NRC ADVISORY PANEL TO EXAMINE REVISIONS TO CONCENTRATION AVERAGING BTP

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will present their proposed revisions to the Branch Technical Position on Concentration Averaging and Encapsulation to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards today. Staff previously presented changes to the BTP—the guidance document that establishes guidelines for blending of different classes of low-level radioactive waste—to the ACRS’ Radiation Protection and Nuclear Materials subcommittee Oct. 4. The changes to the BTP that staff has proposed—including eliminating the factor of 10 rule and altering radionuclide dose restrictions to allow more sealed sources to have access to disposal—have been welcomed by industry. The ACRS subcommittee at its Oct. 4 meeting, and stakeholders at an Oct. 20 meeting in Albuquerque, asked that staff consider making the BTP’s intruder scenario less restrictive, and eliminating some limits such as the requirement of a 55-gallon drum, among other changes. NRC staff previously told RW Monitor that they hope to push back the release of the draft revisions to the BTP for public comment to sometime this spring, giving them time to incorporate comments they received at the October meetings, and potentially the comments they receive from the ACRS during today’s meeting.