Missed license deadline adds fuel to Yucca battle

Thursday, Oct. 24, 2002 | 9:23 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials this week added one more complaint to the legal challenges they are piling up against the Energy Department's plan to construct a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

The next step in the department project is to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to begin construction on the dump site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. By law the department was to submit the license application 90 days after Yucca was officially approved as a suitable site to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste.

But the department missed the deadline Monday, 90 days after President Bush signed the site designation. Department officials have long said they planned to submit the license application in December 2004.

On Wednesday, the states's congressional delegation, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., sent Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham a letter saying they took "considerable umbrage" to the fact that the department this year goaded Congress to approve Yucca two years before it ever intended to submit its license application.

"Congress clearly intended the Yucca Mountain site recommendation to be very closely connected to the filing of the license application," the letter said. "That is, Congress envisioned that a site recommendation would not be made until DOE had completed sufficient studies and analysis to submit a proper license application to NRC."

An Energy Department spokesman was not available for comment.

The lawmakers say they are "offended" that site characterization studies continue at Yucca, arguing that the studies should have been completed before the department officially approved the site.