Welcome to the CSG Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee Update. Below are links and summaries of several important happenings from the last few weeks. Please don't hesitate to contact Lisa (920/458-5910) or Sarah (630/925-1922) with any questions or concerns about any of these issues.

TEC-nical Problems

On February 6-7, states, tribes, and other stakeholders descended on San Antonio for the Transportation External Coordination Working Group (TEC) meeting. The TEC meeting is held twice a year as a forum for DOE to discuss radioactive waste transportation issues with stakeholders. Prior to this meeting, the State Regional Groups had sent two letters to DOE concerning the poor content and structure of the TEC meetings. In response to our suggestions, DOE organized part of the meeting into smaller breakout sessions to cover OCRWM issues, EM issues, and a review of the TEC organization itself. Below are suggestions from Midwestern attendees and other stakeholders for improvement of the TEC, as revealed in the breakouts. Other aspects of the meeting are addressed in second and third articles of this newsletter.

• Who owns TEC? We suggested DOE reassess the "what" and "who" of TEC. Two ways to accomplish this would be to establish a steering committee with stakeholder membership and to add non-DOE members to the planning committee that develops TEC meeting agendas. We also suggested DOE try to encourage more industry and association members to participate by soliciting input from these groups.
• Stakeholders felt the structure of the Topic Groups may need to be reassessed. Currently the Rail and Routing Topic Groups are active, but perhaps their tasks would be better accomplished under an Operations Topic Group. The original purpose of the topic groups was to be ad hoc committees charged with specific tasks, but many have turned into standing committees that continue to exist long after they have served their initial purpose. Keeping these groups alive may be taking resources - including members - away from other tasks that have a more pressing need, such as outreach (see the third newsletter article regarding the possible resurrection of the Communications Topic Group).
• Lately, Topic Group meetings have not been as productive as in the past. We emphasized the need to hold Topic Group meetings in smaller rooms to encourage discussion. We also suggested using professional facilitators to guide the discussion, perhaps even trained personnel from the host state. Having an objective for each meeting and providing a list of action items immediately following the meeting to encourage follow-up were two items that we raised in our letters and reiterated during the breakouts. Regularly scheduled calls of the Topic Groups with clear objectives would also help make the groups more productive.
• Despite the problems with the topic groups, we agreed that these smaller group meetings have the potential to be the most productive sessions at TEC. Most people felt that plenary sessions can be very helpful, especially if the meeting has a specific theme and the plenary sessions address that theme. The Fall 2005 TEC meeting in Pueblo, Colorado, for example, was devoted entirely to rail issues and the plenary sessions were pertinent and therefore especially useful. The return of breakout sessions to the agenda would be another improvement to the structure of TEC meetings, provided they are geared more toward discussion and aren't just mini-plenary sessions in disguise.

At this time, it is unclear how DOE will use this feedback to improve the group for the benefit of all members. Budget cuts and staff turnover are straining OCRWM, but EM is returning as a more active co-chair of the TEC. We in the Midwest are hopeful that we'll see some positive changes taking place before the next TEC meeting.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Most of TEC was focused on Yucca Mountain, or rather OCRWM, issues. In addition to the OCRWM breakout mentioned above, the agenda also included a program update and a Routing Topic Group meeting. Highlights and low points are below:

• Thanks to a suggestion from Tim Runyon (Illinois), the Routing Topic Group has temporarily put aside the Standard Problem exercise to wait for a set of potential rail routes from the major railroads. Topic Group members agreed that the railroads would present a set of routes from the 12 sample sites that could be used as input for the Standard Problem exercise. Once presented with the railroads' routes, members will decide whether to proceed with the Standard Problem, which would involve splitting into groups to develop sets of possible routes, then comparing the different groups' results. The Midwest routing work group had already finished its Standard Problem exercise, using input from our Route Identification Project and other criteria, and we are now looking forward to seeing how our work compares with what the railroads, and possibly other groups, develop. It's good to see routing work moving forward!
• During the OCRWM breakout, Frank Moussa broke the bad news that the release of the updated National Transportation Plan (NTP) is indefinitely on hold because recent budget cuts necessitated content and time line changes within the text. The Midwestern representatives at the meeting suggested that DOE shouldn't rush the re-release of the NTP. We emphasized that because our expectations will influence our reaction to the plan, DOE should articulate exactly what the purpose of the document is. Will it be a true operations plan, explaining how DOE will move waste from Point A to Point B? Or will it be more strategic in nature? We also suggested adding background information on decisions already made, and incorporating TEC Topic Group work product recommendations and pertinent comments from the 180(c) Federal Register notice. If DOE will release the document or an outline of the document prior to the next TEC meeting, we requested ample review time in order to make any discussion on the document at the next TEC productive.
• During the OCRWM program update Gary Lanthrum, director of the Office of Logistics Management, put the 'ugh' in ugly when he revealed that, due to budget constraints, DOE would not be submitting the repository construction license application by its stated June 30 deadline. DOE still hopes to submit the license application sometime in 2008. DOE will, however, issue the final repository and rail alignment EIS documents in June. On the plus side, Gary said that while OCRWM is operating on a reduced budget, transportation remains a strategic objective. In other words, it looks like we'll still get funding for our cooperative agreement and Midwestern committee activities in FY09.

Risky Business

One of the meeting plenary sessions was a presentation by Hank Jenkins-Smith, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and a member of the National Academies' Committee on Transportation of Radioactive Waste. He talked about the social risk surrounding the transportation aspect of the repository program. He said that social risk is different from safety or health risk (i.e., probability of an accident or exposure) because it is based on perception, which is hard to quantify and harder to change. According to Jenkins-Smith, if DOE does not address the social risks of radioactive waste transportation, opponents of the program will have the upper hand in risk perception. However, if DOE does address social risk, the program will likely gain in acceptability because the public is usually reassured by a program that responds to their concerns. After the presentation, during several of the breakout sessions, stakeholders agreed that social risk should be a topic for the TEC to discuss. DOE will likely revive the Communications Topic Group for this purpose, along with other communications issues, such as public outreach materials and fact sheets.

Click here for a summary of the NAS study's risk recommendations.

Click here for the Communications Topic Group website.

For more on this topic, watch our next issue for news about a paper Lisa co-authored on the topic of DOE's key messages on transportation. She will be presenting the paper at the Waste Management conference in Phoenix next Tuesday.

Thanks for reading! Look for our next update in your inbox in two weeks.

Sincerely,
Lisa Janairo and Sarah Wochos
Committee Staff