Through the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) and the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987, Congress directed the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to interact with the NRC in pre-licensing consultation on site characterization activities at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Further, the NWPA limits the amount of time the NRC will have to evaluate a potential license application. Consequently, the purpose of this pre-licensing consultation process is to allow the complex technical issues present at a potential geologic repository site to be addressed early so that potential health and safety issues are identified and receive the attention they deserve.

In order to document the efforts in pre-licensing consultation, the NRC staff maintains a list of KTIs and their status.

Process Description, Staff Evaluation, and Risk Informing

The NRC has structured its pre-licensing program around KTIs. The resolution of the issues by DOE is tracked by the NRC to ensure that potential health and safety issues are identified and addressed. The NRC reviews the DOE work, including analysis model reports, relevant to each issue and conducts some independent technical work related to each issue.

The NRC documents the status of issue resolution, based on the results of its independent work and the review of the DOE work, in issue resolution status reports. In previous years, NRC reported on the status of issue resolution through individual status reports for each of the KTIs. Beginning in fiscal year 2001, the NRC staff decided to develop a single integrated issue resolution status report that would clearly and consistently reflect the interrelationships among the various KTI subissues and the overall resolution status (see the list and status of KTIs for high-level waste disposal). In addition, the integrated status report includes sections on pre-closure topics, performance confirmation, and quality assurance.

In addition to preparing the issue resolution status reports, NRC holds meetings and technical exchanges with the DOE to advance the issue resolution process.

A series of meetings related to the NRC KTIs and sufficiency review and the DOE site recommendation decision have been conducted since August 2000. The objective of these meetings was to discuss and review the progress in resolving the KTIs. Meeting summaries and agreements between the DOE and NRC for each issue are documented for each meeting. The agreements describe the additional work that the DOE will complete to advance issue resolution.

Staff Evaluation of U.S. Department of Energy Analysis Model Reports, Process Controls, and Corrective Actions

An Evaluation Team of staff from NRC headquarters, NRC�s Region IV office, and the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses performed three targeted audits to evaluate the technical information in selected Analysis Model Reports and supporting information that were considered to be of high or medium significance to repository performance. The team also evaluated the processes for developing and controlling Analysis Model Reports and the effectiveness of recent corrective actions in the areas of models, software, and data. On April 13, 2004, the team�s results of this evaluation was provided to DOE in a letter, with the report included as an enclosure to the letter.

Risk-Informing the Issue Resolution Process

Additional meetings will continue throughout the pre-licensing period. On March 3, 2003, the Commission was briefed by the NRC staff on the status of the waste safety programs, performance, and planning in the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. Following the briefing, the Commission directed the staff to provide a report on the risk-significance ranking of the 293 KTI agreements. On June 5, 2003, this report was sent to the Commission.

The staff have revised the Baseline of Risk Insights to reflect the structure of the Yucca Mountain Review Plan . The revised report describes the development of the risk insights baseline, describes the application of risk terminology in the NRC's high-level waste program, and incorporates quantitative analyses to support the risk insights. The staff rated the significance of the individual risk insights to assess the relative importance of staff activities. The risk insights were rated by considering the contribution to, or adverse effect on, the waste isolation capabilities of the repository system. The revised report serves as a reference to help promote a clearer and more consistent staff position on the relative risk significance of technical issues in the high-level waste program. The staff intends to use the information documented in the revised report to help prioritize its pre-licensing activities, focus staff resources, and support risk-informed project management and decisionmaking in the high-level waste program. The staff expects to use the revised report together with the Yucca Mountain Review Plan and the integrated issue resolution status report to conduct a risk-informed review of a potential DOE license application for a high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain. On April 29, 2004, this revised report was sent to the Commission.

Current Status

All of the KTIs have been assigned the status "closed-pending." See the List and Status of KTIs for the definition of this term as well as the integrated issue resolution status report.

Public Involvement

The public can participate as observers in technical meetings on the KTIs and may be able to provide comments during these meetings. An agreement between DOE and NRC governs interactions

between the two agencies during the pre-licensing phase and discusses the extent of public involvement permitted in these interagency meetings.

Upcoming Meetings

See the NRC Public Meeting Schedule for meetings between the DOE and the NRC related to issue resolution in the high-level waste program.

Past Meetings

See the High-Level Waste Disposal Meeting Archive page for meeting summaries and agreements.

Related Legislation

• Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended (NWPA)

Resolution of KTIs for High-Level Waste Disposal

Background

Process Description, Staff Evaluation, and Risk Informing

Current Status

Public Involvement

Related Legislation

Related Documents and Other Resources