Used 22 times over 314 weeks, Yucca Mountain facility closes

At the end of August, the federal government will close its multimillion-dollar hearing facility in Las Vegas where lawyers argued their cases for and against building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

In less than seven years, a panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and License Board held relatively few hearings and meetings in the rented facility on Pepper Lane.

During that time, the commission spent at least $2 million installing closed-circuit televisions, computer equipment, sound systems and an airport-quality scanner and metal detectors. The General Services Administration paid more than $3 million to lease the building at Pacific Enterprise Plaza. That translates to nearly $467,000 per year in rent.

The agency gave notice in June that it would vacate its lease on Aug. 30. No Yucca Mountain hearings were held there this year because the Obama administration abandoned the project and zeroed out funding.

Traci Madison, spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, said in an email Friday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will transfer "excess property to other agencies with some of the computer equipment being earmarked for the computers for learning donation program which provides equipment to schools."

While closing the facility will barely put a dent in the $14.3 trillion federal debt, it will tighten the reins on what began as a warehouse for hearings and evolved into a high-tech effort into which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission poured money so that parties in Las Vegas and at the commission's headquarters in Bethesda, Md., could simultaneously watch and interact in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceedings.

"I remember some of the original meetings. The lawyers and judges were sitting at tables, and we sat in the audience and couldn't hear them. Here we are the entertainment capital of the world, and we can't get a sound system to work," said Steve Frishman, a consultant to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"There were always interruptions and breakdowns," he said about the video and audio retrofits that were installed in the 16,500-square-foot building.

From the time the first public meeting in July 2005 until the last hearing in June 2010, the facility was used 22 times over 314 weeks, according to records kept in the document collection known as the Licensing Support Network. The network was taken offline Friday.

The meetings ranged from technical exchanges among scientists about the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site for disposing of nuclear waste to quarterly management meetings involving officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy with observers from the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"We were usually invited to comment at the end of the meeting," Frishman said.

Of six formal hearings and prehearings, the last one in June 2010 was held before three administrative judges of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. They listened to arguments about the Department of Energy's request to withdraw its license application for the Yucca Mountain site.

The request was a bitter pill for nuclear energy proponents to swallow after more than $10 billion had been spent over 23 years studying a ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas for storing used nuclear fuel from commercial power reactors and highly radioactive defense waste in a maze of tunnels.

One hearing, in December 2008, was held before the Surface Transportation Board about now-defunct plans for building a 300-mile railway across rural Nevada to deliver nuclear waste to the mountain.

So what did the one permanent Atomic Safety and Licensing Board staff member and additional Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff, as well as security personnel, do during all those weeks that meetings and hearings weren't held?

They supported the Licensing Support Network, managed all webcasts, developed desktop database applications for use by judges and provided "'work from anywhere' support for full and part-time technical judges located across the country," NRC spokesman Scott Burnell wrote in an email.

"The security staff maintain vigilance in monitoring the facility security whatever the level of utilization."

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.