Documents added to Yucca database

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department announced Monday it has added 2.1 million documents to a Yucca Mountain electronic database that is available to the public.

Coupled with earlier postings, the database now contains 3.4 million DOE scientific and engineering documents, and other material government officials say will support their bid to establish a nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

Yucca Mountain critics said the licensing support network also is likely to contain information hinting at repository flaws, and they plan to examine the documents closely.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the documents will be divided among 30 science consultants and critiqued for information that could become part of the state's case against the project, to be located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada plans to file "thousands" of contentions, or objections, during formal repository licensing hearings the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to hold, Loux said.

The network Web site is www.lsnnet.gov. It also contains Yucca documents posted so far by the NRC, Nye County and the state of Nevada.

The electronic library will be shared among the participants in repository license hearings. DOE spokesman Allen Benson said several hundred thousand more documents remain to be posted.

The public disclosure appeared to douse one fight between the Energy Department and Nevada, which had alleged that the DOE was hoarding documents and making it hard for the state to track the project.

Another disagreement may be brewing.

By law the licensing database must be officially certified six months before the DOE is allowed to file a repository license application with the NRC. DOE officials have said they plan to certify the database in December so the agency can file an application by the end of June.

But Loux said the state plans to protest that key documents such as analyses of key computer models, and the Total System Performance Assessment, a major science document, might not be made available until the spring.

"The modeling reports are foundation documents that may not be ready until sometime next year," Loux said. "We continue to think this will cause DOE a problem in trying to certify their records."