Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Chu: DOE underestimated job

Failure to grasp enormity of database compilation task has helped delay project, director says

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department underestimated the job of compiling millions of documents into an electronic database for Yucca Mountain, a problem that has contributed to missed deadlines for the Nevada nuclear waste repository, the departing project director said Monday.

Margaret Chu said DOE managers did not grasp the magnitude of cataloging studies, reports and e-mails created over 20 years of examining the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

When DOE tried to certify the database last summer as part of a repository licensing process, Nevada officials charged it was riddled with mistakes, and an administrative law panel told the department to rebuild the network.

"We underestimated the magnitude, but I don't know how to do it a different way because it was just the magnitude," Chu said. "People had left behind tons, millions of e-mails, and we had to sort them out, figure out criteria of what was relevant and what was not. The magnitude was just horrendous."

Chu spoke with reporters at a utility regulators conference three days after DOE announced she had resigned as director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Her resignation is effective later this month.

Shortfalls with the electronic database, known as the Licensing Support Network, were among the issues causing DOE to push back its deadlines for the Yucca project to 2012 or beyond, department officials have said.

Chu said the database fix was a matter she was leaving for a successor to complete. She said it had been her intention to manage the Yucca program for one presidential term.

Speaking at the conference of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Chu said progress at Yucca Mountain will be tied to DOE's ability to obtain adequate money from Congress.

"I am confident we will eventually get there," she said.

Chu said management initiatives she promoted have improved the Yucca project. "I believe that program morale has never been better despite setbacks here and there," she said.

After Chu's address, another speaker at the regulators' conference offered a different view.

Don Keskey, a former assistant attorney general of Michigan, said utility ratepayers who are contributing to a Yucca Mountain construction fund are being put at financial risk by delays with the program.

Electricity consumers served by nuclear utilities pay a one-tenth-of-one-cent-per-kilowatt-hour charge on their electric bills. Utilities pass the fee into a nuclear waste account that has accumulated $24 billion since 1983. The current balance is $16.3 billion.

Keskey urged utility commissioners to consider withholding the fees, or placing them in escrow.

"There is a compelling need for commissions to act to protect ratepayers," said Keskey, who now is in private practice. "Deadlines are not being met and are not being taken seriously as deadlines."

By withholding fees, "you will be announcing to the country that states are not ignoring this issue and are concerned."

Jay Silberg, an attorney who represents utilities, cautioned against that approach. He said power companies could get caught in a crossfire, jeopardizing their licenses and the nuclear waste contracts they signed with the government.

"If you disallow (fees), you are pressuring the wrong guys," Silberg said. "It is not the utilities' fault we are in this situation."