inform major component acquisition decisions. The system study would evaluate the tradeoffs among different system designs and provide a rationale for decision making across the entire waste management program. In its Sixth Report to Congress and the Secretary of Energy, the NWTRB repeated the recommendation that OCRWM conduct top-level system studies, and stated that this should be done in an iterative and timely manner to enhance sound program decision making. This report included discussion from a meeting that was held that year with the NWTRB, OCRWM, and OCRWM’s management and operations contractor at which system studies was among the topics discussed. At that point, the management and operations contractor was in the process of conceptualizing its system study. The Board was concerned that certain key decisions, such as the need to have a monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facility open by 1998, had already been made, thus limiting the overall flexibility in program design. The Board asserted that top- level system studies were most useful when performed prior to making any major decisions or assumptions. The programmatic decisions that OCRWM had already made created constraints on the system that led the Board to conclude that OCRWM’s system study was not truly a “top-level system study” (NWTRB 1992b, p. 14). The Board continued to make the case for high-level system studies, stating that “unconstrained, iterative top-level studies need to be pursued because they will illuminate overall problems, identify enhancements, evaluate alternatives, and provide for contingencies, thus promoting sound program planning” (ibid., p. 15). The Board also expressed concern that OCRWMwas operating under tight target dates, which were compromising the ability to adequately evaluate design options and incorporate improvements. One of the Board’s recommendations was to let scientific analysis, rather than target dates, drive decision making in the repository program. In May 1994, the Board again raised the concern that an analysis of the entire waste management system, including storage, transportation, and disposal, had not been completed. At that point, OCRWM had presented the concept of the multi-purpose canister (MPC), and the Board believed that a system study could assist in decision making related to MPC development (NWTRB 1994a, p. 19). In 2004, in its Letter Report to the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Secretary of Energy, the Board made three recommendations, one of which was that OCRWM’s “transportation planning and development effort should adopt a ‘systems’ approach, addressing both strategic and operational considerations” (NWTRB 2004a, p. 8). The Board noted that OCRWM had made progress in taking a systematic approach to transportation planning, but needed to improve the integration among all the components of the waste management system. One year later, in its 2005 Letter Report to Congress and the Secretary of Energy, the Board identified“systems assessment” as an important issue that would continue to be of interest. The Board again noted the interdependency among the components of the waste management system, “including accepting waste at utility or DOE defense-complex sites; handling, transporting, processing, and storing the waste; and emplacing the waste underground” (NWTRB
design and transportation operations is essential and would help to assure Congress and the public that appropriate attention has been given to safety. In its second report to Congress, the Board recommended that OCRWM develop programs to address system safety and human factors as a way to enhance the safety of the proposed national transportation program (NWTRB 1990b, p. 21). In subsequent reports the Board noted that OCRWM had made progress incorporating system safety and human factors into its transportation planning efforts (see the section on Human Factors ). Although the NWTRB was impressed with OCRWM’s efforts early on to address the recommendations on system safety, little has been done to address the issue in recent years. System safety is not mentioned in OCRWM’s “National Transportation Plan,” issued January 2009. System safety is an issue that should be considered when developing a national transportation program. system studies of the entire repository program, including transportation. According to the Board, “system studies of the nuclear waste management system are those in which the major components are not fixed a priori” (NWTRB 1992b, p. 13). The Board was concerned that program decisions that would impact the entire waste management system were being made without adequate consideration of the impacts on other elements of the waste management system. While OCRWM did direct its management and operations contractor to design a system study, it did so after several key program decisions had been made, thus limiting the scope of the study. The NWTRB’s Report to the U.S. Congress and the Secretary of Energy: January to December 1993 states, “The Board has consistently stated that because the functions of storage, transportation, and disposal are strongly interconnected, the DOE should use systems analysis when making decisions about different parts of the waste management system” (NWTRB 1994, p. 17). In its reports, the Board urged OCRWM to conduct system studies of the entire repository program so that decision making around various components of the program would take into account the effects on other program components. The recommendation that OCRWM conduct top-level system studies of the waste management program was included in its Fifth Report to Congress and the Secretary of Energy. The Board expressed concern that individual decisions were being made about the components of the system in order to meet program deadlines, which could result in “a process that locks in the waste management system configuration before the merits of possible alternatives have been properly evaluated” (NWTRB 1992a, p. 22). The Board’s recommendation was to conduct top-level system studies in a timely manner so that the results could be used to TOP-LEVEL SYSTEM STUDIES The NWTRB repeatedly urged OCRWM to conduct
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