March 17, 2014

STAKEHOLDERS WEIGH IN ON NRC SITE SPECIFIC ASSESSMENT RULEMAKING

By ExchangeMonitor

Stakeholders last week said they approved of the new direction and points of emphasis Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners gave staff on the site specific assessment rulemaking, but made suggestions for other issues they felt should be included. On March 2, the NRC held its first public meeting on the site specific assessment rulemaking since the agency’s Commissioners submitted a January memo to staff asking that they change direction, seek stakeholder comment on four specific issues, and submit a proposed rule after 18 months. The four issues included: updating to current dose methodologies, instituting a two-tiered period of performance, creating site-specific waste acceptance criteria based on performance assessments, and the question of to what degree should the Agreement States have to adopt the final rule. 

Issues such as the inadvertent intruder analysis, the 100-year institutional control period, and potentially updating the Part 61 tables using new dose conversion factors came up repeatedly during the day, though the Commissioners did not identify them in staff direction. There was also vocal support for using the site specific assessment rulemaking to address the major issues in 10 CFR Part 61 waste classification system, and therefore avoiding having a second rulemaking to risk inform that rule. If the NRC addresses institutional control, intruder assessments, and establishes site specific performance assessments, “we are probably fundamentally considering a single revision,” Lisa Edwards, senior project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, said last week. But Larry Camper, director of the NRC’s division of waste management and environmental protection, said, “there may come a time based on feedback we’re getting that there’s no need to do further revision to Part 61 and what we’ve done with the site specific analysis rulemaking is adequate. We may get to that point but I just don’t know right now.”

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