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This document addresses techniques to access and integrate data for defining site-specific conditions and behaviors associated with ground-water and surface-water radionuclide transport applicable to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews. Environmental models typically require input data from multiple internal and external sources that may include, but are not limited to, stream and rainfall gage data, meteorological data, hydrogeological data, habitat data, and biological data. These data may be retrieved from a variety of organizations (e.g., federal, state, and regional) and source types (e.g., HTTP, FTP, and databases). Available data sources relevant to hydrologic analyses for reactor licensing are identified and reviewed. The data sources described can be useful to define model inputs and parameters, including site features (e.g., watershed boundaries, stream locations, reservoirs, site topography), site properties (e.g., surface conditions, subsurface hydraulic properties, water quality), and site boundary conditions, input forcings, and extreme events (e.g., stream discharge, lake levels, precipitation, recharge, flood and drought characteristics). Available software tools for accessing established databases, retrieving the data, and integrating it with models were identified and reviewed. The emphasis in this review was on existing software products with minimal required modifications to enable their use with the FRAMES modeling framework. The ability of fourmore » of these tools to access and retrieve the identified data sources was reviewed. These four software tools were the Hydrologic Data Acquisition and Processing System (HDAPS), Integrated Water Resources Modeling System (IWRMS) External Data Harvester, Data for Environmental Modeling Environmental Data Download Tool (D4EM EDDT), and the FRAMES Internet Database Tools. The IWRMS External Data Harvester and the D4EM EDDT were identified as the most promising tools based on their ability to access and retrieve the required data, and their ability to integrate the data into environmental models using the FRAMES environment.« less

One of the most important concerns for regulatory agencies is the concept of reproducibility (i.e., reproducibility means credibility) of an assessment. One aspect of reproducibility deals with tampering of the assessment. In other words, when multiple groups are engaged in an assessment, it is important to lock down the problem that is to be solved and/or to restrict the models that are to be used to solve the problem. The objective of this effort is to provide the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) with a means to limit user access to models and to provide a mechanism to constrain the conceptual site models (CSMs) when appropriate. The purpose is to provide the user (i.e., NRC) with the ability to “lock down” the CSM (i.e., picture containing linked icons), restrict access to certain models, or both.

Linkages to the Groundwater Modeling System have been developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to enable the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to more realistically assess the risk to the public of radioactive contaminants at NRC-licensed sites. Common software tools presently in use are limited in that they cannot assess contaminant migration through complex natural environments. The purpose of this initiative is to provide NRC with a licensing safety-analysis tool with sufficient power, flexibility, and utility that it can serve as the primary software platform for analyzing the hazards associated with licensing actions at those “complex” sites at which the traditional tools are inappropriate. As a tool designed to realistically approximate prospective doses to the public, this initiative addresses NRC’s safety-performance goal by confirming that licensing actions do not result in undue risk to the public.

This document provides requirements, design, data-file specifications, test plan, and Quality Assurance/Quality Control protocol for the linkage between the statistical package R and the Framework for Risk Analysis in Multimedia Environmental Systems (FRAMES) Versions 1.x and 2.0. The requirements identify the attributes of the system. The design describes how the system will be structured to meet those requirements. The specification presents the specific modifications to FRAMES to meet the requirements and design. The test plan confirms that the basic functionality listed in the requirements (black box testing) actually functions as designed, and QA/QC confirms that the software meets the client’s needs.

The Plus Operator thus provides a mechanism to group modules of similar output so that the output can be combined and supplied to downstream modules. This document provides requirements, the design, data-file specifications, the test plan, and the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) protocol for the Plus Operator.

This document describes concepts associated with transferring temporal and spatial boundary conditions between modules in FRAMES and how FRAMES might consider dynamic feedback.

The information in this document summarizes the approach that is used to link FRAMES-2 with GMS. This linkage will provide the user with the ability to (1) send information to a specific model in GMS, thereby modifying the models input information, as allowed by the model developer, (2) run the executable of the numerical model contained in GMS, and (3) extract, from the appropriate GMS output, information required for consumption by downstream models, which are also linked with FRAMES-2.

Because GMS provides so many features, of which some are also addressed by FRAMES, it could represent a platform to link to FRAMES, or FRAMES could represent a platform to link to GMS. The focus of this summary is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the potential linkage direction and provide recommendations for the linkage between FRAMES and GMS.