DOE’s progress at Yucca to be revealed in report

Tuesday, May 1, 2001 | 10:21 a.m.

The Department of Energy is expected to release a 1,000-page report Friday to explain progress on its studies at Yucca Mountain, the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository site.

The report will not be the long-awaited recommendation on whether a repository should be built at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It is, rather, a review of the scientific work done so far at Yucca Mountain, according Lake Barrett, the DOE's acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

The recommendation is expected at year's end.

Barrett on Monday told delegates of the ninth International High Level Radioactive Research Conference meeting in Las Vegas that the Energy Department is committed to an unbiased decision based on sound science in its search for "the final solution" to the disposal of commercial reactor spent fuel and defense wastes.

The DOE will schedule hearings this summer near Yucca Mountain on the report's findings before a site recommendation is made, Barrett said.

The release was delayed last year after a two-page memo attached to a draft of an executive summary of the report raised questions about the DOE's approach. The memo, written by John Kelly of JK Research Associates of Colorado, suggested the report could be used to sell a repository at Yucca Mountain to Congress.

That brought complaints that the DOE favored the repository. By law, the agency is supposed to remain unbiased.

The DOE's inspector general issued an opinion on April 23 finding no bias. The opinion also noted, however, that certain wording could be interpreted to mean that the DOE had already decided Yucca Mountain was scientifically sound to accept radioactive wastes. Another probe, under congressional investigators in the General Accounting Office, has not started.

Once a site is recommended, it will take years before the DOE receives a license for a repository from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has the final say in whether Yucca Mountain is built and accepts waste by 2010, Barrett said.

The NRC's deputy executive director said that with a looming energy crisis this summer, the commission is expecting within a year to receive its first application for a new U.S. nuclear reactor. It would be the first in the United States in 28 years, Carl Paperiello said.

The Bush administration has signaled support for a possible revival of nuclear power. Vice President Dick Cheney, who heads a Cabinet-level task force on energy policy, said in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Friday that nuclear power plants will be a major part of his recommendations to President Bush.