciate -- I appreciate your comment. I think as 

23 we mentioned, I have to think of the various aspects.

24 I think the Environmental Protection 

25 Agency, which of course is the agency that implements 
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1 the National Contingency Plan, is coming to the 

2 recognition now that it's been 31 years since CERCLA 

3 was enacted and they're beginning to see, okay, we're 

4 at a point now where some of these facilities should 

5 theoretically be closed and done with. So I think 

6 they're coming to the realization too that there are 

7 longer term effects that they need to look at. 

8 So we will of course -- and I meet with 

9 the Office of Federal Facilities Restoration and 

10 Reuse, which is the Federal facility office. And 

11 indeed we also had a -- EPA sponsored a joint DOE/DOD 

12 Federal facility cleanup dialogue with a lot of 

13 national stakeholders, local government, state 

14 governments, public interest groups. And this issue 

15 has very much come up in the guise of long-term 

16 stewardship as DOD and we finish our missions. So 

17 this will clearly be a topic of national interest and 

18 policy interest and EPA is clearly aware of it. 

19 Regarding the new information from a 

20 scientific perspective from actinide behavior in the 

21 environment, we'll just have to incorporate that 

22 information as we move forward through the National 

23 Contingency Plan process.

24 MR. CAMERON: Marty, anything to add? 

25 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah, just on that last 
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1 point. Through our Low-Level Waste Disposal Facility 

2 Federal Review Group and our Performance Assessment 

3 Community of Practice, we are tracking the new 

4 information associated not only with the actinide 

5 chemistry but with also chemicals and other 

6 radionuclides too.

7 MR. CAMERON: And Dan, do you want to add 

8 anything to this from the EPA perspective? Okay. 

9 Thank you. 

10 And if I could have the people on the 

11 phones just mute your phones for now and we'll be back 

12 to you. We're going to go to the audience here in 

13 Phoenix.

14 Any questions or comments for Linda on the 

15 general requirements, the strategic planning, or for 

16 Frank?

17 Okay. Let's go over to Aaron. And if you 

18 could just please introduce yourself to everybody, 

19 Aaron.

20 MR. WHITE: All right. Good morning, my 

21 name is Aaron White. I'm with DOE at Oak Ridge. And 

22 my question is regarding the blending issues, and I 

23 was wondering if you could get into a little bit more 

24 explanation about how you plan to maintain the ability 

25 for our organizations to do blending and prevent it 
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1 from being perceived as dilution just for a pure 

2 requirement to meet WAC for the different sites.

3 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah. Blending and 

4 concentration averaging go hand in hand, and it's an 

5 issue that just really in this last couple of years 

6 has become a topic of discussion. 

7 NRC has branch technical position that was 

8 issued I think in 1995 that really has been industry 

9 standard in understanding how to do that. We did not 

10 have anything specifically about concentration 

11 averaging or blending in DOE Order 435.1 when we wrote 

12 it in 1999. What we're recognizing now is because it 

13 has become such a topic of discussion that we do need 

14 to say something about it. We're working closely with 

15 the NRC staff, trying to make sure that we and they 

16 are on the same page.

17 One that I think we are in violent 

18 agreement about is the blending of two waste streams 

19 is not dilution. Dilution is blending of waste with 

20 clean material. And the concern that I have with 

21 respect to blending is not the purposeful mixing of 

22 two different waste streams, but recognizing that when 

23 waste is generated it comes out of a facility it goes 

24 into a box or it goes into a drum. And the 

25 information about that waste is catalogued and 
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1 understood; its radionuclide content whether it's 

2 mixed waste or not, its size, its weight. 

3 And when that accumulation container is 

4 filled, typically what happens is that all of that 

5 information is collected and averaged over the 

6 disposal container and that is used to understand 

7 where it can go for disposal. There very well could 

8 be pieces in that container that in and of themselves 

9 are of higher concentration and pieces that are of 

10 lower concentration, but the important aspect of it 

11 for disposal is what is the total radionuclide content 

12 of that package going to the waste disposal facility.

13 So what we're wanting to make sure doesn't 

14 happen is that this concern about blending and 

15 concentration averaging turn into something that 

16 forces picking through barrels of waste and 

17 segregating things out into piles of highly 

18 contaminated versus lesser contaminated, when in fact 

19 it's all waste and it's probably all going to the same 

20 place.

21 We could spend a lot of time, money, and 

22 incurred worker dose sorting through those packages, 

23 and that's what we're trying to avoid.

24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I think I'll put 

25 the blending issue in the parking lot for the NRC/DOE 
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1 panel discussion this afternoon.

2 Questions for Linda, for Frank, for Marty 

3 here in Phoenix in the audience? Yes.

4 MR. LARSON: Paul Larson with Energy 

5 Solutions.

6 I have a question regarding the 

7 applicability there for DOE Order 435.1 and its 

8 applicability towards commercial facilities. 

9 Certainly, there's some decision making guidance in 

10 terms of determining disposition path, but then is 

11 there further flow down in terms of what the 

12 expectation is in terms of assessment et cetera, from 

13 DOE Order 435.1 to a commercial facility that may be 

14 used for the disposition of waste?

15 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Paul. 

16 MR. DISANZA: Paul, is your 

17 question related to services that you provide to 

18 characterize and ship waste or disposal? 

19 MR. LARSON: It would be applicable to 

20 both. Certainly for the disposal voice, but also 

21 there is elements in there about the characterization 

22 too. 

23 MR. DISANZA: Well, let me finish here real 

24 quick. 

25 This is the way I would respond to your 
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1 question. As far as when you're providing services 

2 for characterization and shipment, I believe it will 

3 be the responsibility of the DOE entity that is what 

4 we call the generator to pass on to its contractor and 

5 if you're a subcontractor on to you, the requirements 

6 that are in DOE Order 435.1. And Linda talked about 

7 contractor requirements document, that's what you'll 

8 be seeing.

9 As far as disposal, I think that really is 

10 who you're looking to as far as your license. You're 

11 going to have to follow those requirements other 

12 than -- or the requirements that we have at DOE Order 

13 435.1.

14 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah. The other thing I 

15 would say, you were mentioning the assessment 

16 requirements, and that's really tied to the current 

17 policy on use of commercial facilities. As we've 

18 said, we're looking at changing the way that it's 

19 done; not having an exemption process that requires 

20 our sites to come to headquarters to get approval 

21 before they decide to ship waste to a commercial site 

22 for disposal. However, part of our commercial use 

23 policy is still from a due diligence and liability 

24 standpoint, we do have a requirement that our 

25 generating sites that are sending waste to other 
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1 commercial facilities, whether it's for treatment or 

2 disposal, have assured that those facilities have 

3 somehow been assessed and that we have assurance that 

4 they are in compliance with their own license and 

5 permit requirements and that's not going to change.

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Here in Phoenix, 

7 follow-up on the commercial use issue?

8 Okay. Let's go to Greg. Greg. 

9 MR. SUBER: Yeah, Marty, in your 

10 presentation I saw a very interesting table that you 

11 had where you had best practices and areas of 

12 improvement. Did you do a compilation of best 

13 practices and were some of the best practices at some 

14 sites addressing areas of needed improvement at other 

15 sites? And is any of that information public so that 

16 we can get an idea of exactly what you consider best 

17 practices? 

18 MR. CAMERON: You forgot to just introduce 

19 yourself.

20 MR. SUBER: Oh, I'm sorry. My name is 

21 Gregory Suber from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

22 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah, good question, 

23 Gregory. 

24 What you saw, that table, was a rollup of 

25 the information that is in the complex-wide review 
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1 document that we were referring to. We did have some 

2 CD's here, I think they've all been scooped up. But 

3 it is available electronically on our EM website under 

4 the tab of compliance and it should be the last tab of 

5 the list; 2010 complex-wide review.

6 You're right, some things that were 

7 identified as best practices were in fact able to be 

8 used to address areas of improvement at other sites.

9 One of the very notable best practices 

10 that we had was the unreviewed disposal question 

11 process that is used at the Savannah River Site. That 

12 certainly can be used to address areas of improvement 

13 at other sites.

14 I don't know if Linda or Frank have other 

15 specific examples, but certainly we did see some of 

16 that type of relationship. We trended all of those 

17 best practices and areas of improvement when we rolled 

18 them up. And what you were seeing on that table was 

19 the ones that we saw most significant that we saw at 

20 multiple sites or that just stood out as being very 

21 noteworthy. We have all of the best practices and 

22 areas of improvement cataloged in the report.

23 MS. SUTTORA: Actually, one of the best 

24 practices was the use of the Low-level Waste Facility 

25 Federal Review Group, which helps make sure all the 
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1 performance assessments are consistent across all the 

2 sites just by having that Federal review group 

3 requiring improvements to all PAs across. 

4 MR. DISANZA: One other item that I would 

5 add is that, as Marty mentioned, when we were working 

6 as the complex-wide review core teams and we looked at 

7 the number of best practices that were out there, we 

8 made a determination whether each individual best 

9 practice had the potential of influencing the update 

10 to DOE Order 435.1. And what that means is that if it 

11 could be applied across the complex, then we included 

12 that as an input that potentially would change or have 

13 a change in the update.

14 For those best practices that didn't make 

15 that category, I as the low-level waste core team 

16 lead, am working with the Low-Level Waste Corporate 

17 Board to first review those best practices and to 

18 develop processes where we can share those best 

19 practices throughout the complex. But that's outside 

20 of the update process; it's in the Corporate Board 

21 process. 

22 MS. SUTTORA: And actually I just -- one 

23 other mention is back in the Salt Lake City meeting 

24 last year, each group was handed all of the areas of 

25 improvement and best practices from the complex-wide 
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1 review. So each group had the entire list and we went 

2 one by one and identified whether it was, you know, 

3 something for the update for our chapter. And we were 

4 to say, gee, I don't think it goes here, it goes into 

5 another chapter. And then if it didn't go in either 

6 chapter, we would bin it into the Corporate Board, 

7 often. And sometimes we said, gee, you know what, 

8 this isn't applicable to something. It only affects 

9 this one little site, one little thing and it's not 

10 big enough.

11 But I went back before we came out this 

12 week and checked to see how our binning went, because 

13 we get so caught up in working on the chapter that I 

14 couldn't remember if we had actually taken into 

15 account all the items that we had binned into saying 

16 yes, it needs to go into the general requirements 

17 chapter. And in fact every single piece, every single 

18 input that was either identified by my group or the 

19 other chapters that was supposed to go into general 

20 requirements made it in.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. And I'm 

22 going to go to the phones now for anything that they 

23 have. 

24 But I guess I just want to put one idea 

25 out for you. There was a particularly provocative 
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1 idea that Marty mentioned that in consultation with 

2 DOE general counsel about making part of the parts of 

3 the Order or whatever, we can get clarification, into 

4 regulations and I wanted to see if anybody had any 

5 thoughts on that. And obviously, there could be 

6 implications for an NRC rulemaking too. So think 

7 about that.

8 And let's go to the phones. All of you on 

9 the phones, questions? Any questions or comments for 

10 DOE here?

11 I keep looking at the speaker like they're 

12 in there. Anybody on the phones? 

13 MS. WILCOX: Yeah, I'm on the phone. 

14 MR. CAMERON: And do you want to make a 

15 comment or a question? 

16 MS. WILCOX: I don't have any. I'm just 

17 listening, really. I mean, it's interesting and I 

18 haven't been involved in any of the other previous 

19 session, so it's a catch-up for me but, you know, what 

20 I've heard so far is interesting and I'll look forward 

21 to the progress that we're going to make on the Order. 

22 MR. CAMERON: Is this Deb? 

23 MS. WILCOX: Yep. 

24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And Deb, could you 

25 just give us your last name too for the transcript? 
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1 MS. WILCOX: Yeah. W-I-L-C-O-X. 

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Deb Wilcox. 

3 Maureen, Dirk, Rich, Tison, Frank, anybody 

4 else on the phone have a question or comment?

5 MS. O'DELL: This is Maureen but I don't 

6 have any questions at this time. Thank you. 

7 MR. CAMERON: And Maureen, what's your 

8 last name? 

9 MS. O'DELL: O'Dell. 

10 MR. CAMERON: O-D-E-L-L?

11 MS. O'DELL: Yes. I work for Bill 

12 Levitan.

13 MR. CAMERON: One of those lucky people 

14 who work for Bill?

15 MS. O'DELL: Yes.

16 MR. CAMERON: Okay.

17 MS. O'DELL: Thank you. 

18 MR. DUNNING: This is Dirk. I have one 

19 additional question.

20 MR. CAMERON: And this is Dirk?

21 MR. DUNNING: Yes, correct. 

22 MR. CAMERON: Dirk Dunning. Okay, go 

23 ahead, Dirk. 

24 MR. DUNNING: Hi Bill. Hi Marty. 

25 Marty, as you recall in the Waste 
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1 Management Area C performance assessment discussions, 

2 one of the big questions that came up goes to a topic 

3 I think Bill was talking about in the beginning, but 

4 it may have been you, in terms of using models and 

5 looking at probabilistic risk assessments. And one of 

6 the things that became really clear as we walked 

7 through that discussion is that the probabilistic risk 

8 assessments look very much at how the model behaves 

9 and what the model does, as versus what the model does 

10 as compared to the reality.

11 So my question would be is there a way, or 

12 has the Department looked at a way to write into the 

13 rules a requirement that the analysis be based on how 

14 accurate or inaccurate the modeling is compared to the 

15 reality, rather than how precise the model is looking 

16 only at itself?

17 MR. LETOURNEAU: Good question, Dirk.

18 One of the things that we're grappling 

19 with the update here is the amount of direction, both 

20 in terms of requirements and guidance related to how 

21 to do probabilistic risk assessment and what things 

22 need to be taken into account. We've got a pretty 

23 strong team of people that are going to be working on 

24 that and your comment is exactly one of the things 

25 that we need to address to ensure that it's done 
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1 correctly and that we don't head off on something that 

2 just becomes a paper exercise.

3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Marty. 

4 Thanks, Dirk. 

5 Okay. I'm going to go back to the room in 

6 Phoenix now. And we're going to go over to Boby and 

7 then we're going to go over to the gentleman over 

8 there. 

9 Boby, please introduce yourself.

10 DR. EID: This is Boby Eid. Thank you for 

11 the excellent presentation and the discussion is 

12 lively. 

13 My question is regarding an issue also we 

14 are dealing with at the NRC, which is the period of 

15 performance. In the presentation, you indicated that 

16 the selected period of performance is 10,000 years.

17 In this regard, how did you reach the conclusion for 

18 10,000 years? It is it a policy decision? Is it a 

19 technical analysis? Is it -- also you looked at the 

20 NRC, regarding NUREG-1573 where the recommendation at 

21 that time, it was 10,000 years for compliance. 

22 And also you indicated that you will do 

23 qualitative analysis beyond that time. What do you 

24 have in mind to do the qualitative analysis for, and 

25 what you are looking for beyond that time and how 
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1 about alternatives that you are beginning with? 

2 Because you said you will try to use the peak dose. 

3 In this regard, if it is the peak dose, where is the 

4 probabilistic issue if you use the peak dose in this 

5 regard? 

6 And thank you. I know this question is 

7 not easy and we are dealing with, so I understand if 

8 you have no answer. 

9 MR. LETOURNEAU: It's an easy question. 

10 In DOE Order 435.1 right now, we have as our period of 

11 performance or the time of compliance for a disposal 

12 facility 1,000 years. But we also said that we would 

13 look at the peak out to 10,000 years. And that was 

14 part of our compromise, if you will, recognizing that 

15 the NRC recommends in its NUREG 10,000 years. 

16 In this update, we looked at that NUREG. 

17 We looked at some other things including the Utah 

18 state requirements and said, you know, everybody else 

19 is saying 10,000 years, it's hard for us to say less 

20 than that. Everybody would like to see us do 10,000 

21 years. In fact, in most cases we're going out to the 

22 peak out to 10,000 years anyway; that's what that 

23 compromise does. 

24 So we're saying in this update, yeah, 

25 we're going to pony up and say 10,000 years [this 
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1 statement was refuted earlier and later in the 

2 meeting, as discussed prior in this response and on 

3 page 240 (approximately)]. And ultimately, whatever 

4 number you pick is an arbitrary number, but since 

5 everybody else is using 10,000 years, it looks like we 

6 are going to recommend that also. 

7 As far as the analysis beyond 10,000 

8 years, right now the wording that is being proposed 

9 says qualitative analysis beyond 10,000 years. I 

10 think that what we'll end up doing as we clean up the 

11 language there, is to recognize that all analysis is 

12 quantitative, but what you do with it may be 

13 qualitative. 

14 And I think if we can get a microphone 

15 over to Rusty Lundberg there, Rusty might be able to 

16 quote us what the Utah regulation says about looking 

17 beyond 10,000 years. 

18 I think that wording was quite good and 

19 we're looking to do something similar to that, which 

20 is recognizing that you can look at the peak beyond 

21 10,000 years and do a qualitative interpretation of 

22 it. Which means to me that you're not necessarily 

23 comparing that peak dose at 50,000 years, say, to a 

24 numerical standard, but you're using it as information 

25 that helps the decision maker understand what happens 
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1 beyond 10,000 years. Does the peak go radically up? 

2 Does it level out? Does it go down? How far out is 

3 it? That qualitatively is information that is useful 

4 to the decision maker.

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Marty. 

6 And you mentioned Rusty. I'm going to ask 

7 if Rusty has anything to say and then we have George 

8 and John Greeves over there.

9 Rusty Lundberg. 

10 MR. LUNDBERG: Rusty Lundberg.

11 Marty, I think you did capture the essence 

12 of our language without really looking. But the 

13 specific language itself is that we do look at this. 

14 As you described this, I started to picture. The 

15 analogy is that the reason why 10,000 years keeps 

16 coming up is it seems like we're all on this rugby 

17 scrum together until the ball is kicked out to someone 

18 else to say why should it be any different. I think 

19 that we all see ourselves in pretty good company as 

20 far as at least this first level of evaluation, in 

21 terms of a quantitative view of this seems to be that 

22 10,000 year horizon or time period.

23 Beyond that in the State of Utah, in terms 

24 of our specific regulation, we're looking at this in 

25 terms of yes, there are issues that go beyond that, 
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1 particularly as we look at for our particular view of 

2 this as it relates to depleted uranium with a longer 

3 horizon of concern is then you look at the peak dose 

4 time frame. And that's where you also wrap in this 

5 idea of qualitatively what else can you do at that 

6 point to be helpful and determinant about what you 

7 want to accomplish.

8 MR. CAMERON: Great. Thank you, Rusty. 

9 Let's go to George and then John Greeves. 

10 George, could you please introduce 

11 yourself to us? 

12 MR. SAULNIER: Hello. George Saulnier

13 from Areva.

14 I just had a question. Marty, you 

15 mentioned that in some of the legacy cans you didn't 

16 want -- you were going to look at the total dose or 

17 the total equivalent in there and not go and pick 

18 through the can to take out pieces of waste. But with 

19 some of the waste containers at Hanford there's a real 

20 dog's breakfast, if you will, of stuff which might 

21 even include used fuel. 

22 As an operator contractor are we going to 

23 have to separate, for example, if there's little 

24 pieces of used fuel or can we just start accumulating 

25 in a can, so to speak, and get up to a fissile gram 
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1 equivalent and send that off to WIPP? Or would we 

2 have to do that detailed segregation, which might be 

3 quite complicated? 

4 MR. LETOURNEAU: Under DOE Order 435.1 we 

5 have managed pieces of used fuel as low-level waste 

6 where it was used in a research activity, small 

7 quantities. Certainly, you've got to look at the 

8 specific situation. If you are in a fuel fabrication 

9 plant, that's a little bit different situation.

10 But the key thing here, I think, is 

11 recognizing that how you understand the work that 

12 you're performing is going to help you understand the 

13 work or the waste that you're generating. And the 

14 examples I like to use are, you know, when we go to 

15 knock down a building there's nothing that requires us 

16 to take at all rubble that's highly contaminated and 

17 put it in one pile or the rubble that's slightly 

18 contaminated and put it in another pile. No, we knock 

19 down the whole building and we average over the 

20 rubble. That's one example.

21 Another example is I've got waste coming 

22 out of a building and it may be a lot of dry activated 

23 waste, job control waste, booties, it may also include 

24 HEPA filters. I don't necessarily have to treat those 

25 as two separate waste streams. I'm viewing this as 
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1 the waste coming out of the building, it's going into 

2 my drum. I'm going to average over the content of that 

3 drum. So in that context, that piece of fuel may be 

4 okay, but it does depend on the context.

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. 

6 John Greeves. John. 

7 MR. GREEVES: Yes. I'm going to get back 

8 to something you asked ten minutes ago. 

9 You asked the question about rulemaking

10 versus the Order. And I'll observe that I think part 

11 of DOE Order 435.1 has to go to rulemaking. There's 

12 the issue of sufficient concentrations; and the 

13 Department has a liability at the present time because 

14 the Order doesn't go through the Administrative 

15 Procedure Act via rulemaking to get you into a 

16 defensible position to be able to implement this. 

17 And the sufficient concentration language 

18 comes out of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982; and 

19 it raises a question because the Act calls for the 

20 Commission to make a determination about what's 

21 sufficient concentration. So somewhere along the 

22 line, one, I think it needs to go into a rule, two, I 

23 think there needs to be an alignment between DOE and 

24 the Commission and the question needs to be called who 

25 actually makes that call. The Act says the Commission 
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1 makes the call. 

2 And also, this affects lots of other 

3 things besides DOE, including their nuclear 

4 renaissance. There's a white paper, Marty as you are 

5 aware, where the industry wants this particular gap in 

6 definition resolved and to define what sufficient 

7 concentrations are. 

8 So it's a little bit of a long-winded, but 

9 that's an excellent topic that at some point in time 

10 there needs to be a paper put out as how that's going 

11 to be resolved, hopefully in alignment with the 

12 Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In fact, I think 

13 they're going to have to make the determination; but 

14 that's just an opinion. 

15 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah, John, think you did 

16 a pretty good job of summing up the same position that 

17 our general counsel had, which was this feeling that 

18 there are some parts of DOE Order 435.1 that would 

19 probably be better promulgated as regulation.

20 So what we've done on our schedule is 

21 recognize that when we've got all of the core team 

22 work done and we've put together a draft that comports 

23 with our internal requirements and we're ready to put 

24 that out for public comment and we're ready to put it 

25 into the directive system, we're going to sit down 
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1 with our general counsel and say, okay, let's look at 

2 this. What do you think? What do you want to pull 

3 out? Obviously, something like the waste-incidental4 to-reprocessing processes is something that they would 

5 be very interested in seeing promulgated.

6 To that end, one of the things that we're 

7 looking at is a new specific section, I don't know if 

8 it's a chapter or part of general requirements, but a 

9 section specifically on waste classification. And 

10 that would allow us to address the waste incidental-to 

11 -reprocessing concept there. It would also allow us 

12 to address concentration averaging and blending. 

13 And if that was all in one section about 

14 classification, that might be a candidate that we and 

15 our general counsel would look possibly putting out as 

16 a DOE regulation.

17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Marty. 

18 And to give Larry and his staff time to 

19 think about this -- Larry, would you be ready to 

20 address this when we go to the joint DOE/NRC panel, 

21 this idea? 

22 MR. CAMPER: Yeah. We'll caucus at 

23 lunchtime and think about what we've heard here. And 

24 yeah, we can talk about it at that time. 

25 MR. CAMERON: Thank you.
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1 And we're going to go to John here in the 

2 room. And I'm going to check in with the people on 

3 the phones one last time. John. 

4 MR. TAUXE: John Tauxe with Neptune and 

5 Company. 

6 I just had a minor historical note here 

7 that the Order that preceded DOE Orders 435.1, 

8 5820.2A, also had a 10,000 year standard in it. So 

9 you may recall that it was dropped to 1,000, and now 

10 you're going back to the 10,000. 

11 MR. LETOURNEAU: Well, we did try to kick 

12 the ball out of the scrum by going to 1,000, but 

13 nobody followed us.

14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Mike Lee, introduce 

15 yourself. 

16 DR. LEE: Hi, I'm Mike Lee with the NRC 

17 staff. 

18 Over the last couple of days there's been 

19 a lot of discussion about the staff's position on low20 level waste performance assessment. And at the time 

21 that document, staff was also running its own 

22 independent test case. The test case was not unlike 

23 what was done for the original EIS work, but let me 

24 just say it was more sophisticated, if I can use that 

25 term. 
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1 And what the staff found is that in 

2 running the test case, they ran the analysis out to 

3 almost 200,000 years based on the inventories that 

4 were defined in the EIS originally for Part 61. And 

5 they found that most of the dose was covered within 

6 10,000 years. 

7 So it wasn't a capricious decision, nor 

8 was it arbitrary. But there was a basis, if you will, 

9 for deciding that 10,000 years seemed to be the right 

10 number to go with. And if you go to that document, 

11 which I think is as fresh as the day it was first 

12 printed, and I think it is pages B-13, or 15 or 17. 

13 And the response to public comments, there's about two 

14 and a half pages that are dedicated to how the staff 

15 arrived at the 10,000 year number. It's in response 

16 to public comments. So I encourage folks to read it 

17 from front to cover and maybe we can have a quiz one 

18 day or, you know, something like that.

19 MR. CAMERON: A quiz? Okay. Maybe later 

20 this afternoon.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let me go to those of 

22 you on the phone. You've heard the discussion here. 

23 Anything that anybody wants to add to that or any new 

24 things that you want to bring up?

25 MS. CIMON: Yes, this is Shelley Cimon. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And Shelley, just let 

2 me make sure I have the correct spelling for our 

3 stenographer. 

4 MS. CIMON: Sure. It's S-H-E-L-L-E-Y, C5 I-M-O-N, in Hanford. 

6 MR. CAMERON: Shelley Cimon in Hanford. 

7 Go ahead. 

8 MS. CIMON: Yes. Thank you.

9 I missed the -- I could not be on the call 

10 for the first part of the discussions this morning, 

11 but there are some pretty pithy issues that are going 

12 to have to be sorted through. And, as always, I am 

13 concerned with public policy and how we get there and 

14 how the public gets to interface and understand the 

15 depth of these issues and also participates in the 

16 decision-making process. 

17 And so I'm wondering if this afternoon or 

18 maybe this morning there was someone who touched 

19 briefly on how -- what the structure of these 

20 decisions looks like, the framework for making them?

21 And I guess that's my question for now.

22 MR. CAMERON: Let me make sure that we all 

23 understand where you're going with that. And I always 

24 turn to the guru. Marty, do you know what Shelley is 

25 going for?
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1 MR. LETOURNEAU: Shelley, I'm not sure 

2 which decisions are you concerned with. Is it the 

3 decisions on the development of the DOE Order 435.1

4 update? 

5 MS. CIMON: Absolutely. 

6 MR. LETOURNEAU: Okay. Well, right now 

7 we're doing the staff work and we will be putting it 

8 into our directives review system, which will allow 

9 all of the DOE headquarters organizations to provide 

10 comment on it. We'll have to resolve all those 

11 comments before we can move forward. 

12 As I said earlier, we will also be 

13 publishing a notice in the Federal Register making it 

14 available for public comment. We'll be considering 

15 all of the comments that we receive from both the 

16 public and the DOE organizations. Then when we go 

17 into the approval process, we have to have approval 

18 from the Assistant Secretaries of those organizations 

19 in order for this to go forward. 

20 Does that answer your question?

21 MS. CIMON: It does. Is there a sense of 

22 the timeline, Marty?

23 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah. We're hoping to 

24 have the draft ready to go into the directive system 

25 and out for public comment October of this year. 
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1 We've scheduled, allowed, for a full year for comment 

2 and any revisions that need to be done. So we're 

3 expecting that it would come out and be ready for 

4 final approval around August or September of 2012.

5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. 

6 MS. CIMON: Thank you. 

7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Shelley. 

8 Anybody else out there on the phone have 

9 anything? We're almost to our lunch break, but we 

10 have time for something else if anybody has anything. 

11 MR. ENGLAND: This is Frank England. And 

12 since I took the day off today, I'll identify myself 

13 as a member of the public. 

14 I've really enjoyed this. I want to make 

15 a technical comment about the presentation and how 

16 they look from home. 

17 This is a wonderful system you all have 

18 set up. I'm able to see the slide shows, the video --

19 Marty, you look great in your red or orange shirt and 

20 I'm looking to seeing Linda's iPad used some day, tied 

21 in with this system. On a 27-inch monitor I've got 

22 room for all of this.

23 MR. CAMERON: That's very nice. 

24 MR. LETOURNEAU: Thank you, Frank. 

25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I think that's --
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1 MR. DUNNING: One more. 

2 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead. 

3 MR. DUNNING: This is Dirk Dunning again. 

4 And I would echo Frank's comments that, yes, the 

5 presentation is quite easy to follow over the web, so 

6 this worked out well.

7 One thing I would, expanding on Shelley's 

8 comments, is just to remind everyone of the difficulty 

9 in any process like this of hearing the voices that 

10 are not in the room. As someone had said early on 

11 talking about all the discussions you've had, that 

12 everybody was nodding heads around the room that we're 

13 all on the same page and agreeing; but that's a very 

14 closed environment of people and thoughts and views, 

15 and there's a whole lot of voices out in the world 

16 that are not included. And somehow with public 

17 involvement we always need to be mindful of that and 

18 find ways to bring those voices in early so we don't 

19 get caught in the decide, announce, defend kind of 

20 mode.

21 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Go ahead, Marty.

22 MR. LETOURNEAU: Thank you very much, 

23 Dirk.

24 Yeah, that is something we have to keep in 

25 mind throughout this process. Certainly, it is one of 
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1 the biggest challenges in a process like this. 

2 We have prepared a communications plan.

3 We are identifying as many organizations as we can,

4 site specific advisory boards and different trade 

5 organizations. And we are very open to, you know, 

6 coming out and giving presentations and discussing

7 these things in these types of public meetings and 

8 other forums because we do want to make sure that we 

9 can hear the voices that aren't in this room. But we 

10 will keep that in mind throughout this process. 

11 Thank you very much, Dirk. 

12 MR. CAMERON: We will have some of those 

13 other voices on the phone this afternoon for the NRC 

14 part of this, I'm sure. And to the extent that we 

15 deal with the cross-cutting issues between DOE and NRC 

16 on the panel discussion, we'll be able to hear from 

17 them. But thank you for that thought.

18 And we're going to break for -- we have 

19 one more in the room, Jim Lieberman. And Erick, 

20 you're going to have to remind me of what I was 

21 supposed to remind people of.

22 Oh, this session is recorded and also 

23 transcribed. And the recording will be available on 

24 the website and we'll make sure that everybody has 

25 that site before we close today.
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1 Jim Lieberman. 

2 MR. LIEBERMAN: Thank you, Chip.

3 Marty mentioned that small pieces of spent 

4 fuel DOE might consider as low-level waste, but I have 

5 two questions. Question one is what's the line, where 

6 do you draw the line, and how small is small? And 

7 second, since one of the goals is to align the DOE 

8 approach and the NRC approach, if NRC might speak to 

9 what their views are on having small quantities of 

10 spent fuel considered low-level waste.

11 MR. CAMERON: Marty?

12 MR. LETOURNEAU: Thanks a lot. Jim.

13 We have had that requirement both in the 

14 current DOE Order 435.1 and in the old Order 5820.2A, 

15 so it's been around since 1988. And it really is a 

16 situational type thing.

17 It was primarily put in place so that when 

18 somebody took a specimen, a small piece of fuel, into 

19 a laboratory setting to do work on it, to examine it, 

20 to do tests, that when they were done they didn't have 

21 an extremely complicated and unnecessary burden in 

22 terms of managing that now as spent fuel. Recognizing 

23 that we have to look at what the radionuclide content 

24 is and how to manage it both in terms of waste form 

25 and final destination, waste acceptance criteria, what 
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1 disposal facility it would go to. But there's not a 

2 numerical standard that we've applied as to what small 

3 is. It's been very situational. And again, it was 

4 primarily recognizing that people do laboratory work 

5 with specimens and in the end those can be managed 

6 safely as low-level waste.

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.

8 We're going to break for lunch now. I 

9 just want to thank Bill and Marty and Linda and Frank 

10 and all of you on the phones. We're going to start at 

11 1:00 with Larry Camper and the NRC process.

12 Thank you.

13 (Recess)

14 MR. CAMERON: Welcome back, everyone. 

15 We're going to start the afternoon session of the 

16 joint Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory 

17 Commission public meeting on low-level waste issues. 

18 And we talked about DOE Order 435.1 this morning and 

19 now we're going to talk about the NRC and Part 61 and 

20 efforts to perhaps revise Part 61. 

21 And there are two major components to this 

22 afternoon -- or I should say three major components to 

23 this afternoon's agenda. We're going to have 

24 presentations by the NRC staff beginning with Larry 

25 Camper of the NRC, the division director where all of 
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1 this low-level waste churning goes on. And we're 

2 going to hear from Charlie Miller, who is the Office 

3 Director of Federal, State, Materials and 

4 Environmental Management at the NRC, and Larry's 

5 division is in Charlie's office. And then we're going 

6 to have presentations by a cast of thousands from the 

7 NRC. We're going to take a break and we are going to 

8 come back for public discussion, which will start --

9 I'll start here with the people here in Phoenix and 

10 then we'll go to the phones and we'll go back here to 

11 the room.

12 There's going be a panel at 4:15. This is 

13 a joint Department of Energy and NRC to talk about 

14 cross-cutting issues between the update of DOE Order 

15 435.1 and Part 61, and we already identified some 

16 issues this morning that we have in the parking lot 

17 for that discussion. And then there's the 5:15, 15-

18 minute summary. 

19 And I just wanted to point out to people 

20 who are either new or new on the phone that the agenda 

21 that was on the NRC website has been superseded by the 

22 new agenda and we don't stop until 5:30. I think the 

23 old agenda had us stopping at 5:00. So I just wanted 

24 to point that out to everybody. 

25 And there's a slide up with the web page 
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1 where the recorded version of today's meeting is going 

2 to be; it's going to be on the web page. There's also 

3 going to be a transcript available that could be 

4 downloaded also. So there are two ways to see what 

5 went on today.

6 So we'll leave this up for a few minutes 

7 until we are ready to get started with Larry. And I 

8 would just ask those of you who are on the phone now 

9 to just mute your phones and we'll be checking back 

10 with you after the NRC presentations. 

11 And it's a real pleasure to introduce 

12 Larry Camper who is going to kick things off for us.

13 MR. CAMPER: Good afternoon. Thanks for 

14 coming back after lunch and not staying outside 

15 enjoying that lovely Arizona weather.

16 Before I give my remarks, I want to 

17 clarify something for those of you who were not in the 

18 topical workshop yesterday or those of you who are on 

19 the phone listening in. You've heard this meeting 

20 referred to several times, so I just wanted to be 

21 clear that the meeting that's being referred to is a 

22 topical workshop that took place yesterday afternoon 

23 as part of the Waste Management Symposia WM2011 

24 meeting. It was not a Federally-sponsored public 

25 meeting. If you are interested in the proceedings of 
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1 that, you can certainly contact me or Dr. Boby Abu-Eid

2 of my staff and we can make you more familiar with 

3 that discussion and why it's been referenced here 

4 several times. 

5 It was indeed a very interesting 

6 discussion. It had to do with performance assessment 

7 and long-term monitoring for low-level waste disposal 

8 facilities. But of course when we got to talking 

9 about that we naturally gravitated at times into the 

10 construct of Part 61 and so that's why you hear it 

11 being referred to several times here. 

12 Well, I do want to welcome everybody to 

13 the session that we are having this afternoon and it 

14 is certainly a pleasure to work with our colleagues at 

15 DOE in bringing this together. Clearly, we have a lot 

16 of interest in what's taking place in the updating of 

17 the DOE Order 435.1.

18 Alignment was mentioned several times this 

19 morning. Alignment is a laudable goal. We do have 

20 certain statutory constraints and jobs that we do 

21 differently, different roles. But having said that, 

22 alignment is something that makes an awful lot of 

23 sense. And I think alignment and what's the best 

24 process for regulating low levels of waste in the 

25 United States is something that will be talked about a 
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1 lot over the next couple of years. So I'm sure that 

2 will come up again and again. 

3 But in terms of our workshop today, I want 

4 to just briefly discuss the goals for the workshop. 

5 And the first is to introduce SECY-10-0165 and the 

6 title of that document is The Staff's Approach to the 

7 Comprehensive Revision to 10 CFR Part 61, it is 

8 identified as SRM M100617B. That was prepared in 

9 response to a Commission direction and that's why it 

10 is referred to as a staff requirements memorandum or 

11 SRM.

12 We want to elaborate on the options that 

13 are described in that Commission paper. That 

14 Commission paper is dated December the 27th, 2010. If 

15 you are interested in getting a copy of it, it is 

16 available, of course.

17 Clearly, we are mostly interested, of 

18 course, in soliciting feedback from the stakeholders. 

19 That is an important part of our process and we 

20 certainly hope to get lots of dialogue and feedback 

21 this afternoon. We had a lot of good input yesterday 

22 and I'm sure much of that will continue today. 

23 We also want to describe in the course of 

24 our various discussions -- that's good, Marty, that's 

25 cute. We want to discuss future opportunities for 
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1 public comment. There will be a number of public 

2 meetings along the way on examination of Part 61, and 

3 so we look forward to getting more input along the 

4 way.

5 We did publish a Federal Register notice 

6 dated the 28th of February that did a couple of 

7 things. It announced this joint meeting with the 

8 Department of Energy, but it also identified certain 

9 questions that we are asking for input back from the 

10 public on. Those questions were: Should the staff 

11 revise the existing Part 61 or should it be left as it 

12 currently is? What recommendations do you have for 

13 specific changes to the current rule? And then last 

14 but not least, what are your suggestions for possible 

15 new approaches to commercial low-level waste 

16 management here in the United States?

17 Later in the course of our presentations 

18 you are going to hear several members of the NRC staff 

19 giving you information about Part 61, about our 

20 existing regulatory process, about the information 

21 that's contained in the SECY Paper, which I cited. 

22 And the whole idea is for us to inform in the first 

23 part of our presentation, or do a data dump if you 

24 will, so that everyone has a common understanding of 

25 the subject matter at this moment in time. And then, 
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1 of course, that will facilitate the discussion that 

2 will follow and questions and so forth and so on. 

3 What I'd like to do now is introduce our 

4 keynote speaker for the afternoon, Dr. Charles Miller. 

5 It gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce Dr. 

6 Miller. Of course he's my boss and we've been 

7 colleagues and good friends for a very long time. And 

8 I was very pleased that he would join us and come here 

9 today, he's very busy, and take time out of his 

10 schedule to demonstrate to all of you how important 

11 within his office we believe the Part 61 issues to be. 

12 Dr. Miller is the director of the Office 

13 of Federal and State Materials and Environmental 

14 Management programs, FSME. Dr. Miller joined the NRC 

15 in 1980 as a nuclear engineer in the Office of the 

16 Nuclear Reactor Regulation. He served in a number of 

17 positions within that office including project 

18 manager, technical assistant, section leader, project 

19 director, standardization project directorate, project 

20 director for project directorate 1-2, chief of the 

21 emergency preparedness and radiation protection 

22 branch, and deputy director of Incident Response 

23 Operations. 

24 And then from 1987 to 1988 he also served 

25 as a technical assistant to former Commissioner 
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1 Bernthal. In 2001 he was appointed the deputy 

2 director of licensing and inspection directorate 

3 within the Spent Fuel Project Office and the Office of 

4 Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. 

5 In October -- excuse me. In 2003 he was 

6 appointed as the director of the Division of 

7 Industrial and Medical and Nuclear Safety within NMSS. 

8 And then in October of 2006, Dr. Miller was appointed 

9 to his current position as the director of FSME. 

10 He received his Bachelor of Science degree 

11 in engineering from Widener University as well as a 

12 masters and a PhD in chemical engineering from the 

13 University of Maryland. He is also a licensed chemical 

14 engineer, being licensed in the District of Columbia. 

15 Dr. Miller. 

16 DR. MILLER: Thank you, Larry.

17 Good afternoon everybody, it's a pleasure 

18 to be here today. 

19 I recognize that the majority of the 

20 stakeholders that are here today are somehow 

21 affiliated with some Federal, state, licensed, or 

22 contractor or consultant types of responsibilities, 

23 but I don't know if we have any members of the public 

24 or just interested citizens in the audience today; if 

25 we do, if you could raise your hand. I don't see any. 
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1 I don't know if we have any on the phone. With that 

2 said, each of you is an important stakeholder to us, 

3 so I feel that this is a great step as we begin our 

4 journey. 

5 Larry talked in a little bit of detail 

6 about the workshop yesterday. And I had an 

7 opportunity to observe that workshop and it was really 

8 gratifying for me because I felt that it was a great 

9 intellectual debate. And I think that was very 

10 important and there were a lot of great perspectives 

11 put on the table for consideration.

12 As Larry mentioned, I've got a lot of 

13 responsibilities that are fairly broad within my 

14 office, but low-level waste is certainly one that has 

15 risen to the forefront in the last few years. As you 

16 know, the day-to-day operations are led by Larry and 

17 his division, but I did want to acknowledge one of the 

18 new members to the group, Drew Persinko. If you could 

19 stand, Drew. Drew is one of Larry's deputies that has 

20 recently been placed in a management position there. 

21 And many of you will be getting to know and work with 

22 Drew. 

23 So what I want to get into next is 

24 basically a little by way of background. And the 

25 reason we're here today is that the Commission asked 
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1 us to engage you, our stakeholders, on the important 

2 issues and the concerns with regard to commercial on 

3 low-level waste regulations as promulgated in our Part 

4 61.

5 As most of you know, Congress created the 

6 NRC from the earlier Atomic Energy Commission in 

7 1975. And one of the earliest projects that the 

8 Commission took on once it was formed was the 

9 development of Part 61 as our regulation. That was 

10 around 1977. 

11 As part of the development process, the 

12 Commission embraced the NEPA process, which was itself 

13 relatively new and relied on environmental impact 

14 statements to help scope the regulation. The staff 

15 met with stakeholders at that time, including 

16 interested members of the public on the rulemaking

17 initiative on at least seven occasions. The final 

18 Part 61 rule was issued in 1982 and later adopted by 

19 our 37 current Agreement States. 

20 We believe the current rule is fully 

21 protective of public safety and protection of the 

22 environment. I think that's an important matter to 

23 state today. But as you all know, you know, the 

24 current rule is being implemented in Agreement States 

25 only right now because all of our licensed facilities 
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1 in the United States are currently located in the 

2 Agreement States.

3 So let's talk for a couple of minutes 

4 about current events. For the last couple of decades 

5 the low-level waste program at the NRC, based upon 

6 what I just told you, was essentially Jim Kennedy; who 

7 many of you know. He was the agency's eyes and ears 

8 when it came to low-level waste issues while the 

9 program was in a maintenance mode. And over the last 

10 few days Jim was referred to as many things, but I 

11 affectionately refer to Jim as the guru of low-level 

12 waste. And I know that embarrasses him, but he truly 

13 is.

14 So within the last few years there has 

15 been a growing interest in activity in the low-level 

16 waste arena. And let me just name a few items of 

17 interest, which is certainly not all-inclusive. We've 

18 had over the last many years the opening of the Clive, 

19 Utah and the WCS sites, the emergence of depleted 

20 uranium as a waste stream, the change in status of the 

21 Barnwell site, concentration and averaging and 

22 blending of low-level waste as the business model for 

23 some generators, the ongoing NRC reprocessing 

24 initiative, whatever it might turn out to be if we do 

25 proceed to fruition, and issues related to the 
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1 disposition of low-activity Rad waste and norm; these 

2 are just to name a few, and the list goes on. 

3 Another significant development happened 

4 in about the 1995 time frame where the Commission 

5 issued a probabilistic risk assessment policy 

6 statement that directed to staff to expand its use of 

7 probabilistic risk assessments and risk methods 

8 including areas such as low-level waste.

9 Consequently, with all the changes and the new 

10 developments, the staff prepared SECY-07-180, which 

11 was entitled Strategic Assessment of a Low-Level 

12 Waste, Radioactive Waste Regulatory Program. 

13 And let me just pause there for a second 

14 before I go on, because we talk a lot about the staff 

15 and the Commission and SECY Papers. And one of the 

16 things I found in speaking in many forums are it's not 

17 always obvious that all of at the members that are 

18 there really understand how the NRC does business. So 

19 if those of you that know will indulge me for a 

20 minute, I'll cover that.

21 Our Commissioners, we have five when fully 

22 filled and we do currently have five Commissioners, 

23 are nominated by the President of the United States 

24 and confirmed by the Senate; and then the President 

25 gets to choose who the chairman will be at any given 
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1 time. They only have three Commissioners from any 

2 political party. That was in the wisdom of Congress 

3 when they promulgated the Atomic Energy Act. And as 

4 an independent agency, the Commissioners fill a five5 year term. When they are appointed and confirmed in a 

6 timely manner they can be renewed.

7 They do not serve at the pleasure of the 

8 President except for the chairman as the chairman.

9 But if the chairman is asked to step back and be a 

10 Commissioner, they still fulfill their term if they so 

11 choose. And there is a separation of functions aspect 

12 to what we do. There is an NRC staff and then there 

13 is a Commission.

14 And so the NRC staff does all of the work 

15 with regard to implementing Commission policy and 

16 presenting the Commission with policy for decisions to 

17 make. And a majority vote of the Commission sets the 

18 policy. So when you hear us talk about those SECY 

19 Papers, in many cases the NRC staff is giving the 

20 Commission policy issues to debate and determine by a 

21 majority vote how they want the staff to proceed to 

22 implement the program.

23 So that's just a little bit about how we 

24 do business. 

25 So the SECY Paper that I referred to, 
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1 which is the strategic assessment, identified about 20 

2 ongoing and future staff actions and activities, along 

3 with associated schedules that the staff thought would 

4 need some attention by the NRC in one way or another, 

5 given the renewed level of interest in low-level 

6 waste. One of those areas, of course, concerned 

7 whether there might be a need for a Part 61 makeover, 

8 which was item 10 in the strategic assessment paper.

9 So why are we here today? Well, 

10 following -- in 2010 there was a Commission briefing 

11 on the blending of low-level waste, and the staff 

12 received Commission direction to outline its approach 

13 to a comprehensive revision to Part 61 that's risk 

14 informed and performance based. At the time, the staff 

15 was engaged in developing a technical basis to support 

16 a limited rulemaking to Part 61 that was intended to 

17 introduce both an explicit performance assessment 

18 requirement as well as a requirement for a human 

19 intrusion calculation to the Commission's low-level 

20 waste regulation. 

21 These regulatory enhancements are intended 

22 to deal with near-term issue of how to address new and 

23 emerging low level waste streams in the context of 

24 Part 61, as well as to improve the regulations 

25 alignment with the 1995 Commission PRA policy 
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1 statement. That limited rulemaking is currently under 

2 way.

3 In response to the Commissions direction 

4 though, the staff prepared a SECY Paper, SECY-10-165, 

5 which Larry just put up on the board, that determines 

6 some options on how to revise Part 61 in a manner 

7 that's risk informed and performance based. The staff 

8 recommended to the Commission that before the 

9 Commission deliberates on the various options that we 

10 meet with our stakeholders and get feedback, solicit 

11 reviews; and that's why we're here today. The 

12 beginning of that process is really starting with our 

13 public meeting today. And so this is the first such 

14 engagement of that and we hope to do more. The number 

15 of which will be determined as resources permit, but 

16 we will have a number of these as we go along.

17 As many of you know, meaningful, clear 

18 communication with the public is an important agency 

19 goal for the NRC. We pride ourselves as the 

20 recognized number one Federal agency to work. And of 

21 course we get a lot of grief about that. However, one 

22 of the things that we place a high premium on is 

23 communication and to make sure that we try to continue 

24 to improve our communication both internally and 

25 externally. 
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1 Consistent with the earlier Part 61 

2 development model, we once again would like to hear 

3 from stakeholders and seek your feedback on the 

4 presentations that will follow from Larry and his 

5 staff today. These presentations are intended to 

6 stimulate some thought and discussion and we hope that 

7 you'll be engaged.

8 Okay. I mentioned that we're going to 

9 have some future meetings, but we also expect to rely 

10 on technology to engage stakeholders using electronic 

11 media platforms like “GoToMeeting.COM” and the like. 

12 You may find that you wish to consider what was said 

13 today before you react and so if you chose to send us 

14 written comments, we're always happy to receive those 

15 and encourage those.

16 You must also have alternate views on 

17 changes to Part 61. And if yesterday's workshop was 

18 any example, I'm sure that we'll get plenty of them as 

19 we go forward.

20 In closing, I'd like to note that the NRC 

21 is always mindful of how it can improve regulatory 

22 efficiency and decision-making without compromising 

23 public health and safety and the protection of the 

24 environment. 

25 A prime example of the consciousness for 
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1 improvement in this area is nuclear power licensing 

2 activities that we are currently doing for new 

3 reactors. About a decade or so ago, the Commission 

4 amended its decision-making process to include early 

5 site permits, design certifications, and combine 

6 operating licenses. The marriage of these three 

7 elements is beginning to produces some real-time 

8 successes in the area of new reactor licensing as we 

9 review a number of applications. We'd like to hear 

10 from you as to whether similar changes are now 

11 appropriate for Part 61. At this point we're very 

12 open minded; we've formed no conclusions and are in an 

13 input-seeking mode. 

14 And so I thank you for your time and 

15 interest in being here today, especially on a Friday 

16 afternoon after a long week for many of you. And I 

17 hope that you will engage Larry and staff after you 

18 hear their presentations with some challenging issues 

19 for us to consider. Again, thank you and I hope that 

20 you have a good session this afternoon. Larry. 

21 MR. CAMPER: Thank you very much, Charlie.

22 Often when we're up talking with Charlie 

23 about issues in my program, which is a fairly broad 

24 program that includes decommissioning, of course, and 

25 low-level waste issues and waste-incidental-to-
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1 reprocessing and NEPA assessment and uranium recovery, 

2 he'll often look at me and say, is there anything in 

3 your division that is simple and straightforward? And 

4 the answer of course is, no, it's not. So we really do 

5 appreciate Dr. Miller coming out and spending time. 

6 He's actually been here the whole week during the 

7 conference. He's very interested in what goes on in 

8 our area. And he's a busy guy and, again, I very much 

9 appreciate him being here with us this week. 

10 Before we get into our presentations, I 

11 did want to address one issue that came up this 

12 morning. John Greeves raised a question regarding 

13 sufficient concentrations and we talked with our legal 

14 staff at lunchtime, and Lisa -- where's Lisa London

15 (NRC Office of the General Counsel - OGC); is she 

16 here? Lisa was going to make a point of clarification 

17 so there's no confusion about what was being said. 

18 And we did talk with John about it, so he's aware that 

19 we're going to make this clarification. But Lisa 

20 thought it was important that we -- that everyone 

21 stays on the same page --

22 MS. LONDON: I don't know if this is on? 

23 MR. CAMPER: Yeah, it's on.

24 MS. LONDON: I thought I had misheard 

25 something earlier that John (Greeves) had said, so I 
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1 just wanted to clarify in case anyone else thought 

2 they heard the same thing. Mr. Greeves raised a 

3 point; I thought he was stating that the Commission 

4 was in fact required to set the standards for 

5 sufficient concentrations pursuant to the definition 

6 of high-level radioactive waste in the Nuclear Waste 

7 Policy Act. What, in fact, he was saying was that the 

8 Commission has the authority to do so and that it was 

9 his and I'm assuming Jim Lieberman and Talisman's 

10 advice that they should do that and that, in doing so 

11 they should do it as a broad-brush effort, as opposed 

12 to in discrete situations such as West Valley. 

13 So I just wanted to make that 

14 clarification for the record. They were not, in fact, 

15 saying "required," and they are just saying 

16 "authority." Thanks.

17 MR. CAMPER: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you 

18 very much. 

19 All right, with that then, I'm going to 

20 introduce our first staff presentation, then each of 

21 the speakers will introduce the one who follows him in 

22 turn. Of course, our first speaker, who could better 

23 talk to us about the historical development of 10 CFR 

24 Part 61 better than Jim Kennedy? 

25 Now, I want you to know that for those who 
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1 weren't in that workshop yesterday afternoon, we were 

2 talking about old geezers and so forth. Jim made a 

3 declaratory statement that he was not to be considered 

4 as an old geezer. Okay. Jim.

5 MR. KENNEDY: Thank you Larry, it's a 

6 great pleasure to be here.

7 And today I'm going to give you a 

8 historical overview of the development of NRC's 

9 regulation in Part 61. I am going to describe what 

10 happened that caused NRC to undertake this large 

11 rulemaking; that is give you some context for what was 

12 going on at the time when Part 61 was initiated. I'm 

13 going to describe how we went about it. I'm going to 

14 also talk about some of the safety and risk management 

15 issues that were examined at that time. Some of them 

16 you heard yesterday, so I won't dwell too much on 

17 those. 

18 And I think it would be really interesting 

19 to spend more time going over the history. It's kind 

20 of like history in the schools now; you just don't pay 

21 much attention to it, but if you go back and look at 

22 it and ponder it and ask questions like, you know, 

23 what's different between now and then in waste 

24 generation rates, technology, experience, regulatory 

25 philosophy, and so forth? Why was that effort 
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1 successful? You know, what did they do right back 

2 then and what, if they had to do it over, would they 

3 do differently?

4 I would argue that, you know, in light of 

5 30 years of Part 61 being in place, that most people 

6 would agree that it's been a great success. We've had 

7 30 years of safe disposal of low-level waste. It's 

8 true that we're talking about improvements that we can 

9 make and risk informing it and so forth, but I think 

10 most folks would agree that it's been a big success 

11 and that there may be something to learn from how it 

12 was developed. 

13 Now, I'm not going to belabor geezers and 

14 all that. Somebody called me ancient yesterday; I 

15 won't disagree with that. I don't feel ancient, but I 

16 will say I was working -- you know, I had been working 

17 for some time before Part 61 was even developed. 

18 That said, I was not involved in the 

19 development of it. I've learned a lot, having worked 

20 in low-level waste for a long time. I've learned a 

21 lot about how it was developed. And I've worked with 

22 Paul Lohaus in particular and some of the other folks 

23 who were involved at the time, so I've learned a lot 

24 from them. 

25 But a lot of what I've learned and a lot 
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1 of my talk today came from NUREG-1853, The History and 

2 Framework of Commercial Low-Level Waste Management in 

3 The United States. That was mentioned yesterday, it 

4 was prepared mostly by Doctors Ryan and Lee, Mike Ryan 

5 and Mike Lee, when they were with the Advisory 

6 Committee on Nuclear Waste. It was published in 

7 January 2007. It's really a great summary of the 

8 national program and more specifically the regulatory 

9 program Part 61 in particular, but even beyond that as 

10 well. And you know, I would say that I refer to it 

11 probably once a month, there's a question that might 

12 come in from the public or public affairs or one of 

13 the technical staff and I have it on my desktop and I

14 just call it up and do a word search and it's a really 

15 useful document.

16 Well, first the early practices for 

17 commercial low-level waste. In the beginning, ocean 

18 disposal was the primary method by which commercial 

19 low-level waste was disposed of. It occurred at 60 

20 different sites, mainly in the Atlantic and Pacific 

21 Oceans. It occurred from 1946. They started phasing 

22 it out in the early 1960s. It was first done by the 

23 Navy up until 1959 and then the Atomic Energy 

24 Commission licensed seven companies to perform this 

25 ocean disposal. There were, in fact, even standards 
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1 for ocean disposal that had been developed by the 

2 National Bureau of Standards back in 1954.

3 Now, back in that time there was adverse 

4 public reaction to marine pollution. That eventually 

5 led to the 1972 London Convention, which put 

6 constraints on dumping in the sea. On top of that, it 

7 wasn't cheap to dispose of low-level waste in ocean; 

8 it cost about ten times what it cost to dispose of it 

9 on land. And for those reasons the AEC shifted from a 

10 policy of ocean disposal to disposal on land.

11 Ultimately, their policy was to encourage the 

12 development of private disposal sites. But between 

13 the time that ocean disposal was being phased out and 

14 private companies had developed new disposal sites for 

15 commercial waste, as an interim measure they allowed 

16 commercial waste to be disposed of on DOE sites, or AE 

17 sites at the time. There were 16 of those.

18 Now, of course most of us in this room are 

19 familiar with the early commercial disposal sites, 

20 Beatty, Richland, Barnwell, Maxey Flats, West Valley, 

21 and Sheffield. They were all licensed in the 1960s. 

22 There's only been two more that have been licensed 

23 since then under Part 61 or the agreements date 

24 equivalents, and that's the Clive site in Utah and the 

25 recently licensed Waste Control Specialist site in 
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1 Texas. 

2 We should note here that they were all 

3 licensed under 10 CFR Part 20. There was a provision 

4 in Part 20, specifically 20.302, which was just a few 

5 sentences long. There were no systematic site 

6 selection criteria or design criteria, just general 

7 licensing criteria – only a few sentences in 20 CFR 

8 20.302.

9 Now, in the 1970s there were performance 

10 issues at three sites: Maxey Flats, West Valley, and 

11 Sheffield. Problems occurred at these sites. As time 

12 passed some waste consolidated and collapsed causing 

13 some of the disposal trenches to settle and become 

14 depressions in the ground. These depressions 

15 collected rain and therefore increased contact of 

16 water with the disposed waste. Site and groundwater 

17 conditions around the trenches at these sites also 

18 combined with waste consolidation and led to releases 

19 of radionuclides from the trenches through surface and 

20 ground water. There weren't significant release of 

21 radioactivity off-site, however.

22 Those problems and performance issues were 

23 caused at least in part by the lack of the specificity 

24 in the regulations. That is, when they were licensed 

25 and when companies went out and developed these sites, 
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1 they just didn't have much guidance or regulatory 

2 criteria on which to base their decisions.

3 Now, these performance problems drew a lot 

4 of attention at the national level. The public was 

5 very interested. There were several Government 

6 Accountability Office reports at the time. There were 

7 Congressional hearings. NRC, Charlie mentioned in his 

8 talk, one of its first major actions as an agency was 

9 to look into low-level waste and the problems at these 

10 sites. 

11 We formed a task force, and in 1977 the 

12 task force issued its report. They concluded that 

13 there was an urgent need to establish a comprehensive 

14 set of standards for low-level waste disposal and a 

15 need to accelerate the development of the regulatory 

16 program for the disposal of low-level waste. So this 

17 is really the beginning of Part 61 in 1977.

18 I'm going to go off point for a second 

19 here. At the same time that Part 61 was being 

20 initiated and later developed, there were 

21 Congressional actions with respect to the management 

22 and disposal of low-level waste, not really so much 

23 from a safety point of view, because that's covered 

24 under NRC's regulatory program and the Agreement State

25 program, but at a broader policy level. 
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1 The Congress passed the Low-Level Waste 

2 Policy Act in 1980 making states responsible for 

3 providing disposal capacity either within or outside 

4 their state. It authorized states to form compacts 

5 and to exclude out of compact waste and it enabled 

6 them to do so after January 1st, 1986. Now, as you 

7 know, the Act was amended in 1985, it extended the 

8 timetable by seven years and it also addressed some 

9 other issues such as GTCC, making it a Federal 

10 responsibility, emergency access by which generators 

11 who were excluded under the compact provisions could 

12 have a ruling that would enable them to dispose of 

13 their waste under certain extreme conditions, and 

14 below regulatory concern was another topic that was 

15 addressed in the Amendments Act. 

16 But returning to Part 61, from my point of 

17 view looking at this, this was a relatively quick 

18 rulemaking, given how controversial and comprehensive 

19 it was. The ANPR (Advanced Notice of Proposed 

20 Rulemaking) was first published in October of 1978. I 

21 think as Charlie mentioned, there was considerable 

22 stakeholder outreach at the time, there were four 

23 regional workshops during 1980. It's interesting to 

24 reflect back because my perception is stakeholder 

25 outreach is a relatively new phenomenon, say the past 
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1 15 or 20 years. And yet back in 1980 they really 

2 reached out to the public and had, you know, something 

3 that's comparable to what we're doing today.

4 We published the proposed Rule in July of 

5 '81. We published a draft EIS and the final EIS in 

6 1981 and '82. And the final Rule was promulgated in 

7 December, 1982. So from start to finish, really, it 

8 is four years, five years. 

9 Part 61, just an overview of it. First, I 

10 don't have a bullet for this, but it applies to all 

11 land disposal facilities. That does not include 

12 geologic disposal facilities but would include 

13 everything else. We have specific technical 

14 requirements for near-surface and above-ground 

15 disposal technology. It applies to commercial low16 level waste disposal, that is, privately owned 

17 companies, and uses an integrated systems approach in 

18 the regulations consisting of site selection, site 

19 design and operation, waste classification, waste 

20 form, and closure. 

21 Now, NRC's Regulatory philosophy in 

22 developing Part 61, it included the usual things. 

23 That is, we protect members of the general public, we 

24 protect workers under Part 61, we have redundant 

25 systems; that is some defense-in-depth. But what was 
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1 unique about Part 61 was that it was addressing long2 term waste isolation and protection of an inadvertent 

3 intruder; those were two new areas that were not 

4 addressed in other parts of the regulation. 

5 Now, I'm not going to go into this in 

6 detail because I think most of you heard a lot about 

7 this yesterday, but the primary technical basis for 

8 Part 61 is contained in the Draft EIS, NUREG-0782. 

9 Its purpose was to provide the basis and record for 

10 decision on requirements that were adopted. Its scope 

11 includes the health impacts of low-level waste 

12 disposal, various means of limiting impacts such as 

13 waste form and deeper disposal, the benefits achieved, 

14 and alternatives in facility environments, waste 

15 characteristics, design, and operating practices.

16 It's really quite a large and complex and 

17 complicated document I would say. You know, I've read 

18 it many times myself and in my review there are only a 

19 handful of people who probably really understand most 

20 of what's in there. I would include Dave Esh in that 

21 category and Matt Kozak, Mike Ryan, Mike Lee. But 

22 it's an interesting document and there's a tremendous 

23 amount of information in there.

24 Now, the waste streams that were 

25 considered at the time were commercial generators. 
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1 The authors of the DEIS constructed a low-level waste 

2 profile, they identified dominant radionuclides from 

3 waste generators, they defined a likely inventory for 

4 disposal consisting of 36 waste streams among four 

5 waste classes. The four classes were light-water 

6 reactor process waste, trash, low-specific-activity 

7 waste such as bio-waste, and special wastes such as 

8 sealed sources. They identified in particular 24 

9 radionuclides of interest, and they looked at exposure 

10 pathways consisting of those that were activity 

11 limited, that is off-site releases to a member of the 

12 general public, as well as concentration limited, 

13 which affect protection of an inadvertent intruder 

14 onto the site.

15 They considered potential mitigation or 

16 risk management approaches in the EIS or DEIS. Namely 

17 controlling waste stream concentrations to limit the 

18 exposures, specifying waste form and packaging 

19 configurations, relying on limited engineering 

20 features, and adopting institutional controls. 

21 The dose standard that was proposed in the 

22 original Part 61, the proposed Part 61 rather, was 

23 25/75/25 millirem per year, coupled with 4 millirem 

24 per year at the public water supply source. The DEIS 

25 also had a three-tier waste classification system that 
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1 we're familiar with, LLW Classes A, B, and C, based on 

2 the 500 millirem per year dose to an inadvertent 

3 intruder.

4 The FEIS was published in NUREG-0945. 

5 It's not an updated version of the Draft EIS as most 

6 final EIS are; rather it simply references the earlier 

7 document and presents the decision basis and 

8 conclusions for the final regulations.

9 Now, this is kind of busy. It's a summary 

10 of the Part 61 waste classification system, which is 

11 only a part of the regulation, but one that gets a lot 

12 of attention. I'm not going to go through all of 

13 that. Suffice it to say that, you know, there are 

14 three classes that are defined in Part 61 and the 

15 controls that reutilized and specified in Part 61 

16 increase with the increase in hazard from A, B to C.

17 Well, what about other radioactive waste, 

18 other low-level waste? Of course, there's GTCC; and 

19 in 1988 or '89 we added a provision to Part 61 that 

20 addresses GTCC. It presumes that GTCC would be 

21 disposed of in a geologic repository, licensed under 

22 either Part 60 or when Yucca Mountain was viable, Part 

23 63. It also says that the Commission can approve 

24 other alternatives. Those alternatives could be 

25 approved under Part 61. The performance objectives 
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1 would apply in that case, the four performance 

2 objectives in Part 61. However, there are no detailed 

3 technical requirements for GTCC waste in Part 61.

4 Below regulatory concern. NRC proposed 

5 standards for NRC waste in 1986 and 1990; Congress 

6 revoked those in 1992. And from about 2000 to 2005 we 

7 worked on rulemaking on disposition of solid 

8 materials, which would have enabled disposal of and 

9 recycling of materials that met the IAEA standards for 

10 clearance. And as Dr. Meserve mentioned in his 

11 keynote address on Monday, that rulemaking was put on 

12 hold in 2005, in part because of higher priority 

13 rulemakings dealing with security. 

14 And then another important low-level waste 

15 stream that's not addressed in Part 61 explicitly is 

16 low-activity waste. Low-activity waste is low-level 

17 waste at the very low end of the spectrum. Low Class 

18 A is another way of saying it. Sometimes it's disposed 

19 of under NRC or Agreement State provisions in Section 

20 20.2002. There's a typo on the slide, I apologize for 

21 that. And EPA over the years has addressed it. They 

22 had an ANPR on the topic back in 2003 and I think they 

23 are considering it again, perhaps as showing some 

24 guidance in the future.

25 Low-activity waste also considers or 
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1 includes rather, NORM waste, even though that's not 

2 regulated by NRC. Many folks define low-activity 

3 waste as including NORM; that is uranium and thorium 

4 in relatively low concentrations. And states regulate 

5 NORM. Much of that waste goes to RCRA subtitle D and 

6 subtitle C landfills.

7 Just to summarize, Part 61 rulemaking. 

8 You know, it's been, I think, a success for the last 

9 30 years. It's provided for safe disposal and caused 

10 improved practices for disposal. I think we'd all 

11 agree it's outdated in some respects and there are 

12 lots of different ways that we could go about revising 

13 it that we're going to be talking about this 

14 afternoon.

15 I'll just finish with this. I want to 

16 emphasize how helpful and useful the NUREG-1853 is.

17 Another good reference that I'll mention is a 

18 publication of DOE back in 1994 regarding the history 

19 of commercial sites. And that's somewhat different 

20 from NUREG-1853 in that it focuses mainly on the sites 

21 themselves and the geology and hydrology and the 

22 licensing history and so forth, and that's another 

23 good reference that I've used for today as well.

24 Thank you for your attention. Any 

25 clarifying questions?
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1 MR. CAMERON: Jim, I think we're going to 

2 go through all the presentations. 

3 MR. KENNEDY: Okay. 

4 MR. CAMERON: And I just thank everybody 

5 for their patience not only here in the room, but on 

6 the phone. We're going to go through all the 

7 presentations and then we'll be back to you. Thank 

8 you, Jim. 

9 MR. CAMPER: Jim, thank you for that 

10 historical overview of Part 61. And what I want to 

11 try to do now is continue to paint the picture of what 

12 brings us to where we are now by addressing some 

13 recent developments that have come along.

14 Dr. Miller in his comments referenced the 

15 low-level waste strategic assessment, which was done 

16 in 2007. We had a situation in the low-level waste 

17 program, which I think even Dr. Miller mentioned. The 

18 low-level waste program has been in a maintenance mode 

19 for years, staffed at about five FTE. And around 2006 

20 the staff -- we looked at this and we said, wait a 

21 minute, there's just more and more work that's coming 

22 up in the low-level waste area and we've got to do an 

23 assessment and try to figure out okay, what can we do 

24 with the resources that we have and share that 

25 information with the Commission? 
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1 So we did this strategic assessment. And 

2 we looked at 20 various activities as part of that 

3 assessment and identified seven high-priority items 

4 and then we shared that with the Commission and said, 

5 okay, these are the seven high-priority items, this is 

6 how we're going to handle the remaining 13, in this is 

7 the time frame. And the Commission was okay with 

8 that. 

9 Well, one of the things that was set forth 

10 as a high priority item was to update the Branch 

11 Technical Position, the Concentration Averaging BTP.

12 We had a workshop on the 24th of February, just a week 

13 before the symposium in which we had an invited panel 

14 and we had a very active discussion about the BTP. 

15 The BTP, of course, is the operational document that 

16 is used every day as utilities and other producers of 

17 radioactive waste go about packaging the waste and 

18 preparing it for classification and so forth. So we 

19 started down the path of updating the BTP with the 

20 goal of making it more risk informed and performance 

21 based and easier, frankly, to read. 

22 Then along came the disposal of large 

23 quantities of depleted uranium. In fact, in the SECY 

24 PAPER that you see cited there, SECY-08-147, which the 

25 staff prepared in response to Commission direction 
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1 because the Commission directed the staff outside of 

2 the adjudicatory proceedings associated with the 

3 Louisiana Energy Services licensing hearing to 

4 evaluate whether we felt that Part 61, specifically 

5 Section 61.55(a)(6), which is the default provision 

6 which makes depleted uranium Class A LLW according to 

7 the Section 61.55 waste classification tables, should 

8 in fact be modified in any way to handle the fact that 

9 there was going to be these large quantities of 

10 depleted uranium to be disposed of. Large meaning 

11 that if one looks at the DOE DU located at Paducah and 

12 Port Smith, enforcement anticipated DU coming from 

13 uranium enrichment facilities that are being licensed 

14 and will operate over 30 years, you are in excess of 1 

15 million metric tons of depleted uranium. So clearly 

16 it was a problem that warranted some attention.

17 We conducted a couple of public meetings 

18 and then made a recommendation at SECY-08-147 that 

19 yes, we felt there was a need to change the 

20 regulations. We thought that it would be appropriate 

21 to require a site-specific performance assessment to 

22 address the disposal of what became known as unique 

23 waste streams. A unique waste stream is any waste 

24 stream that was not evaluated at the time Part 61 was 

25 created, including large quantities of depleted 
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1 uranium, of course. 

2 The Commission agreed with that and 

3 directed us to proceed with a limited rulemaking, 

4 which is currently under way. We plan to produce a 

5 proposed rule later this year, I think it is October 

6 of this year.

7 As part of that we will be identifying a 

8 period of performance, we will be identifying other 

9 technical parameters that need to be evaluated, we 

10 will be doing more work on the intruder protection 

11 scenario by requiring a deterministic dose 

12 calculation, assigning a dose value to that. 

13 And the Commission, interestingly enough 

14 in SECY-08-147, the staff requirements memorandum, did 

15 something else. In addition to requiring the staff to 

16 go ahead and proceed to do the limited rulemaking, 

17 which is under way currently, the unique waste streams 

18 rulemaking, it directed us to budget for, and we 

19 assume they meant proceed to do therefore, a risk 

20 informing of the waste classification scheme. That 

21 assignment is on the table today for the NRC staff to 

22 carry out. Dr. Esh, who follows me, will talk about 

23 that in more detail; and it is the first option in the 

24 SECY Paper that the staff has prepared to address this 

25 issue of perhaps some sort of comprehensive revision 
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1 to the Part 61.

2 In terms of the updating of the 

3 concentration averaging BTP, along the way we started 

4 to do that work. We actually had a version published 

5 to make it more user-friendly. No changes to its 

6 technical content, but along came this concept called 

7 blending. So the staff decided that we should put the 

8 effort to update the BTP on hold until we could assess 

9 this issue called blending, communicate with the 

10 Commission about that topic, and then have the 

11 Commission decide what they want to do about this 

12 topic called blending. 

13 What was interesting about blending was 

14 that blending is not specifically addressed in our 

15 regulations, nor is it prohibited by our regulations. 

16 So the staff prepared a Commission paper, you see it 

17 there, SECY-10-43, we held some public workshops, we 

18 conducted a Commission briefing last summer. And then 

19 as a result of that the Commission said blending 

20 should be added to and addressed within the branch 

21 technical position, the updating of the BTP, and gave 

22 us certain specific direction about things to address 

23 that are related to blending, such as for example 

24 homogeneity criteria. So today the BTP update 

25 continues, blending is now being addressed within 
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1 that. 

2 The next item deals with reprocessing. 

3 The issue for potential commercial reprocessing has 

4 emerged again. The staff undertook an analysis and 

5 realized in doing a gaps analysis there are things 

6 that we would need to do to enhance our existing 

7 regulatory infrastructure if we were going to license 

8 a commercial reprocessing facility today. Within that 

9 gaps analysis one of the areas that was identified was 

10 the fact that commercial fuel reprocessing certainly 

11 could result in new waste streams that have not been 

12 currently addressed in Part 61 and therefore that more 

13 work was needed in that particular area. 

14 You see that SECY Paper identified there, 

15 SECY-09-82, in which the staff's analysis of those 

16 gaps and its suggested path for proceeding ahead to 

17 address how to deal with commercial reprocessing, 

18 including the advent of new waste streams. 

19 SECY-10-165, you know, the subject matter 

20 of why we are here today, identifies options for 

21 revising Part 61. It does focus upon approaches that 

22 are risk informed and performance based, but in 

23 developing the SECY Paper what the staff recommended 

24 that we do is to proceed to go get stakeholder input. 

25 Clearly, Part 61 is a regulatory part that we knew 
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1 would generate a great deal of interest and there is a 

2 strong diversity of opinions about the existing 

3 regulation or how it might be modified or how it might 

4 be improved and so forth. 

5 So our recommendation was let's hold 

6 numerous public interface meetings and get some ideas. 

7 We do identify five options in there. And I would 

8 make it clear though that at this point in time the 

9 staff has no preconceived notion at all on how we 

10 should proceed on Part 61, nor should we, because we 

11 would not be true to the process if we had 

12 preconceived notions at this point. 

13 Updating DOE Order 435.1. Of course, DOE 

14 has undertaken that update for some time now; today is 

15 the third public meeting. Some discussions this 

16 morning clearly make us all realize the synergism and 

17 perhaps the opportunity for some alignment as DOE 

18 continues to update that Order, and that's something 

19 that we'll be looking at very closely as we proceed 

20 down the road.

21 In terms of the five options in the SECY 

22 Paper, the first was to risk inform the Part 61 waste 

23 classification framework. Again, that is an assignment 

24 that we have right now per the staff requirements 

25 memorandum that came out of SECY-08-147, and Dave will 
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1 talk more about that in a moment.

2 The second was a comprehensive revision 

3 option. We refer to it lovingly as the “Big C.” 

4 Clean slate, open mind, what should Part 61 look 

5 like? If we were going to start anew and look at it 

6 from the beginning, what would it look like? That's 

7 the comprehensive revision idea. 

8 The third is the international alignment 

9 option. Of course as you know, the International 

10 Atomic Energy Agency has a different waste 

11 classification system and includes at one end the 

12 category of exempt waste, and at the other end has 

13 high-level waste. It is a waste management process, 

14 but the issue here is could we, should we align with 

15 the international approach?

16 The fourth option was the use of a site17 specific waste acceptance criteria. Very much like 

18 the DOE model, the use of a site-specific performance 

19 assessment with a waste acceptance criteria being 

20 identified for each particular site. And if you stop 

21 and think about it, given the work that we're doing 

22 today under the limited rulemaking, where the 

23 Commission directed us to require a site-specific 

24 performance assessment for unique waste streams, we 

25 would be then very close to that option once that 
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1 particular regulatory activity is complete. So that's 

2 the fourth option. 

3 And the fifth option is to maintain the 

4 status quo. What's interesting about that particular 

5 option though, and you're going to hear more about it, 

6 it's a negative option. Under that option, it would 

7 say don't proceed to risk inform the waste 

8 classification scheme. Rather, proceed only with the 

9 existing assignment; that being the unique waste 

10 streams rulemaking. And you'll hear more about that.

11 Obviously, this is all about getting 

12 stakeholder input. We are trying to cover each of 

13 these topics so that, again, everyone has a current 

14 understanding. We've got information that we can talk 

15 about today, but stakeholder feedback will be critical 

16 today as it will be in the future.

17 So with that I'll stop and Dr. Esh will be 

18 talking about the first option within the paper. 

19 Dave. 

20 DR. ESH: All right. Thank you, Larry. 

21 This is an interesting presentation. When 

22 I was assigned it, they gave me all of five minutes 

23 and I said, well, you can get a title slide and a joke 

24 and some conclusions, then. And so they gave me five 

25 more minutes, so I have a little bit more to talk 
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1 about that.

2 I would like to note that my title is 

3 incorrect on this slide. Somebody decided to make me 

4 a senior staff scientist and I'm actually a senior 

5 systems performance analyst, which means I have the 

6 unfortunate situation of being on a mailing list of 

7 being sent innovative solutions for the government's 

8 IT problems.

9 This topic has been around a long time, 

10 waste classification, and so there will naturally be 

11 some resistance to change in it. We heard some 

12 yesterday about even whether the whole system should 

13 be scrapped. In this presentation, I'm going to talk 

14 about some options that you may consider keeping the 

15 system, but not the radical option of maybe scrapping 

16 it altogether. We have other things that have been 

17 around an awful long time and we have trouble 

18 scrapping those too, like Jim Kennedy and Larry 

19 Camper.

20 And we did hear yesterday from some people 

21 about waste classification. I'm sure this seems like 

22 a bit of an oxymoron, risk informing waste 

23 classification, because they say, well, when you're in 

24 this scenario of people disturbing waste, that's not a 

25 risk to begin with. And there's some merit to that, 
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1 especially when we're talking on shorter time frames. 

2 When we get the longer time frames though, I think 

3 there's more merit in having some kind of a 

4 classification system. So this risk informing waste 

5 classification might be a little bit like referring to 

6 Milli Vanilli as singers, for some of you younger 

7 folks in the audience.

8 Background. Our NRC waste classification 

9 system is prescriptive. And what we mean by that is 

10 NRC took the burden upon themselves of doing the 

11 assessment and generating something that would apply 

12 to everyone then. The approach was based on the 

13 assumption at the time that we would have many low14 level waste facilities. So they saw this as a burden, 

15 this 61.42 area where you're trying to consider what 

16 happens to people if they disturb waste 

17 inadvertently. It's much more reliant on the human 

18 component and so it's much more open to speculation 

19 and interpretation. And they viewed it as being 

20 difficult for a diverse set of stakeholders and a 

21 diverse set of groups to come to similar outcomes when 

22 you have that, maybe, higher amount of uncertainty. 

23 So what NRC did was they performed inverse 

24 calculations. And I'll talk about that in a slide 

25 coming up; what I mean by that. The approach resulted 
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1 in the waste classification tables that you see in the 

2 existing regulations Tables 1 and 2 at Section 61.55.

3 But the bottom line is then that this approach 

4 constrains all sites to the NRC sets of assumptions 

5 and parameter values when they did that calculation. 

6 So a little bit more background. What's 

7 an inverse calculation that I just referred to in the 

8 previous slide? Well, it's an estimate of the doses 

9 that result from unit concentrations. And tables 1 

10 and 2 of Section 61.55, they're constrained by a 

11 residential construction scenario and a human site. 

12 So, if you are a facility in an arid site and you 

13 dispose of your waste much deeper than three meters 

14 for instance, you're still bound by the waste 

15 classification concentrations that were backed out 

16 that were derived for this scenario and this 

17 particular site and its environmental conditions, et 

18 cetera. 

19 The analysis did consider dilution factors 

20 and the distribution of the wastes. So that, I'd say, 

21 it is leaning in a risk informed direction, including 

22 dilution and dispersion. And then what they did is 

23 they calculated the concentration that would result in 

24 5 millisieverts, 5 millirems. So you put in a unit 

25 concentration, estimate the dose and then put a dose 
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1 of 500 millirem in the ratio to the concentration and 

2 that backs out the concentrations that you see in the 

3 tables. So those tables that are developed are 

4 consistent with the institutional controls, intruder 

5 barriers and waste segregation requirements that you 

6 find in the Rule. 

7 The waste classification system was built 

8 assuming that low-level waste is going to have 

9 characteristics where it decays over time, it becomes 

10 less hazardous, and by putting in requirements for 

11 segregation and intruder barriers you can ensure that 

12 for waste that is higher concentrations and might pose 

13 a hazard beyond, say, 100 years when our active 

14 institutional control period ends, if you put in an 

15 intruder barrier or you bury it deeper, you can ensure 

16 that the people that might be exposed to it sometime 

17 in the future will be protected. 

18 So what are some approaches that we could 

19 use to risk inform? And I've color coded some of this 

20 because listening to regulatory speak, it's easy for 

21 your eyes to glaze over, but there are differences 

22 here as I walk down the slide and I want you to pay 

23 attention to what those differences are. So if we 

24 start at the top, one approach that we could do would 

25 be to revise the tables that were in the regulation, 
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1 adding nuclides that aren't there now with the old 

2 generic modeling. So the old generic modeling, we 

3 heard about it yesterday. They developed some 

4 computer codes in FORTRAN, I believe they're called

5 impacts and they did the calculations that were used 

6 for development of the EIS and therefore the 

7 regulation.

8 Well, at some point in the very recent, 

9 within the last couple of years, Sandia National 

10 Laboratory did optical character recognition of those 

11 files and basically got the old codes up and running. 

12 So if needed, we have access to those old codes, we 

13 could exercise them, it would be pretty 

14 straightforward. Now, those old codes don't have 

15 probably every element and every isotope that you 

16 might be concerned with, so you might have to add in 

17 additional isotopes to it. But they do include more 

18 isotopes than ended up with the final tables in the 

19 regulations, so it would be easy to do that step. So 

20 that's at the top where you're at that time point of 

21 smaller effort but limited flexibility. So effort is 

22 low up here, flexibility is limited.

23 So the next thing we could do would be to 

24 revise the tables to add nuclides and maybe with new 

25 generic modeling. So what do I mean by new generic 
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1 modeling? You can update parameter values, you could 

2 update the dosimetry, there are some things that you 

3 could keep the same sort of calculation but make it 

4 more recent and add in the radionuclides you want. 

5 That would be a step in the more risk informed 

6 direction or at least using more modern information 

7 that we may have. 

8 Then the next level down below that, we 

9 could do something like revise the tables to add new 

10 radionuclides and maybe do new generic modeling. So 

11 NRC would still be doing the modeling in this case and 

12 we would still develop a table, but it might be a more 

13 sophisticated table, okay? So I put a 3-D table here, 

14 that would be wonderful, right? The code of Federal 

15 regulations would probably crash if we said we wanted 

16 a 3-D table put in it. But we could take a 3-D table 

17 and make it two-dimensional in the document. 

18 And what do I mean by that? So that would 

19 mean, like, well, maybe a facility you could have 

20 depth and lifetime of an intruder barrier, for 

21 instance. If you analyzed -- did this inverse 

22 calculation with updated information and you said, 

23 well, two main variables I want people to be able to 

24 account for at their facility would be how deep 

25 they're going to put it and how much effort they want 
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1 to put into their intruder barrier. That could result 

2 in different concentrations that they could be allowed 

3 depending on how deep they put their waste and what 

4 sort of barrier they put in. 

5 You know, and this is starting to move 

6 away from keeping it simple. You know, you want to 

7 make it as simple as possible but no simpler. And it 

8 would provide more flexibility though, but sometimes 

9 flexibility can come at a cost. It would be more 

10 effort and it would be more complicated. 

11 And then at the bottom something that 

12 we've talked about quite a bit would be whether there 

13 would be merit to go to a site specific waste 

14 classification approach. That's what's done in DOE, 

15 that's what's done in a lot of international 

16 countries. That would give a great deal of 

17 flexibility to determining what waste can go where. 

18 It would be also, correspondingly, a lot of extra 

19 effort because you'd essentially be doing this 

20 calculation at each site, needing to review it, 

21 needing to get stakeholders to agree to it. It would 

22 be a lot more effort.

23 So what are so pros and cons of increasing 

24 site-specificity for waste classification? Well, some 

25 pros would be that it would be more risk informed. I 
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1 recognize that some people believe that looking at the 

2 intruder and the disturbance of the material is not 

3 risk to begin with, but I believe that depends on the 

4 waste that you're dealing with and how long it's going 

5 to persist. It's very difficult for us in our short 

6 experience to translate that into these very long time 

7 frames. And human behavior over very long time frames 

8 gets more and more uncertain. So you have to be 

9 practical and understanding of that uncertainty and 

10 develop some approach in your regulation and guidance, 

11 et cetera that accounts for that.

12 So the pros would be risk informed greater 

13 flexibility. It would align the site actions more 

14 directionally with decreasing stakeholder risk. So in 

15 the system now where the waste concentrations are 

16 basically hardwired and they're applied the same for 

17 all sites. As long as they accept waste that meets 

18 those concentrations, there's no incentive for them to 

19 necessarily do something else for that waste. There 

20 may be for Section 61.41 to show that they can meet 

21 the Section 61.41 performance objective, but there's 

22 no direct incentive for them to align their 

23 calculation more with affecting the stakeholders' risk 

24 at their site. 

25 If you go to one of these more detailed 
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1 approaches that I had on the previous slide at the 

2 bottom here, I think those would more directly align 

3 the action that you're taking with maybe some risk; 

4 and it would be more consistent with what's going on 

5 in the international community.

6 So cons would be that the effort is 

7 definitely going to be larger and you're going to need 

8 more regulatory oversight because you're essentially 

9 handing off part of the calculation from the regulator 

10 that goes through the rulemaking process and subject 

11 to public comment to the licensing process performed 

12 by the licensee and reviewed by the regulator. So 

13 that puts more burden on the regulator to review those 

14 calculations and make sure they were done 

15 appropriately.

16 It could possibly increase stakeholder 

17 confusion. And what I say by this is if you go to 

18 let's say a waste acceptance approach; you could end 

19 up with a concentration at one site that might be 

20 significantly lower or higher than the concentration 

21 at another site. So the stakeholders at one site will 

22 say, hey, but they accept waste that's at a much lower 

23 concentration than what you're accepting here for me; 

24 why are you exposing me to this more hazardous 

25 material? And so we would have to -- NRC and the 
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1 other stakeholders that would be using this effort 

2 with more approach, would have to be able to 

3 communicate what this means and how it's working for 

4 them and why they are still protected.

5 And then you also run the risk of 

6 revisions. So if somebody -- even if you consider 

7 well, NRC has the risk of revision right now, because 

8 we did the calculation, we may revise it, some 

9 concentrations may be higher, some concentrations may 

10 be lower. But if you go to a site specific DOE-like 

11 WAC approach, the site does the calculation, they may 

12 do a calculation, everybody reviews and approves it 

13 and then they get some new information sometime down 

14 the line, new measurements for something they thought 

15 they knew very well, and it changes their calculation 

16 and then changes the concentrations that they could 

17 accept. So that would be a challenge with going to a 

18 WAC approach. 

19 Also I would acknowledge that in the 

20 commercial realm where you have businesses that are 

21 competing, that may be a different scenario than say 

22 in the DOE world where they have -- they use the WAC 

23 approach but the disposal sites aren't really 

24 competing with each other; they're just trying to best 

25 put the waste where it needs to go. But in the real 
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1 world you have businesses competing; you can have all 

2 these human effects. Like a site develops a waste 

3 concentration limit for a particular nuclide which 

4 allows them to take a waste. Another site is at a 

5 lower limit because of the characteristics of their 

6 site. They may have an incentive to say, well, how 

7 can we get our limit in better alignment with this 

8 site over here, when maybe it's not justified.

9 So in the real world I think there could 

10 be complications and unintended consequences from 

11 going to some of the more complex approaches. But 

12 hey, we're here for you and we'd like to hear your 

13 feedback on what you think is appropriate. And this 

14 can range from the existing system is just fine to 

15 scrap the whole idea of waste classification or any of 

16 the alternatives that I presented in between. So I 

17 thank you for your attention.

18 DR. LEE: Hi, good afternoon. My name is 

19 Mike Lee, I'm with FSME. First of all let me get the 

20 record straight, I got Dave's title wrong on the 

21 slide. So I'll take the caning later. 

22 Anyway, I'm here to talk about the Big C, 

23 which Larry referred to earlier. And I need to just 

24 dispel one rumor, the Big C doesn't refer to Larry, 

25 it's shorthand for the comprehensive revision option 
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1 to Part 61. Even so, Larry is still the Big C. 

2 That being said, Jim, you get the 

3 continuing education credits for getting the history 

4 of low-level waste right, so we'll work out exactly 

5 how many credits you get later on after the meeting.

6 I'd like to acknowledge also Howard Larson. He worked 

7 on the NUREG as well and it was a lot of fun working 

8 with him and Mike Ryan, and it was just an interesting 

9 task to take on. The committee was preparing to 

10 review the strategic assessment that Jim Kennedy and 

11 Jim Shaffner and Mike Tokar were putting together, so 

12 the charge from Dr. Ryan was he didn't understand how 

13 we got to where we are today. So that was kind of the 

14 motivation behind the development of the document. 

15 As Jim pointed out, when Part 61 was 

16 developed there really wasn't a knowledge base to work 

17 from. RCRA didn't exist. The operating disposal 

18 sites weren't performing very well. There was little 

19 international experience in waste management. And 

20 then you fast forward to today, you know, 30, 31 years 

21 later whatever, maybe 40 years later, there is a lot 

22 of experience in risk management. We're not starting 

23 with -- for those of you who might be Latin students 

24 from parochial school, there's a term "tabula rasa," 

25 which means a blank slate. And the Big C is not 
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1 intended to refer to a blank slate, it's intended to 

2 say today -- or to suggest to you folks, our 

3 stakeholders and other interested members of the 

4 public if we were to start over today, knowing what we 

5 know about waste management of a variety of different 

6 types, how would we develop a low-level waste 

7 regulation? 

8 So starting from scratch might not the be 

9 the best choice of words, but it's essentially if we 

10 were to take what we know today, how would we redo a 

11 commercial low-level waste regulation in the 

12 United States? And the answer in many respects 

13 depends on what types of waste streams we intend to 

14 manage. And that kind of leads to the next slide.

15 If you go to Appendix B in NUREG-1853, I 

16 think, in the low-level waste white paper there's a 

17 review of the historical development of definitions 

18 for the various radioactive waste classes. And we 

19 know that low-level waste is not certain things but 

20 what we do know is that commercial low-level waste is 

21 Part 61 light waste I can kind of refer to as the 

22 classic 36 waste streams, 24 radionuclides that were 

23 identified in the EIS work. From the recent LES 

24 decision-making, we are reminded that according to

25 Section 61.55(a)(6), if it's not listed in table 1 or 
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1 table 2, it's Class-A low-level waste. This can also 

2 include low activity waste. 

3 And as Larry alluded to earlier, there is 

4 an initiative under way right now to develop a 

5 reprocessing regulation. It's currently referred to 

6 as 71X, and over time we're going to get more 

7 direction from the Commission on that. But it's very 

8 likely that there will be some commercial reprocessing 

9 streams out of a SNF reprocessing facility that would 

10 be low-level waste like.

11 So when you think about the low-level 

12 waste regulation and any comprehensive revision 

13 thereto, we have to ask ourselves a couple of 

14 questions, one of which are we going to still be 

15 focused on those waste streams that are amenable to 

16 disposal in a near-surface environment, or should we 

17 also include those waste streams that might be 

18 amenable to disposal or management in an intermediate 

19 depth environment?

20 If you go to the EIS for Part 61 as well 

21 as some other references in Federal Register notices, 

22 perhaps, I think one is greater than Class-C waste. I 

23 don't recall the exact citations, but you could begin 

24 to connect the dots and see that the regulation is 

25 intended initially for shallow land disposal, but 
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1 there's also a reserve provision for other types of 

2 disposal remedies, if you will, for low-level waste.

3 Larry pointed out earlier; there was a 

4 de minimis provision in the Commission's charge when 

5 it first developed Part 61. Should we revisit that 

6 charge once again? Is it appropriate if you are going 

7 to be risk informed performance based, should we go 

8 back and visit that aspect of the framework, if you 

9 will, for the management of this class of wastes?

10 And the other question, of course, is how 

11 much specificity should be in the regulations? Where 

12 the Commission's PRA Policy Statement was driving the 

13 staff to work on risk-informed performance based 

14 approaches to regulation, which places an emphasis 

15 typically on some overall system performance objective 

16 with less specificity on how you get there. The 

17 Commission of course has historically supported the 

18 defense-in-depth-concept. Should we still retain those 

19 features of the new regulation, should there be one? 

20 So these are things just to think about for the 

21 future. And these are things, of course, we like to 

22 hear from the public and our stakeholders on.

23 That being said, when we think about a 

24 risk-informed/performance-based approach, the staff

25 suggests that there may be some types of activities 
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1 you would have to reengage in terms of the development 

2 of any new rule that we're basically starting from 

3 scratch on. One of which is we have to resurvey, if 

4 you will, the waste generators. What kind of waste 

5 streams are we going to be managed and in what context 

6 would we manage them?

7 It's very likely that we'd undertake 

8 another generic performance assessment for some 

9 generic site that we think might be appropriate for 

10 how these wastes would be managed. We're not sure if 

11 it would be geographically an eastern U.S. or a 

12 western U.S. environment, we could, you know, 

13 hypothetically do two PAs. Again, this is something 

14 that we'd like to hear some feedback from members of 

15 the public on.

16 We're likely to have to do an updated 

17 environmental analysis consistent with NEPA to the 

18 extent that we're dealing with new waste streams. We 

19 think it's also appropriate to kind of evaluate the 

20 literature and talk to generators and managers on what 

21 the current engineering practices are and for the 

22 management of these waste streams. And then of course 

23 there's a need to reconsider what guidance needs to be 

24 considered and updated.

25 So in kind of a nutshell, that's what we 
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1 would like to hear from folks on, if not now in the 

2 future, with regard to this particular option. So 

3 thank you. 

4 So now Boby is on deck.

5 MR. CAMERON: For those people who are on 

6 the phones who might not have the benefit of the new 

7 agenda, I just want to assure you that it still is 

8 Friday here in Phoenix and we have four more 

9 presentations to go and we have Boby is going to 

10 start. And we're going to try to get done by 3:10.

11 DR. EID: Good afternoon.

12 One of the options I would like to talk 

13 about which is in SECY-10-165 is the alignment with 

14 IAEA standards. At the beginning we said 

15 international, but international is broad, so try to 

16 focus in this presentation about IAEA standards. This 

17 topic is much broader than what was discussed before 

18 because there are other areas of overlap and 

19 harmonization that we need to think about.

20 I will try to cover briefly, because we do 

21 not have much time, about the radioactive waste 

22 classification system was already mentioned, but I 

23 want to go through it very fast. And then, of course, 

24 I will introduce you to the IAEA waste classification 

25 system. And then you can compare -- I established a 
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1 simplified chart that anybody could take a look and 

2 try to compare to see, okay, what is there, what is in 

3 common? And then I will try to address comparison of 

4 IAEA safety to the Part 61 safety criteria. A safety 

5 criterion for the NRC is very important. They want to 

6 see whether are we harmonized or not. And then I will 

7 talk about international alignment and harmonization 

8 issues in generic sense hopefully, it may come to our 

9 recommendation to leave it to you just to think about. 

10 It's not a recommendation for us to adopt, but those 

11 are areas for you; we'd like to hear from you what you 

12 think about it.

13 I would like to go briefly and very fast 

14 about first the radioactive waste classification 

15 system in a generic sense; I cannot cover everything. 

16 But as you can see it is based on fuel cycle waste 

17 and non-fuel cycle waste. And under fuel cycle waste 

18 you have the uranium and mill-tailings, low-level 

19 waste, transuranic, high-level waste, spent fuel. 

20 Under non-fuel waste you have the NORM and the 

21 accelerated produced material. But if you can see 

22 here on this graph, that would be focused on the low23 level waste which is coming here under NRC waste 

24 classification system. We have greater than Class C, 

25 Class C, Class B, and Class A. So that's our focus 
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1 today. Just focus on this, so when I try to make the 

2 comparison you will understand.

3 I will not discuss this in detail because 

4 it was mentioned in yesterday's workshop and also

5 today by Jim Kennedy. However, the waste 

6 classification is based essentially on the two Section 

7 61.55 tables, Tables 1 and 2. And these two tables, 

8 they are the long-lived radionuclides and the short9 lived radionuclides. And the Class A as you see here

10 is from other waste classes. Class B waste must meet 

11 a more rigorous requirement on waste form to ensure 

12 stability. Class C waste must meet more rigorous 

13 requirement to ensure stability and requires 

14 additional measures to protect against inadvertent 

15 intrusion. Class A, B, and C, and greater-than-Class 

16 C are stabilized, indirect determination of 

17 concentration is acceptable. And the acceptable to 

18 average concentration over volume of waste, which 

19 that's where it came, the average concentration. 

20 Now, in this table I will not go through 

21 everything single RAD unit. This is the long-loved 

22 radionuclide table. Just look at the footnote below 

23 the table, that's more important. 

24 So those are the numbers in the table for 

25 the long-lived radionuclides. And if the 
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1 concentration is less than .1 of what is indicated in 

2 this table, the waste is Class A. If concentration is 

3 larger than .1 but less than what is in the table, so 

4 it is Class C. So if the concentration is larger than 

5 what is in this table, it is greater than Class C. So 

6 that is the first basis.

7 The second table is the short-lived 

8 radionuclides. Again, I will not go through all of 

9 those numbers. Focus on the footnote below. If the 

10 concentration does not exceed column 1, the waste is 

11 Class A. if the concentration is larger than column 1 

12 and less than column 2, it is Class B. And if the 

13 concentration is larger than column 2 and less than 

14 column 3, Class C. And if it is above, it is greater 

15 than Class C and it is not appropriate for near 

16 surface disposal.

17 Now, having this in mind immediately if 

18 you look at the IAEA waste classification table, okay, 

19 if you look at this figure, you will find on this 

20 axis, the X-axis, the half-life. And you will look at 

21 this axis is the activity concentration. The activity 

22 concentration in this case is ambiguous, because it 

23 could be a concentration of unit weight or unit volume 

24 or it could be total active. So they're listed just 

25 like that. And the half-life is very clear and as you 
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1 can see here, there are lines. And the IAEA have 

2 something in mind by what they mean by short half-life 

3 or other kinds of things. So I want you to 

4 concentrate on those classes. 

5 So based on this -- so they have the high6 level waste -- and by the way, as Larry mentioned, the 

7 intent of waste classification by IAEA is management 

8 of waste in order for disposal. So under each 

9 category, you will find high-level waste, where it's 

10 intended to be disposed and deep geological disposal. 

11 Then what they have intermediate-level 

12 waste, which we do not have and then I will talk 

13 about. And this is to be disposed in what is called 

14 an intermediate level. And yesterday we explained 

15 what is meant by near-surface disposal and we said at 

16 the depth of less than 30 meters because IAEA, they 

17 recognize this depth and they say more than 30 meters, 

18 down to 300 meters it is considered intermediate-level 

19 waste. 

20 And then they have the low-level waste. 

21 This is what we are talking about, the low-level 

22 waste. And the low-level waste here corresponds to 

23 our low-level waste where we have GTCC and LLW Classes 

24 A, B, and C. 

25 Then on this side here we have the very 
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1 short-lived waste and this is intended for decay and 

2 storage, this kind of waste. Because you could manage 

3 this waste by decay and storage, it does not need 

4 disposal. And the half-life for decay is very short, 

5 rated from hours or a few days. And for IA, they 

6 could go to about a few years; this means one to three 

7 years. 

8 Now, the very low-level waste is intended 

9 to be disposed in a landfill, which currently, again, 

10 there is an issue in the United States; we do not have 

11 this kind of category of waste. 

12 And below they said, well, this is not 

13 called waste, you call it exempt waste and they call 

14 it sometimes clearance. So keep in mind what IAEA

15 waste classification. 

16 This table is established just to simplify 

17 it and to capture exactly for comparative purposes. 

18 On the left side is the IAEA waste classification, on 

19 the right side is the current USA commercial waste 

20 classification. High-level waste and high-level waste 

21 are more or less similar, and we agree on those.

22 Now, if we look at low-level waste on the 

23 right side. In the United States, look at the right 

24 side, those are the categories I talked about. It 

25 includes GTCC, Class C, Class B, and Class A. In our 
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1 case, we say the means of disposal for GTCC, it is not 

2 appropriate near-surface disposal for the GTCC and we 

3 leave it at that. And we say, but it is low-level 

4 waste. However, we say, okay, this is low-level waste 

5 for near-surface disposal.

6 In the IAEA system, if you look here, you 

7 see that the categories they have are immediate- level 

8 waste, it is not low-level waste. And then they have 

9 one category of low-level waste is called low-level 

10 waste. And that's something to keep in mind when we 

11 compare. And then I will come to talk about more 

12 elaboration in terms of harmonization. 

13 Below you can see that they have very low14 level waste and the very low-level waste somehow 

15 corresponds to the EPA ANPR. If somebody remembers 

16 that was popular, I believe, in '03. And there it was 

17 intended to categorize what is called low-activity 

18 waste. This was intended for disposal in the 

19 landfill. So far we do not have option of this 

20 category, but we thought about it and the question is 

21 if we need to harmonize, do we need to think about 

22 this? Already we have IA waste classification system. 

23 Then what we have is decay in storage. 

24 Decay in storage, of course it is true that when you 

25 have the decay of the material it is gone, so it is 
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1 not really waste. And the question is you cannot keep 

2 the material for one to three years. However, in our 

3 C currently, decay in storage, our practice is 90 to 

4 120 days for decay and storage. Can you expand that 

5 and call it this other category so you can minimize 

6 the volume of waste now to be disposed? 

7 Then the last one, which it was mentioned 

8 before that we have the proposed rule for clearance 

9 for the NRC. Again, the clearance is being built on a 

10 case by case basis and this is called exempt or 

11 clearance waste by the IAEA. So with this here, you 

12 can really capture the picture, the comparison, 

13 between IAEA and NRC and to see where are the things 

14 they are missing, where are the things that we need to 

15 deal with, types of waste categories, and where is the 

16 overlap and what do we need to do about it. 

17 Here now, I'll try to go through very fast 

18 the CFR safety requirements, because when you compare 

19 you want to compare as well the safety requirements; 

20 what are the basis for the safety requirements? So I 

21 will not go through this or it was -- it was talked 

22 about by Kennedy and others yesterday. Those are, 

23 again, the safety requirements and the intruder dose 

24 and so on. I will not talk about it.

25 Now, the IAEA low-level waste safety 
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1 requirements. IAEA, they publish their safety 

2 requirements under SSR-5; a specific safety 

3 requirement. It used to be called it DSE-54 and it 

4 has been published recently in late 2010. What is the 

5 requirement? And also I would like to emphasize that 

6 the requirement for IAEA is more important than the 

7 standard. The standard could be like a guide, this is 

8 a requirement; it is compliance.

9 So what we have here it is somehow 

10 comparable to our current dose criteria. We have the 

11 dose criteria to members of the public 

12 .3 millisieverts, which is 30 millirem. And we are 

13 talking about .5, so we are close, we are not that far 

14 away.

15 Now, the inadvertent human intrusion; what 

16 kind of criteria do they have? The IAEA tried to be 

17 smart, they said well, we're not going to give 

18 criteria, we'd like to give optimization. So what 

19 they said is if the dose based on the intruder 

20 evaluation and assessment, it is 1 millisievert, which 

21 is 100 millirem, which is our public dose criteria, so 

22 it is fine, you do not need to do more optimization. 

23 So it is acceptable and you do not need to do anything 

24 more. 

25 If the dose is 100 to 20 millisieverts, 
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1 which is 2 millirems in this case, okay, well, you 

2 need to do some optimization. So that's their upper 

3 limit in terms of the intruder dose. 

4 If it is above 20 millisieverts, forget 

5 about it, the site is not appropriate for low-level 

6 waste disposal. 

7 Now, the other criteria for IAEA it is 

8 important and the issue we are dealing with, the issue 

9 of uncertainties and the issue of the performance 

10 period. What they have for the issue of uncertainties, 

11 I will read it for you. Uncertainties associated with 

12 this, this is the dose criteria, estimates will 

13 increase for time further into the future. Caution is 

14 to be exercised in applying criteria for periods far 

15 into the future. Beyond such time scales and 

16 uncertainties associated with those estimates become 

17 so large that the criteria might no longer serve as a 

18 reasonable basis for decision making. 

19 And the other point regarding the period 

20 of performance, the disposal facility shall be sited, 

21 designed, and operated to provide features that are 

22 aimed at isolation of the radioactive waste from 

23 people and from the accessible biosphere. The 

24 features shall aim to provide isolation of for several 

25 hundreds of years for short-lived waste and at least 
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1 several thousand years for intermediate and high-level 

2 waste. 

3 And what they meant by intermediate and 

4 high-level waste, when you are talking about long-live 

5 radionuclides; that is really what is meant. 

6 So the issues pertaining to international 

7 alignment and harmonization, those are the following 

8 issues that I would like to summarize. And this will 

9 be open for discussion. 

10 First, in the United States intermediate 

11 level waste is not defined and intermediate disposal 

12 requirement does not exist for commercial radioactive 

13 waste. Under the IAEA system GTCC waste might be 

14 classified as intermediate-level waste. In the U.S. 

15 it is classified as low-level waste and is suitable 

16 for near surface disposal. 

17 IAEA has only one low-level waste for near 

18 surface disposal whereas NRC has three classes, A, B, 

19 and C. They show one low-level waste class may need 

20 explored or thought about. 

21 IAEA very low-level waste category is 

22 comparable to the waste described in the EPA’s ANPR. 

23 And as Jim Kennedy mentioned, Section 20.2012 could be 

24 too. 

25 And IAEA very short-lived waste can be 
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1 compared with low-level waste stored for decay on 

2 site. And this is currently dealt on a case by case 

3 basis. IAEA exempt waste can be compared with waste 

4 categories under disposition of solid material, 

5 commonly known as clearance. The clearance is 

6 conducted currently on a case by case basis.

7 Other international issues that maybe we 

8 need to think about is retrievability and 

9 reversibility; performance period we talked about; 

10 recycling and categorization of waste, whether waste 

11 can be as a resource or it can be considered as a 

12 waste; how to address climate change; decision making 

13 and uncertainties; stakeholders' inputs; institutional 

14 controls; safety criteria for intruder protection; and 

15 a graded approach and safety goals. So those are the 

16 other areas that overlap with international issues. 

17 Thank you. 

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, 

19 Boby. 

20 And we have Greg Suber coming up to the 

21 podium now and he's going to speak to the use of site22 specific waste acceptance criteria. And then he's 

23 going to stay up there and address status quo and path 

24 forward. And then Larry is going to wrap it up for us 

25 with some closing remarks for this session. We're 
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1 going to take a short break; we're going to come back 

2 for discussion with all of you in the room and with 

3 those of you on the phone. 

4 And when we go for a break, I'd like to 

5 talk with the people on the phone to see if we have 

6 anybody added from this morning. That will help us 

7 when we get to the discussion.

8 This is Greg Suber. 

9 MR. SUBER: Thank you, Chip. My name is 

10 Gregory Suber and I am the chief of the low-level 

11 waste branch at the NRC. 

12 The first thing I would like to do is 

13 clear up one small oversight. I thank Bill Levitan 

14 for congratulating Mike Lee on putting this together, 

15 but we also had significant help from Marty 

16 Letourneau. And so I think he should be recognized as 

17 well. 

18 Mike Lee also helped me with my 

19 presentation, so I have to give him credit for that. 

20 He also helped me with my talking points.

21 So I would like to begin. One score and 

22 19 years ago, our regulatory fathers did set forth the 

23 proposition that all low-level waste regulatory 

24 structures should be created for the people and by the 

25 people for the purpose of human health and safety.
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1 Now, we are in the midst of a civil war to determine 

2 if such a regulatory constructive, so conceived in 

3 liberty could --

4 Wait a minute, Mike, so conceived in 

5 liberty could long -- Isn't this the Gettysburg 

6 Address? 

7 That was my vain attempt at humor. No, I 

8 think I'll scratch that one. 

9 So like I said, I'm going to do the waste 

10 acceptance criteria presentation. And much of this 

11 has already been touched upon in the other 

12 presentations. So I'm going to probably move kind of 

13 fast here and try to get us back on schedule. 

14 With respect to the background the only 

15 thing that I think I would like to state and make a 

16 clarification of is that when the waste types were 

17 conceived originally in Part 61, there were a couple 

18 of things that weren't considered. In one of them, 

19 one of the implicit assumptions was that DOE waste 

20 would not be disposed of in commercial landfills. And 

21 so we know that that's no longer reflective of the 

22 reality of the situation that we live in. 

23 There was also an assumption that there 

24 wouldn't be a large quantity of waste with -- long25 lived radioactive waste with long half-lives. And we 
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1 know that both of those don't reflect reality. So in 

2 changing Part 61 and in revising Part 61 to reflect 

3 reality, one of the considerations that the staff has 

4 is to adopt the waste acceptance criteria.

5 The first step in accepting the waste 

6 acceptance criteria would be eliminating the tables 

7 that have been referred to several times in 

8 Section 61.55. I'm not going to go back again and 

9 talk about how these tables were constructed, but 

10 they're very prescriptive and what a WAC approach 

11 would do -- and I'm not saying WAC in a negative 

12 context -- but what a WAC approach would do is it 

13 would get rid of those tables and allow the sites to 

14 conduct a performance assessment to determine what 

15 type of waste the site was capable of accepting.

16 There would still be a requirement for an inadvertent 

17 intruder analysis and the site would still have to 

18 meet the performance objectives for Part 61, Subpart C

19 and also there would be a requirement to perform 

20 periodic updates of your performance assessments. 

21 Some of the benefits of the system are 

22 that a waste acceptance criterion would increase the 

23 flexibility of the facility to integrate site 

24 characteristics, engineered features, and modern 

25 operational practices when the site was developing its 
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1 disposal strategies. It would also allow the site to 

2 represent the disposal options in a more, as we said,

3 risk informed and performance based approach, which is 

4 clearly more focused on the actual hazard produced by 

5 the waste, as opposed to what class the waste is in.

6 The main challenges to implementing this 

7 regulatory scheme is number one, it's well 

8 institutionalized. As we've said before, the current 

9 infrastructure has been in place for over 30 years and 

10 all of the existing and operating sites, low-level 

11 waste dispose sites are in Agreement States. All of 

12 these states have promulgated rules and regulations in 

13 a regulatory framework to manage these sites and to 

14 regulate these sites. And any change that we would 

15 propose to the structure may adversely impact the 

16 regulatory schemes in these states.

17 Also, there's a potential that some waste 

18 might be offered as a result of the development of a 

19 waste acceptance criteria that eliminates that 

20 particular waste from being disposed of safely in that 

21 site. And so those are possible challenges that we 

22 would face if we adopt the waste acceptance criteria 

23 approach.

24 And briefly I'm going to go over the last 

25 option that we had in our paper, and this option was 
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1 basically to maintain the status quo. And Larry 

2 Camper already went over this briefly, and I'm just 

3 going to go over it in not very much more detail. 

4 The first thing that this option would do 

5 is preclude the staff from revising the waste 

6 classification tables that the Commission recommended 

7 that the staff undertake. Under this option, we would 

8 not revise the waste classification tables and we 

9 would maintain the regulatory framework essentially 

10 the way it is, with the exception that the ongoing 

11 rulemaking would go forth. And this rulemaking would 

12 do a couple of things. One of which it would 

13 introduce the requirement for a performance 

14 assessment, and it would also introduce an explicit 

15 requirement for dose assessment to protect the 

16 inadvertent intruder.

17 So that's the end of my presentation. 

18 I'll give it over to Larry Camper.

19 MR. CAMPER: Thank you, Greg. Thanks to 

20 all my staff for the presentations. Can you imagine 

21 trying to provide adult supervision to that crowd? 

22 They're fun. 

23 Just a couple of remarks quickly. A lot 

24 of material; I apologize for that. You've sat here 

25 for a very long time and you've been patient, so we 
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1 thank you for that. You're going to have an 

2 opportunity to talk to us when we come back. I know 

3 some of my staff had to speed their presentation up a 

4 little bit. It' always tough when you're doing that, 

5 but I appreciate that. 

6 But as you can see on the slide just a 

7 couple of things: We are seeking feedback from the 

8 public. There is a Federal Register notice that was 

9 put out; I think it was actually February the 28th, 

10 where it talks about this effort that's ongoing. This 

11 meeting is being transcribed. We have an internet 

12 webinar connection. We have the telephone call-in, of 

13 course; we thank everyone out there listening and 

14 taking part. And last but not least, you see where to 

15 send written documents -- written comments, rather. 

16 There's a docket identified as NRC-2011-0043. I'll 

17 repeat that for those listening in, its ID is NRC18 2011-0043. That's the docket number assigned to this 

19 particular regulatory effort. 

20 So we want those comments and, again, 

21 thank you for your patience and for letting us share 

22 all this information with you. But we thought it was 

23 important to get everybody on a level playing field at 

24 this point in time so you can fully understand the 

25 challenge that we're facing. Thank you. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Larry and thank you 

2 to all the NRC staff. 

3 And we're a little bit ahead of time, 

4 which is amazing but we're a little bit ahead of time. 

5 And I have a little bit before 3:00. Why don't we 

6 take about -- you've been sitting a long time, why 

7 don't we take 20 plus minutes and come back here at 20 

8 after 3:00. 

9 And I'd like to just ask the folks on the 

10 phones -- I'd like to find out if there's anybody new 

11 on the phone from this morning so that will make it 

12 easier when we go to the discussion period. 

13 (Recess) 

14 MR. CAMERON: I'm going to ask the NRC 

15 staff that spoke to come up to the table to answer 

16 questions and respond to comments. And then when we 

17 go to the panel discussion, we're going to ask Marty 

18 and his colleagues to join the NRC staff at the table. 

19 But right now we're going to focus on the NRC issues. 

20 And you heard Larry and Greg Suber and 

21 Dave Esh and Boby, all of them, talk about various 

22 alternatives that they're thinking about. And Larry I 

23 think mentioned we're starting with a clean slate. 

24 Yesterday afternoon in the Waste Management Symposia 

25 Session, there were a couple of thoughts thrown out 
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1 that we should just do away with the classification 

2 tables. I think Mike Ryan was pretty provocative 

3 about that. 

4 We heard a lot of things about the 

5 Agreement State program, and I'm sending Leif 

6 (Eriksson) and Rusty Lundberg out to have a beer 

7 together. But no, this was another issue that came 

8 up. And we also heard from Lisa Edwards about the use 

9 of Section 61.58, and I know that some people in this 

10 audience had been thinking of something similar to 

11 that.

12 So we're going to go to our discussion now 

13 and what I'm going to do is go to Lisa Edwards first. 

14 It's not only relevant, but she also has to catch a 

15 plane, and then I'm going go to John Greeves.

16 Lisa. 

17 MS. EDWARDS: Thank you very much. Let me 

18 first of all thank the panel members. I really 

19 appreciate the forum and you've given me a lot of food 

20 for thought and I appreciate the multiple 

21 perspectives. 

22 I really have two major points that I want 

23 to make just so that it's on the record. From the 

24 research that we've done at EPRI I'd like you to 

25 consider in the process that you use for both Part 61 
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1 and the BTP the concepts of reasonableness and 

2 reflective. And what I mean by reflective is we look 

3 at the baseline assumptions that are contained for 

4 things like what's the volume of waste that was going 

5 to be disposed of? What are the activities that were 

6 assumed in that waste? What are the specific 

7 attributes of -- site specific attributes of the 

8 various disposal facilities and how do they compare to 

9 the assumptions and the Part 61 EIS? How do 

10 engineered barriers and the protection that they may 

11 or may not offer factor into the concentration limits 

12 that are derived? And had an update of the dose 

13 conversion factors so that they reflect the more 

14 current science that we know of.

15 So in our process I would like us to be 

16 reflective and that means that the assumptions 

17 contained in the rule would be reflective of current 

18 practices. 

19 The second part of that is reasonableness. 

20 And what I mean by is that is first of all with 

21 intruder scenarios. But a task lies before us to not 

22 have a limitless supply of intruder scenarios but 

23 rather construct a series of intruder scenarios that 

24 are well defined and bounded in the types of 

25 reasonable types of intruders that we could expect.
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1 And within reasonable, I mean representative and not 

2 necessarily bounding.

3 I do think it's important that we 

4 understand that the bounding cases of the most 

5 fantastic intruder that could exist. I'm not sure 

6 that our decisions should be based upon that and 

7 rather they should, I would suggest, be based upon a 

8 reasonable intruder.

9 There should be the recognition of 

10 intruder barriers. In other words, there should be 

11 some barriers that recognize present unaware intrusion 

12 into a waste form for a specified period of time.

13 I would challenge the assumption of the 

14 100 years as the right time frame to consider the 

15 initial intruder at. And kind of in line with that,

16 reconsideration of the length of institutional 

17 controls. We are on the low side of institutional 

18 controls compared to what the international community 

19 does. I think we need to understand why that's 

20 appropriate today.

21 And finally there's security. And right 

22 now, I think we've considered safety in the original 

23 rulemaking, but security is certainly part of our 

24 lives now and is not currently contained.

25 The second larger point I'd like to make 
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1 is acceptableness. So in my kind of simplified 

2 picture of rulemaking, I think the science digs 

3 ditches that go on either side of the road and perhaps 

4 the road is the practical implementation aspects. And 

5 finally, once you have the ditches dug and the road 

6 laid that hopefully isn't full of potholes, you have 

7 to consider what's acceptable.

8 And sometimes when we think of the word

9 "acceptable," we might jump to the conclusion that I'm 

10 only referring to stakeholders that would have 

11 heightened level of concern that would only drive us 

12 in a more conservative direction, but I would offer to 

13 you that the concept of acceptableness goes in the 

14 other direction as well. If we dig these ditches with 

15 our science and we lay a road that considers practical 

16 implementation, then we wind up with a rule that 

17 orphans sealed sources. In other words, we get a 

18 result that doesn't allow for the responsible disposal 

19 of sealed sources; is that an acceptable outcome? And 

20 I think not.

21 We need to balance protecting the interest 

22 of some envisioned or really potential future intruder 

23 against real-life risks that are posed in today's 

24 world.

25 And finally, I think we have a higher 
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1 calling here to serve the public interest. I've heard 

2 it referred to many times and I think that our work is 

3 not done until we have protective disposal available 

4 for all low-level waste streams, including greater 

5 than Class C and sealed sources.

6 Thanks for the time.

7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Lisa. 

8 I know we're going to be talking a lot 

9 about these concepts that Lisa brought up. I just 

10 want to check in with Larry and his colleagues here. 

11 you're getting some suggestions now about how to do 

12 this and without going into everything in detail, at 

13 this juncture are there some high-level thoughts that 

14 you'd like to respond to Lisa with?

15 MR. CAMPER: Well, yeah. Thank you, Lisa, 

16 by the way, for your comments. 

17 Some of what Lisa brought up came up 

18 yesterday during the earlier Waste Management 

19 Symposium topical workshop. It also came up last week 

20 during the NRC workshop on the concentration averaging 

21 of BTP. 

22 I mean, what we're really hearing is 

23 questioning some of the scenarios that have been used 

24 in the past. They may be overly conservative; they may 

25 not be truly realistic. Certainly, 30 years plus now 
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1 of operating history shows us that many of the 

2 fundamental assumptions in the environmental impact 

3 statement are remarkably different than what reality 

4 is today. So I would simply, without getting into it 

5 more deeply, say, yes, you make very good points about 

6 the need to reexamine some of the existing baseline 

7 assumptions and the approach that is used.

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Larry. 

9 John, did you want to talk to us? 

10 MR. GREEVES: What I'd like to do -- and 

11 Chip asked us to be succinct and clear. And what I'd 

12 like to do is be a little bit provocative in my own 

13 right. 

14 Jim Lieberman and I wrote a paper. It's 

15 on the back table; I think everybody at the front desk 

16 is familiar with it. 

17 And the staff talks about a limited 

18 rulemaking and a comprehensive rulemaking. This 

19 meeting is about a comprehensive rulemaking. However, 

20 we wrote that paper before we saw your list of options 

21 and, in fact, talked to many people about it. And 

22 Larry, last September, labeled the approach the (so23 called) “Grieberman” approach.

24 So my question here -- or my comment is it 

25 isn't quite any of the five options that you have in 
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1 the paper that we're talking about today, it's maybe a 

2 combination of two of them. And so just naming two of 

3 the things that we've stressed, being requiring site4 specific performance assessment for all, and I repeat 

5 the word "all," waste streams, not just DU and 

6 blending. So the approach we identified is to do that 

7 in the limited rulemaking; do it all. And I don't 

8 think I have total clarity on what the limited 

9 rulemaking is doing, but I'm being real clear on what 

10 I would recommend that it do. 

11 The second one -- and these are the only 

12 two I'm going to mention, the paper has more -- is 

13 provide explicit language to allow for a site-specific 

14 performance assessment to override the tables, which 

15 would be retained in Part 61. The limited rulemaking

16 isn't addressing the tables. 

17 So what I come out of that with is a 

18 question, can the staff consider that approach, the 

19 Grieberman approach in the limited rulemaking? And I 

20 would assert that it's consistent with the Commission 

21 direction in the 2000 Savannah River Site decision on 

22 waste-incidental-to-reprocessing. It's also consistent 

23 with the West Valley policy statement on 

24 decommissioning, it's also consistent with the 

25 National Defense Authorization Act, Section 3116 
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1 legislation. 

2 So I leave you with that question, can you 

3 take those recommendations in the paper that we 

4 provided, use them in the limited rulemaking? And if 

5 that's the case, you don't need to spend the money 10 

6 to 13 FTE equaling to $3 million to do a comprehensive 

7 rulemaking. You can get 90 percent of the way there 

8 with the limited rulemaking, just pushing it a little 

9 bit further. 

10 So hopefully I've been clear. I'd be 

11 happy to answer any questions. But I would like to 

12 know either now or later whether you can take that 

13 approach on the limited rulemaking. And Jim, if I 

14 missed anything, feel free to correct me.

15 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, John.

16 And these suggestions that you're hearing 

17 are fair game for comment. Lisa's, John's, the sixth 

18 option, okay? 

19 And I'm going to go over here to Tom 

20 Magette and then we're going to go over to that 

21 gentleman back there. 

22 MR. MAGETTE: I'll use the handheld, then 

23 I can be like Chip and work the room. 

24 I'm Tom Magette with Energy Solutions and 

25 I appreciate the opportunity to make these comments. 
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1 I'll start by saying I agree with what 

2 Lisa said. I think that if we are driven by the 

3 science and guided by the science, then we see that 

4 there is an opportunity to make some changes to Part 

5 61 that would be a real improvement for everybody 

6 concerned. Now, I won't repeat what she said, but 

7 improved dosimetry, better knowledge of waste streams, 

8 particularly the phantom four that she didn't mention 

9 today that she did mention yesterday, which is a real 

10 driver in the disposal world for completely artificial 

11 reasons. So there's some things to be fixed there. 

12 But what I'd, rather than go through what 

13 I think they all are, what I'd rather focus a little 

14 bit on why. A little bit of justification, because I 

15 know you're still looking at, you know, what do you 

16 do, how far do you do, how do you justify doing it?

17 In David's presentation he mentioned some 

18 of the pros and cons. Certainly, he made some 

19 legitimate points. Unfortunately what I hear on the 

20 con side from a lot of people is a different list. 

21 And I think there are a lot of bad reasons not to 

22 reform Part 61 that are floating around. The states 

23 won't be able implement this. These tables and this 

24 regulation are built into statutes. Generators aren't 

25 used to it. It kind of adds up to it's too hard.
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1 I personally don't think it's too hard for 

2 us to make some solid science based improvements. One 

3 of the last and, I think, most misleading is that it's 

4 too hard because we have this notion that we have 

5 these tables, if you comply with the tables everything 

6 is okay. 

7 Well, that's not true. You're doing a 

8 rulemaking already right now because the waste that we 

9 want to dispose of that complies with the tables isn't 

10 okay, maybe. Or you want to see more analysis to 

11 demonstrate that it's okay. 

12 Admittedly, there are some complications 

13 like the depleted uranium waste stream, the blended 

14 wastes, no new isotopes, the same waste that's been 

15 coming out of the power plants for 30, 40 years. And 

16 yet we're going to have to do a site specific 

17 performance assessment to evaluate disposing of those.

18 So the tables aren't okay; they don't give 

19 us the answer. We're doing performance assessments 

20 anyway. All two, otherwise known as both, of the 

21 sites that have been licensed since Part 61 was put in 

22 place are doing this, so we're not talking about an 

23 overwhelming regulatory burden. 

24 And I think that's another point. You 

25 know, we looked at an analogy of the revisions to Part 
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1 50 yesterday and one might suggest that, you know, 

2 what we're talking about is going in the other 

3 direction; Part 50 needed to be made simpler so you 

4 could have a more reasonable licensing basis for power 

5 plants and this is making it harder. 

6 I don't think it's making it harder. I 

7 think maybe people don't realize what we have to do to 

8 implement Part 61 in the BTP. We have a full branch 

9 of our organization, eight to ten people, whose full10 time job as engineers is working with generators to 

11 see if this waste can come in the site. Every day of 

12 the week that's their job. So this is not like, check 

13 a box, send it to Clive.

14 So I would submit that this is not an 

15 increased regulatory burden, because we are already 

16 doing it and because there are a lot of burdens that 

17 go unappreciated in the existing system. 

18 And finally, I would say a site specific 

19 approach is absolutely, entirely appropriate. I've 

20 spent the majority of my career licensing a variety of 

21 facilities, particularly power plants and transmission 

22 lines. I can't tell you if an emission from a power 

23 plant is going to comply with the Clean Air Act unless 

24 I know where it is. 

25 It may be okay to have a once-through 
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1 cooling system on Calvert Cliffs sitting on the 

2 Chesapeake Bay, but I don't think it would work real 

3 well in the middle of the Arizona desert for Palo 

4 Verde. So, you know, you simply can't have a "hey, if 

5 you make it like this it's okay" in most other 

6 regulatory schemes that seek to protect human health 

7 and safety in the environment. 

8 So I don't think it's anything 

9 unreasonable that you would be imposing on the 

10 industry if you did this. I don't think it's anything 

11 more than we're going have to do anyway and are 

12 already doing anyway, nor do I think it would 

13 necessarily be greater than the burden that we have 

14 today.

15 So in sum, I think you have a really 

16 strongly profound justification for modifying and 

17 updating Part 61. Thank you. 

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Tom. That 

19 was Tom Magette. 

20 And we're going to go to this gentleman 

21 here and then were going to go over to Marty. 

22 MR. GOLDSTON: I've never gone before 

23 Marty before.

24 MR. CAMERON: Do you want to try it? 

25 MR. GOLDSTON: I'm going to try; it won't 
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1 work, though. 

2 I'm Sonny Goldston with Savannah River 

3 Nuclear Solutions. And I wanted -- I didn't realize 

4 the comments this last gentleman was going to make; 

5 mine are very similar. 

6 I was watching David's presentation and 

7 thought to myself the site-specific performance-based 

8 low-level waste disposal is what we do in South 

9 Carolina at the Savannah River site and I've been up 

10 in front of the Citizen's Advisory Board, other 

11 stakeholders, the South Carolina regulators, the EPA 

12 many times and explained to them what we do and how we 

13 do it and they have understood it completely. In 

14 fact, you can go and look at the CAB recommendations 

15 in the past and see that they repeated back to us 

16 clearly what we said we were doing, agreed with it, 

17 and agreed with our recommendations to go forward with 

18 different types of disposal. For example, moving low19 level waste items that had lower concentrations out of 

20 our vaults and into trench disposal based on our site21 specific performance assessment.

22 So I think it is time to revise Part 61 

23 and I would recommend that you proceed on with that 

24 and not concern yourselves so much with the fact that 

25 it might be too complicated or complex for people to 
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1 understand.

2 Also, I don't understand your tables so I 

3 think that's pretty complicated on its own. And I 

4 remembered Mike Ryan's presentation yesterday where he 

5 was talking about concentration-based standards for 

6 low-level waste disposal was probably the wrong way to 

7 go, that you really need to understand the total 

8 quantities and the effect of those radionuclides and 

9 those total quantities on your site rather than a 

10 concentration.

11 So thank you. 

12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Sonny. You did 

13 that well, before Marty. Marty. 

14 MR. LETOURNEAU: Okay. What Tom meant to 

15 say --

16 MR. CAMPER: Let me just quickly. Tom's 

17 comments and then Sonny's as well.

18 I made this comment yesterday that one of 

19 the observations I made in the top of the workshop was 

20 there is probably more willingness, if that's the 

21 right term or even interest, in a significant revision 

22 to Part 61 than I might have imagined before we 

23 started this process. Now, we're early in the game 

24 and there are going to be lots of discussions in lots 

25 of places. And there are those who hold different 
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1 sentiments about the existing waste classification 

2 scheme or the approach that we're hearing here.

3 But having said that, I would only repeat 

4 what I said yesterday, I'm struck as I think is the 

5 staff, we're struck by the -- I think I referred to it 

6 yesterday as intellectual purism in terms of looking 

7 at 61 and being prepared to deal with it much more 

8 realistically, shall we say, than I might have thought 

9 before we started this process.

10 MR. LETOURNEAU: Well, now that Tom and 

11 Sonny went before me, I don't have to say the things 

12 that they said. But I agree completely with them on 

13 everything. Well, at least the things they said here 

14 today. And I say that as an intro because when I make 

15 some of my comments here, you are going to think I 

16 don't agree with them. No, I absolutely agree with 

17 them. 

18 But I've been sitting over here listening 

19 to the presentations and I've been coming up with the 

20 thoughts that are going to make your skulls hurt and I 

21 wanted to throw some of those out, because you're 

22 going have to deal with them sooner or later and you 

23 shouldn't be scared of them.

24 But first just as a historical note, one 

25 of the other students of history has led me to believe 
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1 that one of the primary reasons for creating the A, B, 

2 C classification system was to make things easy for 

3 the generators so that they could identify what they 

4 had and, oh, this facility takes A, this facility 

5 takes B. And it was supposed to be an easy way for 

6 them to manage their waste. I think as Tom said and 

7 as we've experienced it's really not that easy and, in 

8 fact, a lot of work still goes into it. 

9 So if that was one of the driving causes 

10 behind having that type of a classification system, 

11 maybe that's part of the initial analysis right now 

12 and determining that well, yeah, maybe that didn't 

13 work. Maybe that's one of the reasons that we can put 

14 forward for moving away from it.

15 Somebody had mentioned needing to do a 

16 NEPA analysis on this. And I started thinking about 

17 that, what would the NEPA analysis look like on this? 

18 It could look like the original EIS, it could look 

19 like what we ended up doing when we did our waste 

20 management PEIS and we actually looked at a generic 

21 facility of the same size and scope in different 

22 locations. And I started thinking about that and, you 

23 know, the NEPA document may be the place where you can 

24 begin to put down some new markers in this ground. If 

25 you wanted to try to establish a number other than 100 
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1 years, the NEPA document would be the place where 

2 you'd have to start. So if there is any thought about 

3 changing some of those societally-decided numbers, 

4 it's going to have to be in the EIS; no question about 

5 it.

6 Avoid over-complexity. What you put in 

7 the regulation versus what you put in supporting 

8 guidance. Be careful to make sure we can keep it 

9 flexible. We've all learned a lot about things that 

10 we tied ourselves into with Part 61 that we should 

11 learn that lesson and going forward find ways to make 

12 dosimetry be something that can change over time.

13 Clearance; the below regulatory concern

14 issue. We do have that. We have a release program.

15 We have restricted release and unrestricted release. 

16 And it pretty much comports with the clearance or the 

17 very low-level categories on the IAEA system. We're 

18 using a similar site-specific analysis based on the 1 

19 millirem the IAEA would suggest that you apply. And 

20 for a -- in most cases we end up with a restricted 

21 release, which means it's going to a landfill and it 

22 can only go to a landfill. Very little can meet the 

23 unrestricted release, which would mean that it could 

24 be used everywhere. But there certainly is precedent 

25 for that already. 
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1 One option. We all know that greater than 

2 Class C, that line between C and GTCC is a political 

3 hot potato. We all know that science wouldn't 

4 necessarily support it, but if we had to go forward 

5 with something that would appease those who feel that 

6 line is important, maybe that line stays or maybe that 

7 line gets adjusted in where it's located. But we 

8 still have that concept of what's going to be called 

9 low-level waste without categories and limits would be 

10 based on site-specific performance assessment, but we 

11 still have that upper line that we say, you know, 

12 these things we still say are generally unacceptable 

13 for shallow land burial. That might make the whole 

14 thing more palatable.

15 Another thought about the PA approach. It 

16 really does require good knowledge of the volumes and 

17 types of waste, radionuclide content that you're going 

18 to be getting. If you're going to be doing a site19 specific assessment, you've got to know what's going 

20 into the facility before you can get the source term 

21 and the radiation standard right. And it also means 

22 as soon as you get it done and approved, it will be 

23 wrong. Because as soon as you start -- the next 

24 barrel of waste you take will be different, maybe 

25 higher, maybe lower than what was in the PA. The PA 
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1 will have to be updated over time to reflect those 

2 changes and, of course, at the end of the facility.

3 Related to that, it is very possible --

4 not only possible, very likely, that an existing 

5 facility here, the first time out when they are doing 

6 their PA they are going to find that things that would 

7 have been acceptable under the existing system may not 

8 be acceptable by their PA; either types of 

9 radionuclides or concentrations thereof. 

10 That does not mean that they are not 

11 protective, that doesn't mean that they won't 

12 ultimately be able to show protection, it just means 

13 that PA is a graded and iterative process and you're 

14 going to go through it quite a few times before you 

15 work all the bugs out of it. 

16 And, you know, this isn't a commercial for 

17 what we're doing on Saltstone, but a lot of what we're 

18 seeing on Saltstone at the DOE site is very similar in 

19 that I believe that facility is protective. I believe 

20 Barnwell is protective and I believe that Energy 

21 Solutions Clive facility is protected. But getting 

22 the PA to correctly and accurately represent how your 

23 system operates is still a tough thing to do.

24 And to that end, our tool for managing 

25 that is the PA maintenance plan. That is where we 
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1 manage the uncertainty and the things that still need 

2 to be updated as you go forward. I would believe that 

3 any PA based system would have to have a PA 

4 maintenance plan a as part of its regulatory regime.

5 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Marty; very 

6 comprehensive. 

7 We're going to go over to Scott Kirk at 

8 this point and then I want to check in with the people 

9 on the phones. And when we do that, I just want to 

10 ask Rusty also if he wants to give us some perspective 

11 of an agreement state who is going through this 

12 process right now.

13 But we're going to go to Scott, check in 

14 with people on the phones, and come back to Rusty. 

15 Scott. 

16 MR. KIRK: Yes, I'm Scott Kirk, Waste

17 Control Specialists. 

18 I think this whole workshop has just been 

19 fabulous. It's really opened my mind up to a lot of 

20 key issues. And I have two questions and, Larry, 

21 they're really for you. One is pretty direct and the 

22 other is more philosophical. 

23 The first one is on your slides you were 

24 talking about the limited rulemaking for DU, and 

25 that's depleted uranium, and it had to do with the 
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1 deterministic human intrusion calculations. Now, you 

2 mentioned that is going to be one of the requirements, 

3 but my question is how are we going to match that up 

4 against a radiation protection standard?

5 Now, Part 20 is being revised. I think it 

6 was a 500 millirem recommendation I think when Part 61 

7 was promulgated back in '80s, but if you have to have 

8 that limit right now, how do you reconcile that?

9 MR. CAMPER: Well, the 500 millirem dose 

10 limitation for the intruder was part of the analysis 

11 of the Part 61 in the draft EIS, but not in the final 

12 EIS. There is no dose standard today in Part 61 for 

13 the intruder.

14 What came out of the discussions during 

15 the course of public meetings around the DU rulemaking

16 was a sense that there should be a codification of a 

17 dose limitation Part 61 for the intruder. The staff, 

18 we tended to agree with that. And one of the things 

19 we are going to address as part of that limited 

20 rulemaking is to incorporate a dose standard for the 

21 intruder in Part 61.

22 The fact that that might change over time 

23 because of some further adjustments to Part 20 is 

24 something that you would come back and revisit as you 

25 always do. I mean, any modifications to Part 20 --
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1 the Commission is still evaluating what it wants to do 

2 about changing Part 20. Any changes to Part 20, as 

3 you know, takes a long time do and it may have some 

4 trickle-down effects. It may have some need to make, 

5 you know, further adjustments in the regulations once 

6 Part 20 is adjusted.

7 So in terms of reconciling, I would say 

8 that the answer is that that is the number that was 

9 used before, there's been a general sentiment in the 

10 workshops that we've had that there should be a an 

11 incorporation of the dose limit to protect the 

12 intruder and that's the number that's been discussed.

13 MR. KIRK: And then my -- the other 

14 question, which is more philosophical. You know, I 

15 would agree that the current system has been well 

16 institutionalized, but the issue is really about 

17 harmonization. You know, as Letourneau pointed out,

18 and others, is that some States have implemented these 

19 requirements completely different. Like in Texas 

20 there is a period of performance and it is 1,000 years 

21 or peak dose, whichever is longer. And that's a very 

22 high bar that we had to cross over. 

23 There's also issues about waste at the 

24 very low end of the scale too, which would be the use 

25 of RCRA subtitle C facilities, and on what those dose 
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1 limits should be. It's worked well in some parts of 

2 the country but not necessarily other parts of the 

3 country.

4 So I guess my question is, you know, when 

5 you -- as you've gone through these discussions and 

6 what you've learned, if you were king for a day, what 

7 do you think would need to be harmonized? What's 

8 worked and what hasn't worked and what are your views?

9 MR. CAMPER: Well, I'm certainly not the 

10 king for the day, the Commission is the king for the 

11 day, for every day for that matter. 

12 Just a couple of observations. It's very 

13 clear to me -- and this is just my personal view --

14 it's very clear to me that many of the assumptions 

15 that were set forth in this environmental impact 

16 statement for Part 61 clearly do not reflect reality 

17 today based on 30 years of operating experience. 

18 I mean, the manner in which waste is 

19 disposed of today in the low-level waste facilities is 

20 remarkably different than what was envisioned within 

21 that environmental impact statement. And it strikes 

22 me, therefore, that the industry and the public at 

23 large would be better served by having an updated --

24 excuse me, a new. You can't update it, it's too old. 

25 A new environmental impact statement that reflects 
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1 the reality of the disposal of low-level waste in the 

2 United States. So I think clearly that needs to be 

3 done.

4 I also think that while it is good for 

5 regulators to be conservative in order to protect 

6 public health and safety, I think most of us would 

7 agree that the linear non-threshold, for example, 

8 model is a conservative approach. 

9 It's perfectly reasonable to be 

10 conservative; however, as has been pointed out by some 

11 of the other callers, you also have to be realistic. 

12 And one of the things that I have found very 

13 interesting in the last few days has been the 

14 discussion around the fact that the probability for 

15 the intruder is 1. It does happen. Is that 

16 realistic?

17 So I think the staff needs to go back and 

18 take a look at some of these assumptions and ask 

19 ourselves what realisms are we bringing to bear? 

20 One more comment on the period of 

21 performance. I have been working with the staff just 

22 recently as we go about developing the unique waste 

23 streams rulemaking. And one of the things we're going 

24 to do in that rulemaking is to specify a period of 

25 performance for the unique waste streams rulemaking, 
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1 which includes depleted uranium. As was pointed out 

2 yesterday, I think it was Matt Kozak, that's a 

3 challenge. Depleted uranium is an interesting and 

4 challenging and unique isotope. 

5 But we are going to propose a period of 

6 performance. I'm not at liberty to say what it's 

7 going to be at this point because we have not, you 

8 know, vetted this with the Commission yet. But there 

9 will be a period of performance in the proposed rule 

10 and we will be soliciting comment on that period of 

11 performance. And I think it's going to be a very 

12 interesting opportunity for members of the public to 

13 react to what we are proposing for a period of 

14 performance. As you know, there is no period of 

15 performance specified in Part 61 today. 

16 So there will be one for the unique waste 

17 streams rulemaking. How broad the unique waste 

18 streams rulemaking ends up being, getting back to 

19 John's comment earlier and Jim Lieberman and John 

20 Greeves' letter. We have a working group that's 

21 looking at that. And one of the things that working 

22 group will ask itself is should there be a more broad 

23 application, i.e., capturing all radionuclides and not 

24 just so-called unique waste stream. But we'll see 

25 what the working group comes up with. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Larry. 

2 Let me check in with all of you on the 

3 phones. Does many anybody have a comment or a 

4 question out there?

5 MR. DUNNING: This is Dirk from Oregon. I 

6 do. 

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Dirk. Go ahead.

8 MR. DUNNING: Question: At this point are 

9 you still looking for alternative concepts and other 

10 important considerations as the rule development is 

11 perceived?

12 MR. CAMERON: Could someone mute their 

13 phone? Could you mute your phone? Someone who's 

14 talking about key working concepts. What's that? Oh, 

15 they might have their TV on? Well, mute your phone or 

16 turn your TV off, or both. 

17 Dirk, I'm going to go to Larry. Did you 

18 get the question?

19 DR. LEE: Yeah, this is Mike Lee. 

20 Consistent with option number two, one of

21 the things that the staff would like to hear from 

22 stakeholders and other members the public on is do you 

23 have other views on how Part 61 might be revised other 

24 than the options that are laid out in the SECY paper 

25 or the existing approach to Part 61? So we welcome 
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1 any and all suggestions.

2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Dirk, any and all 

3 suggestions.

4 Anybody else on the phone have a 

5 suggestion or questions?

6 MR. DUNNING: I have one more.

7 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Dirk, go ahead.

8 MR. DUNNING: Yeah, and it regards -- and 

9 unfortunately, I had to step off for a time and so 

10 this may already have been addressed. 

11 Have you discussed or have you begun 

12 discussion that included looking at some of the more 

13 recent studies on death associated with cardiovascular 

14 risk and death associated with stroke as well as 

15 changes in the dose reduction equivalence factor the 

16 EPA has made?

17 MR. CAMERON: Does that go to the Part 20 

18 issues, Larry? Anybody want to try that from the NRC?

19 DR. EID: This is Boby.

20 Regarding the dosimetry for Part 61, as 

21 all of you know, the dosimetry is based on the ICRP-2. 

22 ICRP-2 has been there for a long time and the staff 

23 came with a paper to the Commission for actually 

24 revising or trying to look into Part 20 in order to be 

25 in harmony with the most recent one, ICRP-103. 
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1 And one of the areas, of course, the staff 

2 will look into how revising Part 20 will impact also 

3 other kinds of regulations and this will be addressed 

4 in the SECY paper. So while we're revising Part 20 

5 and if we revise, of course, Part 61, definitely the 

6 dose conversion factors will be taken into 

7 consideration.

8 We did consider also in other 

9 applications, for example in the commissioning, where 

10 we did allow based on the request of the licensee to 

11 use more advanced ICRP dose conversion factors. 

12 However, having said this, so the licensee should not 

13 take advantage of increasing the dose but they should 

14 be consistent. If they applied ICRP-103 or 60 or 

15 other ICRP dose conversion factors, they need to be 

16 consistent in all of their requirements for safety. 

17 So consistency is very important. 

18 So I agree with, also Lisa raised that 

19 issue regarding the ICRP-2 and when it's going to be 

20 changed. This is one area, definitely I agree with 

21 her, that needs to be changed. So this is an area we 

22 need to look into.

23 MR. CAMPER: The only thing I would add 

24 to that is in the direction from the Commission with 

25 regards to SECY-08-147, that limited rulemaking, there 
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1 was direction from the Commission to use updated 

2 approaches including modern ICRP approaches. 

3 So there will be a modernization that 

4 takes place bringing to bear a current ICRP 

5 methodology. That's point one.

6 Point two is, as we all know, you know, 

7 this is a continuum. You update Part 20, which takes 

8 a long time, you're continuing to improve your 

9 analytical methodologies, your application of ICRP 

10 recommended dose values and so forth. So it's a 

11 continuum, so we'll always be doing that.

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you.

13 So Dirk, it looks like you should be 

14 following the Part 20 efforts of the Commission.

15 MR. DUNNING: I agree. The concern that I 

16 have is actually -- it isn't with ICRP, this 

17 information is more recent than that, but indicating 

18 risks comparable or greater for cardiovascular death 

19 and for stroke death than for current cancer death 

20 curves.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I would imagine 

22 that the NRC would be interested in that information. 

23 And whatever vehicle you want to use to get it to 

24 them, they'll make sure that that's shared with the 

25 relevant staff.
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1 And Larry?

2 MR. CAMPER: I was going to say, on one 

3 hand as a regulator you always want to be cognizant of 

4 studies and things that emerge that show you things 

5 about radiological implications that you did not know 

6 before. However, there is a process that you go 

7 through as a regulator when you decide to get to the 

8 point where you endorse certain information that's out 

9 there such as this ICRP process. And so there is a 

10 fairly regimented process that you follow in arriving 

11 at regulatory based upon prevailing information.

12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We're going to go to 

13 Rusty now but I just -- is there anyone else on the 

14 phone who wants to say anything right now?

15 Okay. We're going to go back to the room 

16 then; we have a couple of other people who want to 

17 talk. But I'm going to go to Rusty Lundberg now.

18 And I just want to say that our next event 

19 here is to have the DOE folks come up and join the NRC 

20 folks at the table for a panel discussion. And we'll 

21 see how that goes, how that takes off, but it may be 

22 that we just continue the discussion that's going on 

23 now.

24 But let's go to Rusty Lundberg from the 

25 state of Utah. 
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1 MR. LUNDBERG: Okay. Thank you very much.

2 If I may begin first of all to, I guess, 

3 lay the foundation of working off some of some of the 

4 topical -- or the comments from yesterday's topical 

5 workshop as well. I'm going to be brief so that I 

6 don't extend this thought that the state regulator 

7 would like to protract things out just for the sake of 

8 doing that. But I do want to offer some things in 

9 terms of a perspective here a little bit. 

10 In one of my presentations during the 

11 symposia, I began by noting, having been involved with 

12 environmental programs for over 30 years, that we tend 

13 to do things -- and I mentioned this to Bill yesterday 

14 too -- is that we look at things in terms of a more 

15 circular, dynamic aspect of things. Meaning that as 

16 we talk about revisiting our starting point, that 

17 draws in this nature of an opportunity to look at 

18 things in a circular opportunity, but at the same time 

19 look at ways to improve that and move it forward to 

20 update.

21 So that's where I want to lead into my 

22 first comment that in terms of as we look at how to 

23 modernize the aspect of this, I think that's a good 

24 concept. But I also want to say and go one step a 

25 little bit beyond that by indicating that I think that 
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1 that's a good thing to do, to modernize, but we 

2 certainly don't want to limit ourselves by saying the 

3 current conditions ought to help, say, and do all that 

4 we need to answer things that will be important in a 

5 more long-term aspect.

6 And so my point of that is simply yes, 

7 it's good to modernize, but let's not do it just for 

8 the sake of holding ourselves hostage to current views 

9 of things but look beyond as well. And by that I mean 

10 we're getting now into more issues that relate to 

11 philosophical aspect as well. Those are difficult 

12 questions to answer simply just by the science. In 

13 fact, they go beyond the science. 

14 And that's appropriate too, because I want 

15 to have you understand that in terms of the 

16 acceptability as a host state and having the public be 

17 confident and accepting of facilities like this as a 

18 host state, you also have to address not only the 

19 science, but you also have to address the 

20 philosophical or the policy aspects of these things 

21 too.

22 Let me give you a quick example of why 

23 that's successful. In Utah, one of the reasons that I 

24 firmly believe personally that we were successful in 

25 not only siting the Energy Solutions facility, but 
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1 attendant to that about the same time we were looking 

2 at the siting of commercial hazardous waste 

3 facilities, both an incinerator as well as the 

4 landfill. All of that was kind of concurrent and went 

5 through the process. 

6 That led the local government, Tooele 

7 County, to be a little more foresightful about what it 

8 meant to host facilities in their area in the west 

9 desert. Without that foresighting creating the 

10 foundation of the ability to site facilities in a 

11 zoned area that was specific for that type of 

12 industry, that simply set the stage and also in a way 

13 a restriction as to what was acceptable. So that was 

14 not just the science based aspect. That was a policy 

15 driven basis in which to site and to move forward. So 

16 we have to look at the combination of both of those in 

17 terms of acceptability of a host state.

18 Let me move on to another point that 

19 relates to this. It's been mentioned that sometimes 

20 state regulation, the implementation of that should be 

21 fairly harmonized and consistent. I think states 

22 across the board regardless of the program have 

23 uniformly said, yes, we need some kind of consistent 

24 floor to work from across the country. That's simply 

25 just helpful for us as we implement what we have set 
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1 out to do on behalf of the Federal government. 

2 As we look at that floor, however, I think 

3 that you'll find most states would want to move into 

4 it; however, don't remove some flexibility for us. I 

5 know that's a little counter to what others have said. 

6 When you open up flexibility, that opens 

7 up patchwork and again this idea that it's not 

8 consistent anymore. However, I think that when you 

9 allow for some flexibility, whether it be 

10 implementation of the rule content itself, you account 

11 for localized or more geographic demographics, all of 

12 those things that tend to be a little more localized 

13 and a more local concern. Without that flexibility and 

14 setting just a floor only, I think you wreak a little 

15 bit of havoc by not having that flexibility. Again, 

16 you would not have something sited in Utah if you 

17 didn't have that additional flexibility. 

18 And that stems from a follow-up comment in 

19 terms of some of the information that we received from 

20 the reports too as you look at comparisons. Arid 

21 climates tend to be in the west, eastern climates, 

22 more humid -- eastern area, more humid climates. I 

23 think that's good for the short term, but as you look 

24 at the long-term horizons in terms of some of the 

25 long-term changes that can happen with climate, that 
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1 does not really hold. But for purposes of comparison 

2 it does.

3 And, again, this is more of an aspect that 

4 we need to look at the acceptableness. It also has to 

5 be practical in terms of the right time horizon as 

6 well.

7 And let me just conclude with the last 

8 little bit is that -- again, my comments are not to 

9 get in the weeds as far as the desire, at least 

10 representing the states a little bit here, the desire 

11 of what would be acceptable for states in terms of the 

12 specifics. I don't think we're at that point right 

13 now and I think that that's a good thing is to look 

14 first of all at the higher level conceptual aspects 

15 and then move into the weeds a little bit later. 

16 And with that, I should have started my 

17 comments by expressing appreciation to both DOE and 

18 NRC for hosting this. I know earlier, they consulted 

19 with some of the states about how to proceed through 

20 this process of looking at the rulemaking and 

21 accounting for changes that would be appropriate for 

22 Part 61. And I think it was probably uniformly said 

23 that we need to keep this in an open opportunity for 

24 all of us to participate. And I think having this 

25 today is reflective of that commitment on behalf of 
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1 both agencies to do that and I think that it's 

2 important for us to continue down that path; not that 

3 you would not otherwise do that.

4 I think that kind of pretty much captures 

5 some of the points that I wanted to make in terms of 

6 some of the things that have been brought up. But I, 

7 again, do appreciate this chance to express these 

8 comments.

9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Rusty. 

10 Let's go to John and then we'll go to 

11 Susan.

12 John. 

13 MR. TAUXE: John Tauxe again, with Neptune 

14 and Company.

15 I just wanted to touch on one piece that 

16 came up in Mike Lee's talk about option two, and that 

17 was the concept of the generic performance assessment. 

18 And of the -- given my experience, having worked on 

19 11 PAs at six sites and at least a dozen more that 

20 I've studied, I just don't think this is really a 

21 workable concept to have a generic PA. There's really 

22 very little that's generic about them. 

23 And the simplification that there's east 

24 sites and west sites and humid and arid, but even 

25 among sites one to another in a humid place or one to 
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1 another in the west, they are very different. And the 

2 idea that you could have a generic sort of PA is -- I 

3 don't think that's a very good starting point, because 

4 they're all just so different. I wouldn't even know 

5 how to build a generic PA. I mean, I made a generic 

6 PA model that I shared with everybody, but that's just 

7 a toy model; it doesn't represent any particular site.

8 Anyway, I think the generic PA concept 

9 that would be used to help construction disposal 

10 decisions is not a very good place to start. I love 

11 the idea of doing site-specific PAs and I think given 

12 the number of sites that we're talking about, that 

13 that's quite a reasonable thing to do.

14 And then one other aspect about 

15 genericness of assessments is -- and I may get -- I 

16 expect that this is a rather controversial thing, but 

17 personally I think the idea of having a member of the 

18 public and an inadvertent human intruder scenarios 

19 that are generic, which is sort of where we are now, 

20 also doesn't make much sense. And I would -- that's a 

21 particular part of the language in these regulations 

22 that I would completely do away with in favor of doing 

23 another -- that part of a performance assessment 

24 should also be site specific, so that you're looking 

25 at site specific receptors. Who would be showing up?
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1 What would they be doing? Whether they're an 

2 intruder or a member of the public sort of thing is 

3 irrelevant. What things might people do at a 

4 particular site? 

5 And we should abandon the idea of having 

6 cookie-cutter dose assessments in the same way we 

7 would never entertain the idea of having cookie-cutter 

8 groundwater models or something like that. It's as 

9 unique to every site as is the hydrogeology and the 

10 biology of each site.

11 So I would promote unique site-specific --

12 Well, I would say dose assessment, risk assessment, 

13 but impact assessment perhaps, to adopt some of the 

14 new language that DOE is promoting.

15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, John.

16 And before I go over to Susan, I just want 

17 to go to Marty who has a follow-up on that, I think.

18 But could we get the DOE staff to come up 

19 to the table? And if you guys could make room for 

20 them.

21 MR. LETOURNEAU: John, didn't you 

22 participate in the Sandia disposal work group effort 

23 back in '95?

24 MR. TAUXE: Yes. I would say that in 

25 essence it was a form of generic performance 
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1 assessment. 

2 What we were doing was that we were 

3 charged by a group of people to look at 12 different 

4 sites that were being considered under the waste 

5 management PEIS as potential sites for a mixed low6 level waste disposal facility. And we developed a 

7 sort of generic PA model with the idea that we were 

8 going to populate it with site-specific information 

9 and that we were hoping to get an order of magnitude 

10 answer. So sort of a generic facility that we would 

11 go to a site, collect their site-specific information, 

12 run some simple calculations, and we were looking for 

13 order of magnitude information. 

14 We used tritium, carbon-14, cesium, 

15 strontium, technetium and americium, plutonium, and 

16 uranium. And when we ran those results, lo and 

17 behold, the numbers that we got were about an order of 

18 magnitude right around the NRC limits in the tables.

19 We proved what the EIS proved, that those are the 

20 concentrations that are generally acceptable for 

21 shallow land disposal.

22 The only other thing we proved was that 

23 dry sites were better than wet sites by about an order 

24 of magnitude and waste form could buy you about an 

25 order of magnitude but it was asymptotic; the longer 
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1 the half-life, the less it bought you. 

2 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Marty.

3 And Marty is going to go up there. 

4 And Susan. And we have Susan's name in 

5 the record already, her last name. Susan. 

6 MS. GAWARECKI: So you're not going to try 

7 it?

8 My name is Susan Gawarecki and I am the 

9 executive director for the Oak Ridge Reservation Local 

10 Oversight Committee. I had my hand up but Dr. Miller 

11 missed me. I'm probably the only member of the 

12 public.

13 And I'm here because I was at waste 

14 management and also because we're seeing DOE looking 

15 more towards commercial disposal of its wastes, so I 

16 really wanted to learn more about it. I have a 

17 technical background; it doesn't go very far into 

18 radioactive waste disposal but I've learned a lot and 

19 I -- let's see, I had a few questions and comments.

20 Okay, first of all I'd also like to say 

21 any comments I make or opinions are my personal ones. 

22 My Board of Directors actually has not had a chance 

23 to even begin to look at this. But we do deal with 

24 sometimes overarching policy issues as well as 

25 technical issues. And one question I had was for 
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1 policy issues on the revision of Part 61, should the 

2 public contact the NRC Commissioners?

3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Larry, do you want to 

4 -- we're going to go -- Larry, you can address that.

5 MR. CAMPER: You certainly can write 

6 letters to the Commissioners, you certainly can 

7 request an audience with the Commissioners; anyone has 

8 the right to do that. However, that is not the normal 

9 process. The normal process is to provide comments 

10 through the docketed information that I provided 

11 earlier, because all of the comments that we receive 

12 on this rulemaking, on any rulemaking, has to be 

13 processed by the staff and then reactions identified, 

14 articulated, and ultimately in the rulemaking vehicle 

15 itself. So that's the more effective way to do it.

16 MR. CAMERON: All right.

17 MS. GAWARICKI: I would say that as far as 

18 your options for revision, I don't think it's rational 

19 to update the existing tables and use the existing 

20 calculations, because it doesn't really acknowledge 

21 the knowledge base it's accumulated since these 

22 regulations were written. And, you know, I'm really a 

23 little bit surprised at how it's currently done. I 

24 can't imagine that if you were starting over again, 

25 you would choose the same system. So I'm going to 
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1 urge you to look at some of your other options.

2 And one of them I think you might look at 

3 would be to redefine the wastes, even if for 

4 discussion purposes, to align with the IAEA standards; 

5 that's your option three. I've done some work with 

6 the IAEA and when you start to look globally, it's 

7 more important, I think, that the United States be 

8 talking the same language as everybody else in the 

9 world. I can't wait until we get to the metric 

10 system, but I'm not holding my breath on that. And 

11 combine that option with more of a site-specific 

12 performance assessment and using waste acceptance 

13 criteria. I think that some sort of blended option 

14 would serve NRC best in this respect.

15 A lot of my questions were answered. The 

16 one about the number of current facilities, I mean, I 

17 think we all recognize there were two out there. Is 

18 there any expectation that, you know, a significantly 

19 larger number will be licensed within the next ten 

20 years? I don't see any on the horizon. Maybe you all 

21 might.

22 But I tend to agree with the commenters 

23 who said this is not doing -- site-specific work is 

24 not too difficult. We have a huge number of very 

25 competent consultants out there who've done this for 
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1 the DOE.

2 As a DOE stakeholder, you know, I've 

3 looked at performance assessments, the basis for waste 

4 acceptance criteria, some of infractions of disposal 

5 in landfills. We have an onsite landfill in Oak Ridge 

6 for DOE's CERCLA waste and the stakeholders 

7 participated in probably at least a year of 

8 discussions over that, every aspect, and it's 

9 certainly not beyond our understanding.

10 I guess one question I have because I'm --

11 I was interested to learn that the NRC doesn't 

12 delegate their authority to Agreement States but sort 

13 of passes it over wholesale. And to what extent and 

14 how quickly and what are the drivers to have the -- to 

15 require the states to update and enforce their 

16 regulations to be consistent with any changes you 

17 might make. That would be a question I have that I 

18 don't really understand very well.

19 MR. CAMERON: Why don't you finish what 

20 you have and then we'll go to that question. 

21 MS. GAWARICKI: All right. 

22 Oak Ridge also dealt with the issue of 

23 volumetrically contaminated materials, and maybe this 

24 is straying a little bit from Part 61, but the state 

25 was actually looking to allow release of huge 
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1 quantities of very lightly contaminated nickel into 

2 the commercial market for recycling. Many antinuclear 

3 stakeholders went berserk over this. We did not.

4 We looked at how the decontamination was 

5 done and the test results and the science behind it 

6 and decided, you know, it was perfectly protective of 

7 human health. But the DOE now has a moratorium on 

8 that. 

9 And in general we're seeing that a lot of 

10 money is spent managing things as waste, which there's 

11 no need to from a human health perspective. And I 

12 think there needs to be some rationality injected into 

13 this process. Not every gamma ray is going to cause 

14 cancer.

15 So I think we need a de minimis provision, 

16 we need a way to free release material that is below 

17 regulatory concern. I mean, that's only common 

18 sense. EPA does that with hazardous waste which has 

19 no half-life, and we certainly should be able to do it 

20 with low-level radioactive waste.

21 And I had one more, actually two more 

22 comments. 

23 Dirk's issue regarding cardiovascular 

24 effects. And I know that the NRC is charged with 

25 protecting people, but -- and I mentioned this 
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1 yesterday -- on balance the particulates and the 

2 emissions from coal-fired plants according to EPA's 

3 risk assessments kill 400,000 people a year; 400,000 

4 real people, not, you know, some intruder far in the 

5 future who may or may not show up on site, may or may 

6 not drill into it for water in the middle of the 

7 desert.

8 So there's got to be a balance here. You 

9 can't make life so difficult for nuclear power plants 

10 so that they can't bring the benefits of non-carbon, 

11 non-emission power to the people of the United States.

12 And then finally, the intruder scenario --

13 in Oak Ridge of course there is that consideration for 

14 the closed waste sites, but what the community is 

15 really looking at is you can't protect, I mean, 

16 there's just no way that these sites aren't going to 

17 eventually deteriorate. And one of the keys is to 

18 implement a system called long-term stewardship where 

19 you have these sites registered with the county 

20 registers, they're on deeds, they have restrictions, 

21 there's institutional controls as well as the physical 

22 barriers, you have an ongoing education program. 

23 Those things are essential elements for when a site is 

24 finally closed and the operators are gone. And maybe 

25 NRC would like to start to look at long-term 
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1 stewardship requirements as well as some of the other 

2 technical requirements. 

3 And I want to thank you for your time. I 

4 really appreciate the extra day-long meeting. I'm a 

5 little bit sorry there aren't more members of the lay 

6 public here, but it can be tough sledding with some of 

7 this technical stuff. Thank you.

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Susan. 

9 And before we go to the panel, and I will 

10 go over to Leif, Larry maybe you could just briefly 

11 put a little bit of the finer point that relinquish 

12 doesn't mean wholesale.

13 MR. CAMPER: No, it does not. 

14 The reason that I pointed out that we 

15 relinquish the authority as opposed to delegate --

16 during one of the presentations the term "we delegate" 

17 was used. We relinquish our authority, vested in the 

18 Atomic Energy Act. But when we do that, we do that 

19 under a rather rigorous process. 

20 The Agreement State, for example, has to 

21 come in and demonstrate that they have developed a set 

22 of regulations that are adequate to protect public 

23 health and safety, that they have achieved the level 

24 of compatibility that has been assigned to those 

25 regulations, that they have adequate staffing, that
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1 the staff is properly trained and so forth. So when 

2 the governor of a state and the chairman of our agency 

3 enter into an agreement, it is not just that we just 

4 say, here, now it's yours; it doesn't work quite that 

5 way. 

6 And then in addition to that we have a --

7 for any given regulation a compatibility is assigned 

8 for various components of that regulation and then the 

9 Agreement States have a prescribed amount of time to 

10 implement those regulations consistent with the 

11 compatibility that is assigned. And then we go 

12 through a rather rigorous monitoring process where we 

13 interface with the Agreement State regulators and 

14 conduct what we call a vertical slice. We look down 

15 through their licensing activities, their selection 

16 activities, the quality and currentness of their staff 

17 in terms of training. So there is quite a bit more to 

18 it to become an Agreement State and then to maintain 

19 that status as an Agreement State, it is a rigorous 

20 review process. So when we relinquish that authority, 

21 it's not just wholesale.

22 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Larry. 

23 I'm going over to talk to -- see what Leif 

24 has to say.

25 But for the panel, we started out this 
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1 morning saying that the purpose of the panel was to 

2 deal with any cross-cutting issues. There were a 

3 number mentioned this morning: implications of the DOE 

4 rulemaking, blending, period of performance, 

5 sufficient concentrations. I don't know where all of 

6 you want to start with that or whether you want to 

7 start with where are you collaborating or where are 

8 the potential areas of conflict to start that 

9 discussion. 

10 But we're going to go to Leif first and 

11 then we'll go up to panel.

12 MR. ERIKSSON: Well, maybe this isn't such 

13 an issue. My name is Leif Eriksson. 

14 I made some comments yesterday and to my 

15 great satisfaction, most of them have been addressed 

16 here, so I will not belabor you with those again. I 

17 just hope that -- David enlightened me yesterday on B 

18 and C conditions, and there will be a lot of A's if A 

19 is what I think it is. 

20 What I would like to do is to look a 

21 little bit broader. And that is we have a problem in 

22 the United States today, we can dispose of low-level 

23 waste, it is more expensive at some sites than others 

24 due to the way the states implement the regulations 

25 but we still have -- we have four buckets if you're 

26 going to keep the classification system they have 
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1 today, A, B, and C, and greater-than-Class C. 

2 My thinking on greater-than-Class C is that 

3 it could be beneficial to push greater-than-Class C 

4 into 10 CFR Part 60 and 40 CFR Part 191. And I'm not 

5 quite sure that that would work, but I just wanted to 

6 lay it on the table for consideration by the NRC to 

7 begin with. 

8 And also with regards to Greater than Class 

9 C, the EIS looked at various disposal solutions. I 

10 would recommend that also and anyone who is 

11 interested in a relatively safe solution close to the 

12 surface, go to www.skb.se (the website for the 

13 Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co. or SKB)

14 They (SKB) have operated a facility since 1978 for 

15 short-lived, low-level, and long-level radioactive 

16 waste. So they have tremendous experience. And in 

17 my mind, that is the place where I think the GTCC 

18 could go without any problems if it doesn't go to 

19 WIPP. 

20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Leif. 

21 And I'm going to get to you. I want to 

22 make sure that we at least kick off the panel 

23 discussion. 

24 Do we have any good ideas about how to 

25 kick that off?

26 MR. LETOURNEAU: I've got to start by 

27 making a confession and correcting the record, since I 

28 misspoke this morning. Yeah, I know. I know. 
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1 Frank pointed it out to me. We have not 

2 proposed capitulating on the 10,000 year time of 

3 compliance. We are still keeping 1,000, doing peak up 

4 to 10,000 and then adding the qualitative analysis for 

5 any peak that occurs after 10,000. So we're adding 

6 the qualitative part, we're still going to use 1,000 

7 for compliance. 

8 MR. CAMERON: And let's go to Boby; you 

9 have that right there. And then we'll go down the 

10 microphone. Boby.

11 DR. EID: I think your question is 

12 regarding what areas of collaboration in order to 

13 achieve something so we can satisfy the public and the 

14 stakeholders and the licensees in terms of low-level 

15 waste sterilization activities. In terms of PA, 

16 definitely, we need to work together because as was 

17 indicated, and Dave also tells us that PA is not an 

18 easy task; it is a complicated issue, so methodology 

19 could vary from one agency to another. So it may be a 

20 good idea to establish some kind of a group to 

21 interact with each other. It's not just only with 

22 DOE, it's with EPA because those issues there are 

23 overlapping. 

24 And to address risk-informed performance 

25 based approach, one solution could be how can you 
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1 establish a model site. It is not just on what you 

2 call it model A, B, and C, try to tackle that issue 

3 based on a practical approach, some data available, 

4 and then try to conduct some kind of PA analysis using 

5 different approach, different methodology, different 

6 codes. See how we do it independently and then after 

7 that, get together and see what kind of issues that we 

8 do it in different way. 

9 If we leave just the PA to be conducted by 

10 the consultants and all these things by themselves and 

11 then after that we try to look at it, maybe we will 

12 find we are not in harmony. 

13 So my solution if we can start this 

14 activity to harmonize the PA methodology, PA approach, 

15 I think this would be a good idea. 

16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks Boby, that's 

17 very helpful. 

18 And I'm reminded of Rodger's presentation 

19 yesterday where he talked about the group that meets 

20 in May. And I want to get to Mike Lee, but Marty, do 

21 you just want to tell us the name of the group that 

22 Rodger is talking about? 

23 MR. LETOURNEAU: This is definitely a 

24 partial answer to Boby's concern and we'll make sure 

25 that he gets the information. We're setting up the 
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1 steering committee right now. And we're trying to 

2 establish it such that it becomes a true community of 

3 practice; not a DOE community of practice, not 

4 anybody's community of practice. But in order for it 

5 to be successful, it has to have DOE, NRC, EPA, state 

6 regulators, and so on, and practitioners to be 

7 successful. 

8 So we'll continue to work with you on 

9 that. And I think there is a special project in your 

10 future. 

11 MR. CAMERON: Wonderful

12 MR. LETOURNEAU: Thank you. 

13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And thank you, Boby. 

14 Mike Lee. 

15 DR. LEE: Just a couple of points. I 

16 think the committee that Marty talked about is 

17 laudable. I know that when the staff put together the 

18 staff recommendations on low-level waste PA, that 

19 document went out for public comment. We got a lot of 

20 comments from Agreement States as well as 

21 practitioners. And that's an opportunity, I think, 

22 subject to resource availability. It might be useful 

23 to get engaged in. 

24 The other comment, though, regarding the 

25 time of compliance and as Larry elaborated on earlier 
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1 is that there is a rulemaking effort under way. The 

2 staff as part of that rulemaking effort are developing 

3 a technical basis for their position on what that time 

4 of compliance might be. And then there's an alignment 

5 process that's going to take place and then ultimately 

6 it will go to the Commission; and then the Commission 

7 is going to respond to what the staff recommendation 

8 is. 

9 So I don't think we can do anything more 

10 than that right now, just let the process run its 

11 course. Ultimately, if the Commission decides to do 

12 so, it will make that document available for public 

13 comment prior to giving -- I mean, there are a couple 

14 of scenarios. The Commission could say let's make it 

15 available for public comment after they review, they 

16 could turn around and say well, we don't want to weigh 

17 in on it until we hear from the public on it. There 

18 are a couple scenarios. 

19 But I think that the important point for 

20 the audience and other folks to bear in mind is the 

21 fact that there is an alignment process that has yet 

22 to take place. And the other thing, of course, is the 

23 process has to kind of reach fruition. 

24 So there's not a lot we can really say 

25 until we get some internal alignment.
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1 MR. CAMERON: This is the beginning of a 

2 good discussion and we're going to go back to you, go 

3 to Frank. I know that we have a member of the 

4 audience, Tom Magette, who wants to comment on what 

5 you're discussing. 

6 But I want to make sure that this 

7 gentleman gets the chance to get on the record before 

8 he has to go.

9 MR. MAYHUNE: Okay. Thank you. 

10 My name is Arthur Mayhewn (phonetic). I 

11 work for Energy Solutions in the U.K. I'd just like 

12 to provide some observations from a U.K. perspective. 

13 About five years ago in the U.K. we 

14 embarked upon a similar program of work to what you 

15 are now considering. We decided that we needed to 

16 modernize our low-level waste policy and update our 

17 disposal regulations. And we had a classification for 

18 waste that in principle is very similar to the U.S. 

19 system; it's not quite as complex, it's not quite as 

20 prescriptive. But it was based on activity 

21 concentrations for various categories of waste. And 

22 those activity concentrations stemmed from work that 

23 was done in some cases going back to the 1960s.

24 The system that we've moved to is a risk25 informed system. It's based on good science, it's 
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1 based on a proportionate pose to risk and it's very, 

2 very flexible. 

3 What we haven't done, though, is throw 

4 away our old classification system. So the new system 

5 that we've got, we've still got to old classification 

6 system. And the majority of waste that's currently 

7 being consigned to waste routes -- waste disposal 

8 routes in the U.K., is being done so under the old 

9 classification system.

10 But there are new routes that are now 

11 being developed; and those new routes, they have site12 specific waste acceptance criteria. And I think the 

13 changes in the policy and the regulation framework in 

14 the U.K., they've really driven better solutions to 

15 radioactive waste. 

16 We've now got very low-level waste and 

17 lower activity level waste. We've got routes 

18 (disposition paths) opening up for those waste 

19 streams. We've also got a route for intermediate20 level waste that we are now developing. 

21 And so I really would urge people within 

22 this room to consider a risk informed approach. We 

23 really haven't found the difficulties in 

24 implementation that I think were suggested by a number 

25 of members of the panel. 
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1 Yes, there is more work to do for the 

2 developers in terms of performance assessment and 

3 environmental safety case developments and there is 

4 more work to do for the regulators, but we haven't 

5 found that to be significant. Just to give you an 

6 idea of that. We've gone through an exercise for a 

7 waste landfill to take very low-level waste, it took 

8 us around about six months to put together the 

9 application, it's taken the regulator 12 months to 

10 actually review that application. So we don't think 

11 those are unreasonable time scales. 

12 I'd just like to make another couple of 

13 points. The inadvertent human intrusion scenario in 

14 the U.K., we only look at credible inadvertent human 

15 intrusion scenarios, but we do apply a probability of 

16 one to those scenarios. And, again, I think that goes 

17 back to a more proportionate type approach. 

18 In terms of institutional control in the 

19 U.K., the period of institutional control is subject 

20 to discussion with the regulator. It can be up to 300 

21 years.

22 I think there was also some discussion 

23 about the period over which you would need to do a 

24 performance assessment and look at the risk to the 

25 public. In the U.K. we have to apply the same 
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1 standard of protection to future generations as to the 

2 current generation. What that means, of course, is 

3 that we have to have a look if there is the potential 

4 for there to be significant risk to the public in 

5 1,000 years, in 10,000 years, we have to do some type 

6 of assessment. But again, those types of assessments, 

7 given the uncertainties associated with those time 

8 scales, they can only be stylistic. And in terms of 

9 the burden on developers in order to do those 

10 assessments, they haven't been -- we haven't found 

11 them to be significant. 

12 Okay. Thank you.

13 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much.

14 I think Tom's comment very much to the 

15 topic of DOE, NRC. And then we're going to go back up 

16 to the panel and start with Frank. 

17 MR. MAGETTE: I just had one comment 

18 largely relevant to what you were just saying, Mike. 

19 I really appreciate the idea of DOE and NRC getting 

20 together on this. But it seems to me that if there's 

21 one place where you really ought to have harmony it's 

22 on the period of performance. Because if you are 

23 going to dispose of DOE generated waste, the 

24 commercial facilities that are licensed by the NRC on 

25 Monday and dispose of on-site cells on Tuesday on DOE 
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1 sites, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that you 

2 ought to use two periods of performance to assess 

3 whether Monday's site is okay or Tuesday's site is 

4 okay. 

5 So it might be hard -- okay. It will be 

6 hard, but it would be really nice if you guys could 

7 get together on that. 

8 MR. CAMERON: And, Frank, we're going to 

9 go to you but, you know, I just want to see if after 

10 Frank if someone, anybody on the panel wants to 

11 address how do you go about harmonizing that? And 

12 we'll go to Marty. We'll go to Frank and then we'll 

13 go to Marty.

14 MR. DISANZA: Mine is real quick.

15 On time of compliance is that the way we 

16 structured our DOE Order 435.1 update is that we have 

17 the requirements, but following that we have a guide. 

18 And in the guide it gives you the argument for why we 

19 chose 1,000 years. And what I'm suggesting is it's 

20 real important that you read that. And I don't know 

21 exactly what the process is but I hope, Marty, we can 

22 make that available.

23 MR. LETOURNEAU: Our friend from the U.K. 

24 gave me another great idea. So this is another one of 

25 those brain busters. 
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1 Suppose we keep the classification system 

2 A, B, and C, but we have a site-specific performance 

3 assessment. And where the dividing line between A, B, 

4 and C is, is site specific based on what the important 

5 assumptions were about those classes. 

6 Class A is what you can dispose of as is. 

7 So based on your site-specific performance 

8 assessment, how high of a concentration can you 

9 dispose as is before you have to kick into Class B, 

10 which means you need additional waste form? And your 

11 limit of Class B would be as much as you could do 

12 based on your site-specific PA with that waste form. 

13 And then C would be, of course, deeper.

14 MR. CAMERON: And where does that get you 

15 in terms harmonizing the period of performance?

16 MR. LETOURNEAU: Oh, no. No. I'm not 

17 dealing with that right now. I had to get this out of 

18 my head before my head exploded. 

19 MR. CAMERON: Okay.

20 MR. LETOURNEAU: Was that what you were 

21 thinking about?

22 MR. CAMERON: That's a brain buster but --

23 We'll see if anybody else wants to --

24 MR. DISANZA: Chip, I'd like to add on to 

25 what Marty was saying. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay.

2 MR. DISANZA: As a manager of a disposal

3 site, many times when I take people out to the site I 

4 refer to our facility as a boutique disposal site. 

5 And what that means is that we are at a point where we 

6 are looking waste stream by waste stream as far as how 

7 to dispose of it. 

8 And we run the computer models, we make 

9 the appropriate decisions regarding does it go in our 

10 standard trench or do we have to excavate a new trench 

11 that's deeper, wider, so on? Are these trenches that 

12 are required deeper disposal, are they small trenches, 

13 large trenches and so on. And so that fits right in 

14 with what Marty says. 

15 As far as what we do, I think we do the 

16 latter part of it, because we don't get any standard 

17 little waste that just goes over here into a standard 

18 trench. 

19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I think Tom's 

20 point -- I mean, in terms of public -- in terms of 

21 credibility, can you really have two different periods 

22 of performance? I don't know how that would --

23 We're going to go to Dave. Dave. 

24 DR. ESH: Well, I think -- and for the 

25 transcription, this is Dave Esh, NRC. 
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1 We do now. I mean, we do now between NRC 

2 and DOE. We do now within NRC's programs between our 

3 Agreement States. We do between NRC and various 

4 international programs. So it's not like -- the 

5 period of performance, I think we should identify it 

6 based on technical considerations, societal 

7 considerations, policy considerations. 

8 And some of those things may be mutually 

9 exclusive between different groups or programs and 

10 they may not be amenable to a resolution, because 

11 people think very differently about this problem. 

12 I've done a lot of work on it, I'm looking at what 

13 different programs do, different groups do, and 

14 there's a very diverse range of the approaches that 

15 people take.

16 I think the best that we can do is we can 

17 clearly develop what we think is an approach and share 

18 it with stakeholders and get feedback. And I 

19 appreciate all of you to give us feedback whenever we 

20 get our information out there and we'll consider it 

21 and, if needed, revise the approach that we take. And 

22 some of that feedback we hope will come from our 

23 brethren at DOE and EPA and the other government 

24 agencies that we're all trying to represent protection 

25 and public health. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: So it's not necessarily a 

2 fatal flaw that there's different periods of 

3 performance?

4 DR. ESH: I don't think it's a fatal flaw, 

5 no. I mean, I think it's one of those areas where it 

6 can be challenging to discuss it with the 

7 stakeholders, but it's not any different than NRC 

8 having 25 millirem for a dose limit and the EPA having 

9 15. I mean, that's the same as --

10 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah, we live with that 

11 too.

12 DR. ESH: Or having groundwater protection 

13 or not having groundwater protection. I mean, a lot 

14 of energy goes into arguing or discussing a topic like 

15 that. So you're going to have these differences and 

16 some of them are not going to be amenable to 

17 resolution like that so simply. But we'll certainly 

18 try. Just because it's difficult and you may not come 

19 to resolution doesn't mean that we won't try to 

20 achieve resolution on it.

21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, David.

22 MR. LETOURNEAU: Rusty, for the non-DU 

23 what's your time for compliance for energy solutions?

24 MR. CAMERON: And Rusty, let me make sure 

25 I get this answer on the record. 
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1 MR. LUNDBERG: It's 500 years for non-DU.

2 MR. LETOURNEAU: Scott, you said Texas was 

3 1,000? 

4 MR. LETOURNEAU: A 1,000 year peak. 

5 Anybody know what South Carolina is for 

6 Barnwell? 

7 MR. GOLDSTON: They evaluate at 2,000 

8 years, I believe.

9 MR. LETOURNEAU: 2,000 years? We win.

10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you all. I want 

11 to do one last check with the people on the phones 

12 before we go on.

13 All of you on the phones, you've been 

14 listening to the discussion between the NRC and DOE 

15 staff and also have been listening to other things 

16 that have been said from the audience. Does anybody 

17 have anything that they want to offer at this point?

18 MR. CAMPBELL: Hi, Chip, this is Tison

19 (Campbell) with NRC's OGC (Office of the General 

20 Counsel). 

21 MR. CAMERON: Hi, Tison. How are you 

22 doing? 

23 MR. CAMPBELL: All right. 

24 I just wanted to clarify a few points 

25 about the Agreement State program. 
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1 MR. CAMERON: Good. Okay. 

2 MR. CAMPBELL: And I believe one of the 

3 questions that was asked was how long do the states 

4 have to implement regulations after the NRC adopts 

5 them? And the answer to that is three years.

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. 

7 MR. CAMPBELL: And also on this 

8 compatibility question, when we develop the 

9 regulations, we work with the Agreement States and 

10 make them aware of what we're doing throughout the 

11 process. And at the end of the day, the states have 

12 the -- you know, we assign a compatibility level to 

13 each section. And depending on what we have done, the 

14 states either have to adopt an identical regulation, 

15 they can adopt something that is more restrictive than 

16 what the NRC has done, or they are in some cases given 

17 the option to not adopt the regulation at all.

18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, any other thoughts? 

19 This is Tison from the Office of General Counsel at 

20 the NRC.

21 Anything else, Tison?

22 MR. CAMPER: That's all I have right now. 

23 If anyone has any questions, they can get my contact 

24 information from some of the NRC staff and I'm happy 

25 to answer questions offline.
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1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Tison.

2 Anybody else on the phone want to make a 

3 comment or question?

4 MR. ENGLAND: Frank England. Thanks 

5 again, for an excellent presentation. The technology 

6 worked great the second half of the day, including the 

7 chat. And I appreciate Tison's comments. And with 

8 that, thanks and I'm out. 

9 Oh, one other comment. (Inaudible) and 

10 ask to make an announcement of how we could get all of 

11 the materials shown in the slideshow. We couldn't 

12 download them, and we attempted to during the 

13 presentation. Thanks. 

14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And NRC materials are 

15 going to be -- and let's find out how we get NRC and 

16 DOE materials. NRC materials? 

17 MR. KENNEDY: Yes. We set up a website 

18 for today's meeting. There were a couple of typos in 

19 the slides. Today is Friday, we'll probably have a 

20 corrected version reposed by Monday or certainly by 

21 Tuesday. So if you can wait a couple of days, we'll 

22 have a corrected version of the slides on the NRC 

23 website under the low-level waste program. 

24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. So just go to the NRC 

25 website, low-level waste program.
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1 MR. KENNEDY: Well, the slides are there 

2 now, but we've picked up on a couple of typos. 

3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. In terms of the DOE 

4 slides? 

5 MS. SUTTORA: Okay. So we're going have 

6 the DOE slides, if you go to the Department of Energy, 

7 so it's energy.gov, then go to the environmental 

8 management, which is actually em.doe.gov, under the 

9 compliance link on the far left-hand side, they will 

10 be there probably Monday or Tuesday.

11 MR. CAMERON: Great. That's terrific. 

12 And we already gave the website where 

13 people can get a recorded version of today's 

14 proceedings. And I just want to make sure, the 

15 transcript, when it's available, and usually it's 

16 maybe ten days or whatever has been paid for in terms 

17 of urgency, but where will that transcript be posted? 

18 MR. SUBER: The transcript will be in 

19 ADAMS and it will also have a link on it when we 

20 update the webpage. So you can either go to ADAMS and 

21 get the transcript or through the link. 

22 MR. CAMERON: And it may be easier to go 

23 to the link and just click on -- go to the website, 

24 click on the link for the ML number. 

25 MR. LETOURNEAU: And we'll do the same 
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1 thing. We'll post it in the same place where our 

2 presentations and the recordings will be. 

3 MR. CAMERON: Great. Thank you for that 

4 question, too, because that clarifies a lot of things. 

5 Anybody else on the phone? 

6 MS. O'DELL: Maureen is still on, but I 

7 don't have any comments. Thank you.

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much. 

9 Was that Deb?

10 MS. O'DELL: No, it's Maureen O'Dell. 

11 MR. CAMERON: That's Maureen. Okay. 

12 Sorry, Maureen. 

13 MS. O'DELL: Oh, that's okay.

14 MR. CAMERON: All right. Anybody else in 

15 the -- oh I'm sorry, sir, I think you had your hand up 

16 earlier. All right.

17 MR. SMITH: Len Smith from CORAR, that's 

18 the Council on Radionuclides and Radiopharmaceuticals.

19 And firstly, I'd like to say I really 

20 appreciate that we're having this discussion with both 

21 NRC and DOE; it's wonderful that we're doing this. 

22 CORAR had concerns way back -- oh, first 

23 of all I should explain that the members of CORAR are 

24 the major manufacturers of radionuclides and 

25 radiopharmaceuticals, and we supply -- our customers 
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1 are mostly the biomedical community, but also we 

2 produce sealed sources for quality control and so 

3 forth. So of course we generate quite a lot of low4 level waste manufacturing and also our customers do as 

5 well. 

6 Way back when Part 61 was created we were 

7 concerned that there was just one set of tables, you 

8 know, the two tables and we felt that there should 

9 have been another set for the arid sites; and we still 

10 feel that. And the other thing that we're very much 

11 aware of is that that practices have changed in the 

12 existing sites and they are much more protective than 

13 was envisaged before. 

14 So we strongly feel that there needs to be 

15 an updating of Part 61 to accommodate those changes, 

16 recognize those changes.

17 We do believe that concentration limits 

18 should be recalculated for current site conditions and 

19 practices, and we also believe that it should be done 

20 for each low-level radioactive waste disposal site.

21 However, we do appreciate that might be a 

22 prohibitively costly process. 

23 And that brings up another issue for us. 

24 We have had a long-term concern that many licensees do 

25 not have access for disposal, either access or they 
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1 can't afford to dispose. So there are quite a few 

2 licensees that store waste on site and would continue 

3 to do so even if the access was available to them. So 

4 we're concerned about the costs. So any update to 10

5 CFR Part 61 we think you should be considering the 

6 costs; you should try and get some feedback on how it 

7 would affect the cost of waste disposal to the 

8 generators. We would be glad to try and help you with 

9 that.

10 So looking at the options, we see there is 

11 value in virtually all these options except the last 

12 one. We do not like the status quo. We think there 

13 is a real need for change. But it seems to us that 

14 probably, if there's a cost problem, that the best 

15 option is having just simply another set of default 

16 values for arid sites. 

17 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much. And 

18 just for the stenographer could you just write your 

19 name down on that and make sure she got it.

20 Okay, are we ready to have the two big 

21 dogs so to speak come up and do a sum up for us, or 

22 are there other things that the panel wants say or 

23 people in the audience?

24 Jim Lieberman, we'll go to him

25 MR. LIEBERMAN: Jim Lieberman. 
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1 Mike Lee described the rulemaking process 

2 and the norm is that SECY papers with proposals are 

3 not disclosed to the public until the paper has been 

4 submitted to the Commission. But that's not always 

5 the case. 

6 There are some cases when there is a 

7 sufficient stakeholder's interest, that the staff 

8 releases the draft for a preliminary review so the 

9 public can comment on it so that when the SECY paper 

10 is finalized, the Commission has the benefit of 

11 stakeholders' views when it reviews the staff's 

12 proposed rule language. And I suggest that in this 

13 case, especially with the issue of time and compliance 

14 with the Unique Waste Commission paper, that this 

15 might be a candidate for the staff to consider 

16 releasing their views prior to the SECY paper. 

17 DR. LEE: Thank you, Jim, for that 

18 comment. 

19 I alluded to an alignment process, and 

20 that process includes higher levels of NRC 

21 management. We certainly intend to remind them of 

22 what options are available in terms of release of 

23 information and they in turn will deliberate on those 

24 options and tell us what they think is best.

25 So I'm not going to say that it's not 
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1 going to happen one way or another, but we'll do our 

2 due diligence, brief management, and then management 

3 will get back to us on what they think is an 

4 appropriate approach. And we will certainly let them 

5 know what your position is. Thank you.

6 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you all. And 

7 Marty, another comment? 

8 MR. LETOURNEAU: Yeah. I just wanted to 

9 throw out some thoughts about the intruder scenario, 

10 because there's been a lot of discussion about that. 

11 And one of the things that may help us in 

12 having a more realistic understanding is making sure 

13 that we understand what we're talking about with the 

14 intruder scenario. Typically, you know, we are 

15 talking about somebody who is going to intrude in the 

16 site and we're talking about a 500 millirem standard. 

17 But what does that really mean? That's a 500 

18 millirem dose in a year. 

19 So whether you assume that the intruder 

20 lives there for 70 years or you assume the intruder is 

21 only there for a year, you are only looking at the 

22 highest year during that time period and comparing 

23 that to the 500 millirem standard. So as unreal as it 

24 may seem to have somebody assumed to be living there, 

25 it may make us more comfortable to understand that we 
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1 are looking an annual dose against the limit. 

2 So maybe we do assume that we have 

3 institutional control over these facilities and we 

4 don't lose it and there are going to be guards and 

5 gates and guns, or at least somebody that comes by 

6 once a year from Legacy Management to walk the grounds 

7 and make sure that nobody has moved in there or nobody 

8 has -- there hasn't been excessive erosion or 

9 subsidence. So that would say -- well, let's assume 

10 even every two years, every other year; they're cash 

11 strapped so they're only going to come out there every 

12 other year. You are still -- you are in a situation 

13 where you're going to discover somebody fairly quickly 

14 before they are going to be able to set up too much of 

15 a camp. They might have their house partially built, 

16 but they're probably not going to have the house, the 

17 barn, and the corral built by that, but let's make it 

18 even simpler. The point of highest dose for an 

19 intruder is usually going to be in that first year 

20 right after you assume that you've lost institutional 

21 control. Because of decay and because of short life 

22 products, the further out you go typically, we see 

23 that the intruder scenario is smaller. 

24 So we really are talking about, if we are 

25 going to use a probability of one, picking a point and 
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1 applying it and seeing what happens. We don't have to 

2 make up a lot of scary bizarre scenarios about who's 

3 living there and how long they were living there. 

4 We're talking about what happens in a year at the 

5 point where they are going to get the highest dose, 

6 which will in most cases be the year that you assume 

7 institutional control is lost. 

8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I'm going to ask Greg 

9 and Marty to just slide down one and we're going to 

10 ask Bill Levitan and Larry Camper to come up. 

11 And I just wanted to thank Justin, our 

12 audiovisual person that did an excellent job for us 

13 and also Tina, our stenographer, and the officers who 

14 helped us out before that. And Erick Reynolds has 

15 done a lot of the setup on WebEx and all that; so 

16 thank you, Erick. 

17 And here with go with Bill and Larry. And 

18 if we could -- okay.

19 MR. LEVITAN: Well, thank you all. I'm 

20 surprised how many people are actually still here at 

21 5:00 Mountain Time. And I guess we'll call you the 

22 hard core, but we appreciate you being here. And I 

23 certainly appreciate our NRC brethren, our co-Federal 

24 agencies. 

25 This is not the first time we've been 
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1 sitting with one another and it won't be the last, but 

2 I think that's positive, because actually the NRC 

3 plays two roles with us. One is if we just look at 

4 3116, both a monitoring role and a consultation role. 

5 And we try and be very careful as we work through 

6 those different hats that they wear. 

7 But I think from a consultation 

8 perspective, if I could say, and a common interest 

9 perspective, that we have a very healthy relationship 

10 and we look forward to that continuing and we look 

11 forward to that continuing in these types of public 

12 venues. Because, I'm not political, but clearly --

13 you've heard the word transparency a lot from the 

14 current administration. Our assistant secretary is 

15 very much about transparency and we've been talking 

16 over the past couple of days about the chairman of the 

17 NRC very much being an advocate of transparency as I 

18 think is our recent traditions in both of our agencies 

19 anyway. 

20 And I think we recognize that we both have 

21 a common interest and a common mandate, frankly, on my 

22 term and actually sort of a CERCLA term on 

23 protectiveness. Protectiveness to the public health 

24 and the environment. 

25 We at DOE though depart a little bit from 
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1 the NRC in the sense that we actually have a mandate 

2 from the communities in which our sites are and from 

3 the Congress that we need to clean up these sites. As 

4 I may have mentioned this morning, I can't remember, 

5 but we literally have hundreds of milestones in our 

6 compliance agreements. We have approximately 40 

7 compliance agreements and hundreds of milestones a 

8 year that drive us. 

9 And we went into an agreement with EPA and 

10 our host states on these agreements, so we want to 

11 meet our commitments to the communities that supported 

12 basically us winning the cold war. 

13 And as a result, as I said this morning, 

14 we and I and my staff and most everybody in EM really 

15 has a sense of urgency as we go about our business. 

16 But with that sense of urgency is a sense of 

17 responsibility that we maintain a safe envelope, that 

18 we maintain a compliant envelope and that we maintain 

19 protectiveness; that's our goal. 

20 So we're not interested as sometimes we're 

21 accused, of cutting corners. What we are interested 

22 in doing is completing our mission effectively and 

23 efficiently and delivering results to the taxpayer. 

24 So as a result what I mentioned this 

25 morning about this transition -- and there is a point 
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1 whether it was at a waste treatment plant or waste 

2 processing, with technologies that are constantly 

3 being developed, with models that are constantly being 

4 improved, that we basically have to draw a line in the 

5 sand and say this is what we know now, we need to get 

6 on with it. And that's because we have these 

7 pressures to perform as well.

8 So I find this -- this has been very 

9 interesting for me because, as I mentioned before, I 

10 don't get immersed; I leave that to Marty and to Linda 

11 and others on our staff. I don't get immersed in the 

12 details, particularly of Part 61. 

13 So I've learned a lot today and yesterday 

14 and I really appreciate our partnerships and thank you 

15 all very much.

16 MR. CAMPER: Well, obviously, I would echo 

17 much of what Bill has said in terms of the amount of 

18 communication and effort that goes into the 

19 relationship that we have with the Department of 

20 Energy. And so this opportunity for a joint public 

21 forum was quite acceptable and quite interesting to 

22 both agencies. And frankly, we welcomed the 

23 opportunity and we started planning this probably a 

24 year or more ago and it has really come together very 

25 well. And so I would certainly echo the sentiments 
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1 that Bill set forth. 

2 I think yesterday afternoon we were 

3 closing the topical workshop, I made the comment and I 

4 would echo it again here today at this point in time; 

5 there is more going on right now in low-level waste 

6 policy space than has been the case in the United 

7 States in the past 30 years. 

8 We have been updating and risk-informing 

9 and performance-basing the concentration averaging 

10 BTP. We have the unique waste streams rulemaking. We 

11 are addressing this topic of blending within the 

12 unique waste streams rulemaking. We have this 

13 examination of Part 61, which has been the topic of 

14 this discussion today, and of course the updating of 

15 the DOE Order 435.1. That is a tremendous amount of 

16 policy activity in the low-level waste arena. 

17 We owe a recommendation to our Commission 

18 in December of '12 with regards to Part 61. We're 

19 going have a number of additional opportunities for 

20 public participation in that process over the next 

21 year or so. 

22 Clearly, the stakeholder input is a 

23 critical part of what we do. The Commission has a 

24 strong interest in stakeholder input and I know that 

25 DOE does as well, as Bill expressed in his comments.
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1 We got a lot of very useful input 

2 yesterday and today and, again, I would also echo the 

3 sentiment of thanking all of you for staying here 

4 until 5:15 on a Friday afternoon in lovely Phoenix, 

5 Arizona. Throughout the day you've had a lot of very 

6 interesting things to say and you've given us much to 

7 think about as a staff. 

8 In the final analysis, Part 61 has worked 

9 well; Part 61 is adequate to protect public health and 

10 safety. That is not to say that it can't be improved. 

11 And I think what I'd like to see us do as we work on 

12 Part 61 over the next year or so and try to decide 

13 what we want to recommend to the Commission, is that 

14 we bring to bear the best science that we can, the 

15 most realism that we can, all the while ensuring that 

16 we continue to adequately protect public health and 

17 safety.

18 So we thank you for your input. We thank 

19 you for your active participation. And we look 

20 forward to the next opportunity to interface with you 

21 publicly as we proceed ahead looking at these various 

22 policy issues on the low-level waste front.

23 Thank you.

24 (Whereupon, at 5:00 p.m. the joint 

25 workshop was concluded.)
Docket Number: n/a 


Location: Phoenix, Arizona 


were held as herein appears f and that this is the 

original transcript thereof for the file of the United 

States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, 

thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the 

direction of the court reporting company, and that the 

transcript is a true and accurate record of the 

foregoing proceedings. 

ina Ihrig I 

fficial Reporter 

Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc. 

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Joint DOE/NRC Workshop on disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste (LLRWJ 

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