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Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

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Draft p. 3.4.13<br />

Issue<br />

Response<br />

336<br />

ALTERNATIVE DISPOSAL CONCEPTS<br />

Handling equipment for these operations will be formidable. (35)<br />

The point made in this comment (regarding Section 3.4.4.2 <strong>of</strong> the draft Statement)<br />

accurately indicates potential problems with the proposed handling method. At this point,<br />

the method is only a'proposal and has a high probability <strong>of</strong> being rejected on a more thor-<br />

ough engineering review and analysis. In fact, the final Statement does not incorporate<br />

these approaches into the reference system. If the rock melt disposal technique is to be<br />

used, there would be no obvious reason to convert to glass before emplacement, and the<br />

as-produced liquid high-level waste would be emplaced directly. Similarly, there appears<br />

to be no current interest in emplacing solidified canisters <strong>of</strong> HLW in the rock melt cavity.<br />

Draft p. 3.4.15<br />

Issue<br />

Extended subsurface storage <strong>of</strong> waste would be very difficult to implement. What would<br />

it accomplish? (35)<br />

Response<br />

Extended subsurface storage <strong>of</strong> waste was discussed to identify the potential options<br />

available in the operation <strong>of</strong> the disposal method. There is no particular known advantage<br />

to this approach, and it is believed that other methods are much more satisfactory. In the<br />

final Statement (Section 6.1.2) it is pointed out that retrieval <strong>of</strong> the HLW after<br />

emplacement is considered very likely to be difficult or impossible. This is a primary<br />

reason for rating the potential <strong>of</strong> the rock melt cavity to be very low, as measured against<br />

DOE program objectives.<br />

Draft p. 3.4.17<br />

Issue<br />

The post sealing period environmental effects are assumed to be "the same for (non-<br />

salt) conventional and Rock Melt repositories." The basis for this assumption should be<br />

given. If the thermal barrier effect protects the HLW from groundwater leaching for pos-<br />

sibly a few thousand years, might not the post sealing performance be superior to that for<br />

conventional geologic disposal? (208-NRC)

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