Consent Based Siting From: Christine Speed Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2016 6:26 PM To: Consent Based Siting Subject: Response to IPC Dear Dept. of Energy, I live in the 49th District of Congressman, Darrell Issa. Unfortunately, I am out of town and missed your presentation in San Juan Capistrano on June 22nd, but would still like to comment on the removal of nuclear waste from the San Onofre Nuclear Station. As you know, San Onofre sits right on the coast of San Clemente. Actually, it’s right on the BEACH— just like Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. San Onofre is on the other side of the Ring of Fire where such a lot of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. I am in support of using the nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain. The federal government has spent millions of dollars studying this site and has employed some of the brightest, geologists to do so. These geologists have studied the site from every angle and concluded that its technical characteristics make it an optimally safe site. Their extensive report has been finalized for some time now. Storage of nuclear waste is a critical safety issue, safety that only the federal government can provide. Yet no action has been taken by Congress to permit Yucca Mountain to begin its life as a storage facility. Rather, Yucca Mountain has been treated like a political football— FOR YEARS while WE sit next door to 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste that are at total risk of catastrophic contamination the next time a tsunami or earthquake hits southern California. In other words, we are sitting on a nuclear time bomb just waiting to go off while Congress remains in paralysis. Such non responsive government is what makes citizens feel so helpless and then become so angry. Congress cares about terrorist uses of dirty bombs. What about this dirty bomb? Why is this one different? Please end the political obstruction of the Yucca Mountain repository. You have extensive geological science on your side. Use it. Mount an Executive Branch legislative offensive. March up to the Hill and make your case. Create some noise. Remind those Congressmen that southern California will see to it that every single obstructor will lose his job if San Onofre blows up while they were treating the threat of nuclear destruction like a cute political game— especially — when a totally safe site has been available for some time now and there is no scientific excuse for not using it. Thank you. Sincerely, Christine A. Speed Consent Based Siting From: William P Gloege Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2016 1:03 PM To: Consent Based Siting Subject: Simplify Dear DOE, Your idea for "Consent Based Siting of Waste" is a good one. But can you streamline the outreach for comments and for explaining the program? Who is your audience for this information? Who do you want to send comments? It better not be the public because they will quickly click away to something else on their busy schedule. Your site looks like something created by a government bureaucrat. How about asking for help from a good web designer, or somebody at Google. You know, someone who knows how to communicate with people. That's the place you should start with this worthy and badly-needed waste storage program. Please get busy ASAP. Thank you. William Gloege Californians for Green Nuclear Power Consent Based Siting From: Leif G Eriksson Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2016 11:56 AM To: Consent Based Siting Subject: Re: "Response to IPC" Attachments: Response to IPC-Rev1.-lge-30 June 2016.docx; WM2016-16010-FinalR1.pdf; WM2016 Presentation 16010-FinalR1.pptx Thank you for the permission to correct my initial IPC. Attached please find the revised version. Following are some of the edits I made: I listed the previously missing data source 4 (both the related 16010 paper and the presentation are attached). Listing it resulted in the previous data source 4 now being listed as data source 5. I condensed and included my initial response to question 4 in my updated response to question 3 and, instead, added a more appropriate response to question 4. I defined and replaced a couple of repeated terms/concepts with acronyms, e.g., DAP and S&D. Please let me know if you need any related clarification or additional information. Last, but perhaps not least, in response to one of your other e-mails with a response due by noon (EDT) today, I am relieved to be able to report that I received written permission from Waste Management Symposia LLC (WMS) yesterday for me and DOE to publish the five WMS papers and presentations listed in the attached IPC. Sincerely, Leif G. Eriksson Public Comment To Inform the Design of a Consent-Based Siting Process for Nuclear Waste Storage and Disposal Facilities” (IPC) TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN The December 23, 2015, Federal Register “Invitation for Public Comment To Inform the Design of a Consent-Based Siting Process for Nuclear Waste Storage and Disposal Facilities” (IPC), as well as the handout provided at the first related public meeting held in Washington, D.C. on March 10, 2016, solicited public responses on five “key” questions. Please find below responses to the aforementioned five questions from Leif G Eriksson, . The ensuing responses are based upon my active involvement in and monitoring of nuclear waste management programs in the USA and abroad since 1978 (resume available on request by e-mail to or by phone at . 1. “How can the Department ensure that the process for selecting a site is fair?” Put simply, it can’t, because the “Department” does not control the process. Case in point, since the enactment of the still applicable, but not enabled since FY2011, Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), as amended in 1987 (NWPAA), both the Secretary of Energy and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM), have been controlled both financially and productively by one or more of the U.S. President, the U.S. Congress, the majority leaders of the U.S. Senate, and the majority leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives. The related results, or rather the globally-embarrassing lack thereof, are not conducive to instilling confidence in either the Secretary of Energy’s or the “Department’s” ability to be able to ensure a “fair” process in the future. With a peripheral glance beyond the current legal situation, as elaborated upon in e.g., the attached Waste Management (WM) 2013 [1], WM2015 [2 and 3], and 2016 [4 and 5] papers and the therein listed references, the new organizational Executive Branch structure for the siting and development (S&D) of future spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and other high- level radioactive waste (HLW) storage and disposal facilities unsuccessfully introduced hitherto in the U.S. Senate in 2013 (S.1240-IS) and 2015 (S.854-IS) to replace the Secretary of Energy’s responsibilities under the NWPA, i.e., the OCRWM, would exacerbate rather than decrease the political control and financial chokeholds imposed upon the DOE/OCRWM in the past. Page 1 of 4 - Rev. 1. (lge-05-Jul-16 2:19 PM) Public Comment To Inform the Design of a Consent-Based Siting Process for Nuclear Waste Storage and Disposal Facilities” (IPC) In summation, to imply or suggest that the “Department” would be able to ensure a fair process for the S&D of future storage and/or disposal facilities for SNF and HLW fails to account for the related historical record. 2. “What model and experience should the Department use in designing the process?” Put simply, “consent-based” is a qualitative term/concept lacking exactitude that accommodates a broad variety of amorphous interpretations. As elaborated upon in several of the attached WMS papers [1-5] and related slide presentations, the siting pre-process could be a never effort unless a measurable definition of “consent-based” is provided from the outset. One of several potential measurable- quantitative “consent-based” S&D models is described in a couple of the attached WMS papers and illustrated in the related slide presentations. With regard to relevant experience, as suggested by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) in 2011 and 2012, the voluntary-based S&D process for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) transuranic radioactive waste (TRUW) repository in New Mexico, USA, and the societally-equitable repository S&D process designed and re-designed in Sweden based upon LOCAL public opposition and continuous involvement, embody particularly-relevant experiences, as do their respective licensing processes and the related parties involved in them (please also see question 3 for additional information). Suffice it to also mention here that an acute experience issue in the USA is the continually diminishing availability of relevant domestic institutional subject-matter intellectual and hands-on professional resources. A large number of professionals involved during the past 30 years or longer in the S&D of deep geological disposal systems (repositories) for SNF and HLW (and TRUW) in the USA have retired or passed away. Furthermore, based upon the premise that valuable lessons can also be learned from failures, it should also be noted that the USA’s only candidate SNF/HLW repository since 1987 at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, which may be considered by many to represent a domestic antithesis to “consent- based” S&D, have been on hold since 2010 and its implementing organization, the OCRWM, was de-staffed in 2011. 3. Who should be involved in the process for selecting a site, and what is their role? As elaborated upon in several of the attached WMS papers and schematically illustrated in them and their related slide presentations, all interested parties residing legally in the USA should have the opportunity to access relevant information and expressed their respective opinion and Page 2 of 4 - Rev.