NRC promises tough Yucca Mountain review

Friday, May 15, 1998 | 10:13 a.m.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an agency created to protect people's health and safety from commercial nuclear activities, has asserted its independence in reviewing a radioactive waste repository.

The NRC could receive a license application from the U.S. Department of Energy for the first-of-its-kind permanent nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain by 2002.

It could take four years of formal public hearings for the NRC to examine the DOE's work at Yucca Mountain to see if it is suitable to isolate highly radioactive waste, said Michael Bell, NRC's acting manager for safety of the Yucca Mountain Project.

"We don't see ourselves as working along with them (the DOE)," Bell said.

Instead the NRC has hired the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, to review every scrap of evidence about Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The scientists are independent of the DOE or its contractors.

The NRC has reviewed some DOE documents, but it is still early in the process for commission staff to be in formal review, Bell told about 40 people at UNLV Wednesday night.

The NRC has been critical of DOE's documentation to prove its scientific research at the mountain.

However, without prodding from the NRC, the DOE issued a stop-work order on tunnel contractors on May 6 for nine deficiencies based on water use.

DOE spokesman Allen Benson said the work, which uses water in the tunnel for dust control as studies continue in the five-mile-long exploratory test facility, should resume by next week.

DOE's own inspectors discovered an estimated 60,480 gallons of water had leaked from a pump over a period of three weeks. Daily logs of how much water is drawn and how much is drained from the tunnel were not complete.

The DOE has had a checklist for recording scientific information at Yucca Mountain for 10 years. It is information based on such day-to-day records that the NRC will review for licensing any repository, Bell said.

If such records are not corrected before licensing begins, the DOE might not receive permission to operate a nuclear repository.

This year the DOE will produce a review for Congress and the Clinton administration called a viability assessment. This assessment, while the NRC will look at it, will not receive the intense, formal review of the licensing process.

Ian Zabarte, assistant chief of the Western Shoshone Nation, asked the NRC to ensure participation by the tribe during the licensing process. The Shoshones claim the land including Yucca Mountain.

The process, Bell assured him, is open to everyone.