Friday, February 11, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Talks begin on how to handle sensitive Yucca documents

Lawyers for Nevada, Department of Energy seek common ground

WASHINGTON -- Attorneys for the Energy Department and Nevada opened talks Thursday on how sensitive documents will be managed during licensing for a Yucca Mountain repository.

The session aimed to lay some groundwork to defuse a potentially contentious phase of the Yucca project. Attorneys for the state and environmental interest groups are seeking access to reams of DOE documents as they prepare for Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings on the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository.

The sides were ordered to the negotiating table by a panel of NRC judges. Without some orderly process in place, the judges said, they feared long document fights that could draw out the license review.

The NRC panel gave Nevada and the Energy Department 40 days to see whether they could reach an agreement over how such disputes could be avoided, or at least resolved quickly.

"Our goal is to set up a system that works for everybody," said Donald Irwin, an attorney for the Hunton & Williams law firm representing the Energy Department.

The negotiations involve documents compiled over two decades related to Yucca Mountain, such as technical analyses, reports and e-mails. The papers are being loaded onto an Internet database that would be made public six months before the NRC begins its license review.

Though the database will contain millions of pages, lawyers are negotiating ground rules for smaller categories of documents that would be shielded from view because of claims that they involve homeland security, privacy or attorney-client privileges.

Joe Egan, an attorney for Nevada, said the state expects to post several hundred thousand documents to the Yucca database and anticipates claiming privileges on "1 percent, if that."

"Our view is that Yucca Mountain is a public project and there should not be a lot to hide here," Egan said.

Others taking part in the discussions Thursday represented Clark County, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, several environmental organizations and OMB Watch, a nonprofit organization that promotes governmental openness.