States Call for More Flexibility
Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
9/12/2014
NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane shot down any notion this week that the Commission would reduce the compatibility category assign to the current 10.CFR.61 rulemaking during a webinar held by the American Nuclear Society. With a Compatibility ‘B’ distinction, the rulemaking would require that the Agreement States adopt Part 61 almost exactly as the NRC words it, a distinction that has state regulators grumbling. “This is what the Commission decided going forward,” Macfarlane said when asked if there was any chance the category could be reduced. “I know the states are not happy about that. I was actually out at the meeting of the Agreement States at the end of August, and heard from them about this directly.” The moderator of the webinar clarified the question by asking if that meant ‘no,’ and Macfarlane responded “right.”
The NRC released its latest Staff Related Memo on Part 61 earlier this year. The SRM contained a new three-tiered approach to evaluate performance assessment of a site including a time of compliance of 1000 years, a protective assurance analysis from the end of compliance period through 10,000 years and a qualitative analysis stretching beyond 10,000 years to evaluate long-term risks. The SRM also indicated that the rule should have a Compatibility ‘B’ distinction, the second most stringent category, requiring states to adopt most of what the NRC rules.
States Want Flexibility
Macfarlane’s comment stands in opposition to the wants of state regulators, as voiced during the RadWaste Summit last week in Summerlin, Nev. During a panel on state perspectives of Part 61, all of the state representatives called for more flexibility in the rulemaking. “In regards to compatibility, it’s all about flexibility in some respects,” said Rusty Lundberg, director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control. “Particularly for us, as we go through this important performance assessment for DU, we think we are answering some of the questions. It would be hard also to all of sudden turnaround in five or ten years to have to repeat that so soon.” Lundberg’s comments were echoed by Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Brad Broussard. “We are urging the NRC to allow the greatest flexibility when it comes to category compatibility,” Broussard said. “I think ‘B’ is ok for 1,000 years. I think everybody would be amicable to that, but for some of the other provisions, the NRC might need to go back and look at computability categories to allow the greatest flexibility as possible.”
Gary Robertson, a technical consultant with the Low-Level Waste Forum’s Part 61 Working Group, compared the compatibility category in terms of football. The NRC, he said, was the quarterback, and the Agreement States were the wide receivers. The quarterback (NRC) needs to trust the wide receiver (states) to catch and move the ball down the field. “We want to be out running down the field with NRC, and not waiting until we are on the one yard line for the pass to us,” Robertson said. “Then, we are out there working the public and trying to convince them why the decisions made in D.C. are good elsewhere.” He added, “As a regulator, I like guidance more than compatibility B direction.”
Grandfather Clause
Depleted Uranium lies at the heart of the rulemaking, and the states with disposal sites that do not qualify for DU called some sort of grandfather clause to the rulemaking to avoid performing costly changes to the site for no reason. Susan Jenkins of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control argued last week that especially for the Barnwell site, the costs would not make sense for a facility that plans to close relatively soon. “If you think about increasing the cover thickness that would be very costly,” Jenkins said. “The long term care fund we have set up does not account for such expenses. It’s only for maintenance and repairs to the existing cap, but not to completely replace the cap and certainly not to enhance a cap. In addition to that, about half the waste volume at the Barnwell site was buried prior to Part 61 becoming effective, so that means intruder barriers were not used for that waste.”
Jenkins also went on to say, “These long term analyses were driven by the disposal of a very specific waste stream at one of two existing sites. The Barnwell site is not a candidate for this type of disposal. To add on to that, the long term radiological impact analyses should not apply to existing waste at sites, especially if they do not intend to receive unique waste streams. I do think applying these new requirements to existing licenses and existing waste should remain on a case by case basis.”
