New rule eases shipping of waste to Yucca

Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1999 | 3:13 a.m.

A new rule issued Monday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would allow nuclear waste to be shipped to a proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, with fewer restrictions.

The rule allows nuclear power plants to forgo extensive environmental impact statements along transportation routes or at the destination for various kinds of high-level nuclear waste.

The commission used Las Vegas and the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain as models to calculate the consequences of nuclear utilities shipping the existing 40,000 tons of radioactive wastes to a permanent dump site.

While the NRC's final rule had not yet been published, a draft version released in February anticipated no cancer deaths from the shipments.

Under the new rule the utilities can rely on the NRC's research when renewing reactor operating licenses at more than 100 sites across the country and do not have to calculate cancer fatalities or other consequences from shipping the wastes to a permanent repository.

"It adds a requirement that a license renewal application address the impact of transportation on local services in the vicinity of the plant during the license renewal term," the NRC's two-page memo said, but not on the final destination or along the routes.

The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects was outraged by the final rule. The state may sue the NRC if the rule depends on outdated information and fails to address worst-case scenarios, a Nevada official said.

The state opposed the NRC's rule because its draft regulation used old information, the agency's Planning Division Administrator, Joe Strolin, said.

"It is inappropriate for us to say whether we will litigate this until we review all the documents," Strolin said. "It will depend on whether it relies on old information or not enough information."

The final rule's language had not been published in the Federal Register as of Monday. But Strolin said the commission used 1990 census figures for Las Vegas when two-thirds of the area's current 1.3 million residents did not live in Southern Nevada.

The amended rule will have no effect on the NRC when it is time to consider a license for Yucca Mountain, the commission said. A license application is a separate regulatory action from the final rule on license renewal for nuclear power plants.

"The NRC's analysis of the impacts in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain in this instance does not prejudge the eventual licensing of Yucca Mountain as a repository," the NRC said.

Yucca Mountain has not been approved as a permanent nuclear waste dump by Congress or any other federal agency. The Department of Energy, whose scientists have been studying the mountain for almost 20 years, does not expect to request a license from the NRC for a repository until 2002, if the mountain passes scientific muster.

The NRC's final rule eliminates the need for each utility to conduct its own specific site evaluation of the nuclear wastes from reactors unless "new and significant" information exists.

The commission said its staff overestimated the risk from actual environmental impacts of shipping the nuclear wastes to a single burial site.

The state disagreed. The radioactive wastes taken from a nuclear reactor after a long time are more radioactive and create more radiation, Strolin said.

The state also objected to the NRC's rule, because it uses generic accident rates and its worst-case accident scenario did not include damage to the waste containers or effects on people involved in such an accident.

Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa asked the NRC on June 22 to amend its safeguards based on risks from sabotage and terrorism, issues raised by the state in its comments on the draft rule. The commission could revise the rule if it grants the state's request.

Although the public comment period on the proposed rule officially ended on April 27, public response raised enough concerns that the NRC considered comments received as late as July, NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said. The state has not reviewed the 51 public comments and the NRC responses, Strolin said.