State official says he doubts NRC efforts to downplay activity

Thursday, March 29, 2001 | 9:41 a.m.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission official tried to reassure a state representative Wednesday night that increasing activity by NRC staff does not mean a permit for a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is under way.

William Reamer, the NRC's nuclear waste branch chief, said during an open house on the Yucca Mountain Project that in order to prepare a $20 million budget for fiscal year 2003, his 30 employees are preparing a site evaluation report on the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They also are searching for an appropriate place in Las Vegas to conduct licensing hearings and training inspectors if a repository is ever constructed.

Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied for a repository to hold the nation's high-level nuclear waste.

Nevada's technical coordinator, Steve Frishman, said he was skeptical that the commission staff was working independent of the Department of Energy, which is charged with studying, designing and eventually building a repository, if it is deemed scientifically safe.

The site evaluation report Reamer's staff prepares could become a blueprint of the commission's licensing requirements handed to the DOE, Frishman said.

Although the NRC's actions appear to smooth the way for a DOE licensing bid, Reamer said, there is much work to do before the commission itself begins hearings in about three years, if Yucca Mountain is approved by President Bush and Congress.

It will take 18 months for the NRC staff to review the DOE's performance of scientific work before a licensing hearing can begin in front of the commission, Reamer said.

"And there's a big if, a real big if, in front of the license application itself," Reamer said, referring to all of the political approvals and technical reviews needed on the mountain before the NRC will consider a license application.

The DOE had planned to report to Congress at the end of last year on progress at Yucca Mountain, but two investigations over possible conflict of interest between the DOE and the nuclear industry have delayed that report and a subsequent site recommendation to the president and Congress.

On Dec. 1 the Sun published excerpts from a two-page anonymous memo offering suggestions on how to sell the Yucca Mountain project to Congress in spite of a $58 billion price tag to build and operate the repository. Previous estimates had priced it at $36 billion.

The DOE's inspector general is investigating that memo, and a General Accounting Office review is being prepared into a six-page letter that questions the qualifications of DOE staff working on the project. The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted to proceed with a formal licensing process for Yucca, which would take three to four years, even though in February it began considering informal reviews for nuclear power plant licensing.

The five commissioners agreed, however, that a hearing for a Yucca Mountain repository should be formal, allowing witnesses to be cross-examined in a courtroom-like setting.

"As noted above, I would explicitly include any proceedings relating to the licensing of a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain within the class of proceedings for which formal procedures are necessary," NRC Chairman Richard Meserve said.