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

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policies" suggesting that concepts might be rejected because of potential policy conflicts.
Because Federal legislation and international agreements can be amended for reasonable
cause, this condition will not be used as a standard, but its consideration provides insight
into the difficulty of implementation. Any waste management concept, if implemented, would
be required to comply with applicable laws and regulations.
6.2.2.4 Independence from Future Development of the Nuclear Industry
Implementing a nuclear waste management system is a large scale, costly, and long-term
effort. Concepts selected for priority development should be independent of the future
development of the nuclear industry including industry size, fuel cycles, and reactor
designs.
Three standards of judgement derived from DOE Performance Objective 7 are related to
this factor: 1) waste disposal concepts selected for implementation should be independent
of the size of the nuclear industry, 2) independent of specific fuel cycles and 3) indepen-
dent of reactor design issues.
6.2.2.5 Cost of Development and Operation
The purpose of this factor is to compare concepts on the basis of estimated costs for
research and development (presumably to be borne by the Federal government but recovered
from the utilities through fees charged for disposal) and on costs of implementation and
operation (borne by utilities and included in their rate bases). No standards have been
established for cost.
6.2.2.6 Potential for Corrective Action
The probability of system failure can be reduced to low levels by careful design, thor-
ough assessment of performance and provision of redundant systems. However, as with any
engineered system, probability of failure cannot be entirely eliminated, with the result
that there will remain a probability (although very low) that the system may not perform as
expected. Thus the ability to detect and correct failure or to mitigate its consequences
would be a desirable property of the concept selected for implementation. The desirability
of corrective action capability is implied by DOE Performance Objective 5 which suggests
that corrective action capabilities should be provided to compensate for residual uncer-
tainties in system performance. Thus the importance of corrective action capability should
be assessed with consideration of residual uncertainties in system performance.
The proposed NRC Technical Standards for Regulating Geologic Disposal of High-Level
Radioactive Waste require retrievability, a form of corrective action, to be maintained for
50 years following termination of waste emplacement operations (Proposed 10 CFR 60.111(a)
(3)). No standards were established for corrective action potential given the dissimilar
characteristics of certain of the waste management options.