DRC-2024-006532

August 13, 2024
Vern C. Rogers, Director of Regulatory Affairs
EnergySolutions, LLC
299 South Main Street, Suite 1700
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
RE:Federal Cell Facility Application Request for Information
Dear Mr. Rogers:
The Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control (Division) hereby provides follow up Requests for Information (RFI) regarding the Federal Cell Facility Application dated August
4, 2022.
Each RFI in the attached document represents a follow up to an RFI issued earlier in the application review process. The numbering system ties the additional questions to the initial
RFI with an added letter designation. When responding to an RFI, please use the assigned number representing the question.
With this round of follow up RFIs, the Division recommends that appropriate staff from the Licensee, the Division and consultants meet to discuss each matter for clarity. Please contact
Larry Kellum at 385-622-1876 to schedule a meeting.
Sincerely,
Douglas J. Hansen, Director
Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control
DJH/LK/JMK
Enclosure: Federal Cell Application, Requests for Information.
c:Jeff Coombs, EHS, Health Officer, Tooele County Health Department
Bryan Slade, Environmental Health Director, Tooele County Health Department EnergySolutions General Correspondence EmailLLRW General Correspondence Email
Federal Cell Application Review
Request for Information or Updates to the Application (RFI)
General
Each of the RFI’s has been assigned an identifier with a numbering convention as follows-
Application/Appendix Section
Section/Appendix Subsection
Section/Appendix Subsubsection (when applicable)
Sequential numbering
Example: A question in Section 1, subsection 1, subsubsection 1 -The first RFI # would be 1.1.1-1, the next question in that section/subsection would be numbered 1.1.1-2
Please refer to the assigned RFI number when submitting a response.
Appendix O:Federal Cell Facility Waste Characterization Plan
O-29.a
The response to RFI O-29 did not address the main concernof whether the uranium isotopic composition in the Savannah River Site (SRS) Depleted Uranium (DU) accurately reflects the uranium
isotopic composition in pure Gaseous Diffusion Plant (GDP) DU.
The SRS receives pure GDP DU and creates targets out of it by exposing the GDP DU to a neutron flux from within a reactor to create plutonium. The neutrons turn some of the U-238 into
plutonium through activation and beta decay. The initial U-238/U-235/U-234 composition of the targets is the same as the GDP DU composition. It can also be observed, that based on the
presence of fission products in the SRS DU, that the neutrons also cause some fission in the target DU. What is not known, however, is what fraction of fission was due to U-238 and plutonium,
versus U-235. Because the GDP DU has less U-235, there is reason to believe that there is not a large fraction of U-235 fissioning. Moreover, there may be other neutron induced uranium
transformations happening while the targets are in the reactor. Therefore, it may be concluded that the U-238/U-235/U-234 composition of the targets coming out of the SRS reactors is
different from the GDP DU composition. However, we do not know by how much the two compositions differ.

Please demonstrate(within some calculated uncertainty) that the change in the U-238/U-235/U-234 composition is insignificant.
Section 1.2: General Facility Description
1.2.2-6.a
The RFI response stated the reference had been added to the text of the application, however, there is no document Sobocinski (2020) reference included in the Section 1 Reference Folder
of the Application. If this was intended to reference the 2020 Groundwater Quality Report by Sobocinski, which has been included in the Section 1.0 Reference Folder of the Application
and discusses TDS at the site, the text in the application should be changed to correctly reference this document.
Section 2.7.2: Natural Resources
2.7.2-2.a
The RFI response stated the application had been updated to identify that the wells to the east of the site were used to water livestock and had no effect on the site. In this update,
the application now states that one of the wells to the east has been destroyed. Please provide justification that the remaining well to the east of the site does not have an effect
on the site.