Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Title: Workshop on Spent-Fuel Storage Cask Testing Protocols Docket Number: (not applicable) Location: Las Vegas, Nevada Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Work Order No.: NRC-796 Pages 1-335 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC. Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + + 4 WORKSHOP ON SPENT FUEL STORAGE 5 CASK TESTING PROTOCOLS 6 + + + + + 7 WEDNESDAY 8 MARCH 12, 2003 9 + + + + + 10 LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 11 + + + + + 12 The Public Meeting was called to order at 13 the Conference Room of the Clark County Building 14 Department, 4701 West Russell Road, Las Vegas, Nevada, 15 at 10:05 a.m., by F.X. "Chip" Cameron, Facilitator, 16 presiding. 17 PARTICIPANTS: 18 MIKE BAUGHMAN, Lincoln County, Nevada 19 BONNIE BOBB, Yomba Shoshone 20 RICK BOYLE, U.S. Department of Transportation 21 CHRISTOPHER BAJWA, NRC 22 E. WILLIAM BRACH, NRC 23 JIM CHANNELL, State of New Mexico 24 MIKE CONROY, U.S. Department of Energy 25 TOM DANNER, NAC International NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 2 1 PARTICIPANTS: (CONT.) 2 FRED DILGER, Clark County, Nevada, NRD 3 ROBERT HALSTEAD, State of Nevada, ANP 4 CASE JASZCZAK, Nye County 5 PEGGY MAZE JOHNSON, Citizen Alert 6 JOHN KESSLER, EPRI 7 JOSIE LARSEN, White Pine County, Nevada 8 CINDY MARQUES, Ely Shoshone Tribe 9 CALVIN MEYERS, Moapa Paiute Tribe 10 ANDREW MURPHY, NRC 11 DIANNE NIELSON, State of Utah 12 JIM PEGUES, City of Las Vegas, Nevada 13 AMY SNYDER, NRC 14 KEN SORENSON, Sandia National Laboratories 15 KALYNDA TILGES, Shundahai Network 16 JUDY TREICHEL, Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force 17 JOHN WELLS, Western Shoshone National Council 18 DAVE ZABRANSKY, U.S. Department of Energy 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 3 1 A-G-E-N-D-A 2 Agenda Item Page 3 Opening Remarks .................3 4 Overview, E. William Brach .......... 15 5 Overarching Issues .............. 25 6 Amy Snyder 7 Andrew Murphy 8 Discussion of General Testing Issues .....148 9 Fire Test Issues Introduction and .......207 10 Audience Discussion 11 Christopher Bajwa 12 Recap and Other Issuess Discussion ......310 13 Adjournment ..................335 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 4 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 (10:05 a.m.) 3 FACILITATOR CAMERON: Good morning. My 4 name is Chip Cameron, and I am the Special Counsel for 5 Public Liaison at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 6 the NRC, and I would like to welcome you to the NRC 7 public meeting this morning. 8 And our topic for today is the NRC’s plans 9 to conduct full-scale testing of spent fuel 10 transportation casks, and that plan is embodied in 11 this report that all of you should have, the Package 12 Performance Study Test Protocols. 13 And it is my pleasure to serve as your 14 Facilitator for the meeting today, and my general 15 responsibility in that role will be to try to help all 16 of you have a productive meeting. 17 Before we get into the substance of 18 today’s discussions, I just wanted to talk a little 19 bit about meeting process issues -- the purpose of the 20 meeting, the format and ground rules -- and go through 21 the agenda for you so you know what to expect today. 22 In terms of why we are here, the first 23 purpose is to clearly explain the NRC plans to do 24 full-scale testing; why are we doing this, what is 25 planned, and how are we going to try to accomplish it. NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 5 1 The second purpose and the most important 2 purpose is to listen to your views and recommendations 3 on these plans. The ultimate goal is to use the 4 discussion today, and any written comments that we 5 get, any comments from other types of public meetings 6 on this issue, and to use those comments to assist us 7 in finalizing the test protocol. 8 In terms of the format for the meeting, we 9 are in what we all a roundtable format, and obviously 10 not literally round, but we have a broad spectrum of 11 affected interests, commonly called stakeholders 12 around the table, and people whose organizations are 13 affected, and concerned, and knowledgeable about these 14 transportation issues. 15 And the purpose of doing a roundtable 16 format like this is that we are fundamentally 17 interested in each person’s views on these issues, but 18 in a roundtable we want to try to engage all of you in 19 a discussion of those individual views by others 20 around the table. 21 And we hope that this will give us another 22 perspective, another type of information that we won’t 23 get just by reading the individual comments, or just 24 by hearing individual oral comments that are presented 25 at the meetings. NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 6 1 And this leads me to the ground rules. 2 The first one is to try to be focused and concise in 3 your comments today. The roundtable gives us an 4 opportunity to develop a richness of views on these 5 views, but it means that we have to sacrifice going 6 into a lot of detail on your individual comments. 7 And we want to make sure that everybody 8 around the table has an opportunity to express their 9 views and we want to cover all the items on the 10 agenda, and hopefully get us out of here at a 11 reasonable hour at the end of the day. 12 So I would just ask you to try to keep 13 your comments to major points. I know that that can 14 be difficult on these controversial issues, but let’s 15 see how we can do with that. 16 If you have a recommendation, please try 17 to give us the rationale behind that recommendation. 18 You have name tags in front of you, and if you want to 19 talk, please put this up on the end, and that will cue 20 me into the fact that you do have something to say, 21 and will relieve you of the burden of having your hand 22 up all the time. 23 Because we want to get the reaction of 24 others around the table to your views, I may not take 25 the cards in the order that they come up so that we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 7 1 can follow what I call discussion threads, and please 2 only speak one at a time, because we are having a 3 transcript taken. 4 Our stenographer is right over there, and 5 that transcript will be available before the written 6 comment period closes, and so you will have an 7 opportunity to look at that. 8 Now, because we want to try to get a 9 discussion of views, we are in the roundtable format, 10 and the focus is up here, but we know that this is an 11 important issue obviously to all of you who are in the 12 audience. 13 And so at several times during the meeting 14 I will go on to you to see if you have any comments or 15 questions. So we will be out to you for your views. 16 In terms of the agenda for today’s 17 meeting, we are going to give you some background 18 first, some relatively brief presentations by the 19 Nuclear Regulatory Commission and our expert 20 consultants, on what are the NRC responsibilities 21 generally for these types of issues, and what is our 22 mission, and why are we doing full-scale cask testing, 23 and some details of what we plan to do. 24 And I will be introducing the speakers in 25 a minute, and we will go to you for questions about NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 8 1 those presentations to make sure that we have as much 2 clarity on this before we go into the discussion. 3 The next item on the agenda is called 4 participant interests, and this is basically just a 5 short statement of your major interests and concerns 6 on this issue. It will provide a foundation for our 7 discussions through the rest of the day, and it will 8 also help us do some agenda building to make sure that 9 we are covering all of the items of importance to you. 10 And again try to keep it to 2 minutes, or 11 3 minutes.