Thursday, July 22, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RADIATION STANDARD: Yucca ruling has agency scrambling

NRC seeks recommendation on whether to accept nuclear waste dump application

WASHINGTON -- Regulators are uncertain what to do in the wake of a court decision that has greatly complicated the Yucca Mountain Project.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission asked its general counsel to study whether the agency can or should accept an application for a Nevada nuclear waste repository that is beset with uncertainties after judges voided a radiation health standard this month, chairman Nils Diaz said.

"We need to get to a decision to accept the application or not," Diaz said after a scheduled commission meeting. "We are not at that point."

The new clouds over the Yucca program increase the likelihood that a repository will be delayed years beyond a 2010 target opening, NRC commissioner Edward McGaffigan added.

"From the date on which clarity emerges, that puts it probably at 10 years," he said. "In the best case you could shave a year or two."

The NRC, along with the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, is sorting out a host of legal, technical and procedural questions raised by the July 9 ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

A three-judge panel threw out a 10,000-year radiation protection standard for the repository, saying its authors at the EPA disregarded a 1995 National Academy of Sciences study that suggested protective standards should be set for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years longer.

Department of Energy officials said they still plan to file a license application later this year. They expect the NRC will begin a formal review while the court ruling is appealed, or as the EPA or Congress forge new standards.

The judges withheld their ruling on the radiation standard until after appeals requests are decided. While there is an expectation the ruling will be appealed within the 45 days allowed, none has been announced yet. Spokesmen for the EPA and for the Energy Department did not return calls on Wednesday.

The government activity is being monitored closely by officials in Nevada, who believe the court delivered a potential knockout blow by voiding part of the repository's radiation protections.

The state is prepared to take the government to court if repository licensing goes forward, said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"Our view is that (the NRC) cannot accept an application." Loux said. "It seems to me it is time for the commission on their own to take a stand on the issue and stop worrying about what the industry says and doesn't say."

McGaffigan said the nuclear industry is proposing the NRC docket the license application and work on segments that do not involve long-term radiation until the 10,000-year standard is settled.

In addition to the web of tunnels where 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste will be stored, the Yucca facility will consist of an above-ground complex where the nuclear material will be placed in containers for disposal.

"You could be working theoretically on the easier parts first, getting some of the work out of the way, but you would still be waiting for the (radiation) standard to do the hard stuff," said McGaffigan, who stressed he has not taken a position on the matter.

Diaz also said he will not consider the details of moving into a Yucca licensing phase until NRC attorneys advise whether the application could even be accepted.

The NRC had supported the 10,000-year radiation standard voided by the court. McGaffigan said he was troubled by the National Academy of Sciences study that formed the basis for the court's ruling.

McGaffigan said scientists on the study panel assumed residents in the repository vicinity in the far future "are going to be dumber than people today" and would be unable to filter impurities from water supplies.

"There is technology available in the 21st century that would drive (radiation) doses pretty darn close to zero and meet all the EPA standards," he said. "I suspect that humans will not be dumber in the 5000th century than in the 20th century."