of its compliance agreement partners to deviate from its current obligations, a risk-informed exemption process, as described below, is the committee’s recommended approach. Put another way, if DOE wants to renegotiate its compliance agreements, it must make a case for renegotiation that is informed by risk, sets out clear criteria for an exemption, comprehensively addresses health risks (including worker, transportation, and long-term risk), and follows a transparent process that allows meaningful public input. Finally, the committee’s recommendation of a process for exemptions or exceptions should not be taken to mean that any particular waste stream is suitable for exemption; rather, exemptions must be decided on a case-by-case basis, through the process described herein.

The existence of inflexibility concerning disposal strategies for HLW is based on the committee’s understanding of the wastes that were examined, the capabilities of current technologies, and the present regulatory system as interpreted by the courts.

The need to manage all HLW by disposal in a permanent geologic repository and the strong preference for disposing of TRU waste in the same manner represent extremely expensive options, and, indeed, push or exceed the limits of technical feasibility in some cases. Requiring retrieval and permanent geologic disposal also entails additional risks from the retrieval work and transportation, for example, that might be quite high. For these reasons, as described in Chapter 2 and above, DOE has in the past sought and obtained from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S. NRC) informal or ad hoc exemptions from the definition of HLW to allow for near-surface disposal of HLW and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) to allow near-surface disposal of TRU waste. DOE now seeks the advice of the National Research Council on a risk-informed approach to management of these wastes.

All rules generalize, which means that all rules create problems of over- and underinclusiveness. That is, they include some regulated items that probably should not be in a category and omit or exclude others that

Front Matter (R1-R14)

Executive Summary (1-12)

1 Introduction and Background (13-36)

2 Why Consider Flexibility in Disposal Options? (37-60)

3 Exemption Process (61-86)

4 A Risk-Informed Approach: Procedures and Criteria for Risk Assessment to Support an Exemption Process (87-112)

5 Impediments to a Successful Application of the Risk-Informed Approach (113-138)

6 Findings and Recommendations (139-148)

References (149-162)

Appendix A Overview: Risk Assessment (163-170)

Appendix B Summary of Previous Studies and Programs Aimed at Incorporating Risk into DOE Environmental Management Decision Making (171-198)

Appendix C Information-Gathering Meetings (199-204)

Appendix D Glossary (205-210)

Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members (211-216)