State officials renew charge against DOE

WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials have renewed a charge that the Department of Energy plans to withhold key Yucca Mountain documents from the state's scrutiny.

Lawyers for the state filed a complaint Monday at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It is part of a simmering dispute over how much technical information about the proposed nuclear waste repository DOE is required to make public and when.

The Energy Department has posted 3.4 million documents to a public Internet database for Yucca Mountain.

But Nevada officials said the department is legally required to post "all documentary material" before it files a repository license application.

State lawyers said in the complaint that DOE has announced it does not plan to post its major repository performance assessment, nor the modeling reports that are its building blocks.

The complaint was sent to a three-person administrative law panel at the NRC. The panel is refereeing early fights leading up to DOE's filing of a license application due next summer.

DOE officials have said the information would be properly made available when the license is submitted. The Energy Department will file a formal response to the state's charge by August 3, a spokesman said.