Documents about Yucca in tug of war

WASHINGTON -- Battle lines are forming in a dispute over whether the Department of Energy is withholding important documents from the public about its Yucca Mountain research.

Thirteen environmental groups have lined up behind the state of Nevada, which charges that DOE does not plan to make available all relevant documents in advance of certifying a key database for the proposed nuclear waste site.

The Energy Department has responded that the state's charge is unfounded and off-base. The pro-repository Nuclear Energy Institute and staff for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agree.

The dispute was aired in legal documents filed in the past week at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A three-judge administrative panel assembled by the NRC is expected to weigh in this fall on the argument.

Lawyers have clashed off and on for the past three years over the ground rules for millions of pages of documents that will play into the government's bid to license a nuclear waste repository at the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Energy Department has said it plans to file a license application by June 30, 2008.

Leading up to that, DOE says it has posted 3.4 million documents to a pre-licensing database made available to the state and other stakeholders preparing for NRC license hearings.

The database, known as the Licensing Support Network, is required to be certified at least six months before DOE files its application.

But Nevada attorneys filed an NRC complaint this summer that DOE is likely to omit important documents, such as analysis model reports that will serve as the building blocks for the license application. The application itself is a highly technical document that will run thousands of pages.

Without access to key documents and time to review the supporting material, it will be difficult for Nevada to mount strong challenges against the project in license hearings, state officials have said.

"Those are the documents that everyone needs to see in advance." said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "Otherwise, the whole LSN is pointless."

Nevada called on the administrative judges to scrutinize DOE's database and to require "all documentary material" to be posted.

Other groups that oppose the Yucca repository echoed the state's request in an NRC filing on Aug. 3.

They included the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, the National Environmental Trust, Sierra Club, Citizen Alert, Public Citizen, and the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.

"As the representatives of many citizens of Nevada and members of the public throughout the nation, we must be able to know about the specific information upon which the U.S. Department of Energy will rely in making plans and decisions," the groups said.

But the Energy Department says Nevada is being "alarmist" and that what the state wants "is impractical in the real world."

"This is not a situation where a participant has deliberately delayed finalization of documents," lawyers said in an Aug. 3 NRC filing.

Development of a licensing application "is an ongoing process," and the department will continue to generate supporting documents up to the time it submits its application, government lawyers said.

The NRC already has recognized that would be the case, they added, and new documents would be added to the database on a rolling basis.

"There is a wealth of information currently available for the participants to review," they said.

The Nuclear Energy Institute said Nevada's request was "far wide of the mark" of what NRC requires and "in fact is inconsistent with common sense."