Friday, August 20, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Yucca Mountain license application remains on track

Despite recent ruling on safety requirements, DOE to submit application by December

WASHINGTON -- Despite uncertainty about whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can even accept a license application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Energy Department officials on Thursday said they still plan to submit the application by December.

NRC officials have asked lawyers to research whether the agency can accept the application in the wake of last month's ruling by a federal appeals court that Yucca Mountain's safety requirements should extend well beyond 10,000 years.

If the Energy Department follows through with a license application in December, the NRC will have 90 days to decide if it should docket, or begin reviewing, the application.

"It's DOE's decision to make about when to submit the license application," said Bill Reamer, NRC's director of the division of high level waste repository safety. "When the license application is submitted we'll make our docketing decision."

During a joint meeting Thursday with Energy Department officials, Reamer and other NRC staffers did not ask questions about the effect of the court ruling on the license application.

On July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the federal government's designation of Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for the permanent storage of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

But the court also struck down the EPA safety standard of 10,000 years for Yucca Mountain, saying it disregarded recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences.

Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, acknowledged that any change in health standards by the Environmental Protection Agency would require adjustments to the license application.

But, Chu said, the license application is still on schedule.

"The progress we are making in license application preparation, waste acceptance planning and transportation supports our long-standing goal of beginning repository operation and waste acceptance in 2010," Chu said.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Nevada is prepared to go to court to block the NRC from accepting the license application.

"The absurdity of this situation is that the Department of Energy plans to submit a license application predicated on a standard of 10,000 years, which we know is invalid," Loux said.

"We don't know what the standard will be in the future, but it won't be 10,000 years."

As of Aug. 11, the department had completed 281 of 293 responses to the NRC regarding key technical issues in the license application, said Joseph Ziegler, director of the office of license application and strategy.