Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

DOE speeds schedule on Yucca questions

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department will answer remaining technical questions about Yucca Mountain by August, much sooner than it originally planned, according a recent letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"High-risk" unresolved technical problems which had been set to be answered as late as August 2005 instead will be answered before the department submits its license application to the commission in December 2004, according to a Nov. 28 letter sent to the commission by Joseph Ziegler, director of the department's Office of License Application and Strategy.

The questions, also known as "key technical issue agreements," relate to the proposed nuclear waste storage site's ability to keep the radiation from contaminating the environment.

Nevada officials, who have fought against the site for years, said they were concerned that the Energy Department had decided to speed up the process.

"The health and safety of Nevadans is too critical to hurry through important technical issues at Yucca Mountain," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said in a statement. "We will continue to carefully monitor each issue determined by the Department of Energy to ensure that thoroughly researched and conclusive answers are reached."

Tessa Hafen, spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, "This is more proof positive that the DOE is determined to push this nuclear waste dump through regardless of science and at the expense of safety."

Hafen said at a Senate hearing in May that the General Accounting Office and a former NRC inspector testified that a completed license application could not accurately be ready for at least three years.

Out of 293 lingering questions, 83 have been deemed resolved by the commission, with dozens more under review, according to Janet Schlueter, head of the commission's high-level waste branch.

Some answers to questions about water getting into the tunnels where the waste will be stored will be given to the commission in July as opposed to January 2005 as previously thought, according to the letter.

Water is a key factor is the site's safety since it could cause corrosion of the casks storing the 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel or make radiation move faster through the site and possibly contaminate the ground water, among other problems.

Ten questions pertaining to corrosion of the waste containers and the drip shield protection them are to be submitted by the end of this month, the letter states.

Date shuffling took place among the remaining issues to be resolved, but "significant improvement been made in the overall schedule," Ziegler said.

"Nothing has changed in terms of how the work is being taken," said Rod McCullum, senior project manager of waste management for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade association and lobbying group. "There is no scientist now working through the night or having to write notes faster."

McCullum said that when the department released its original schedule in June there were uncertainties about the project's funding and the research involved. But now the Energy Department has "greater certainty on the information" and since the project received almost all its funding from Congress, it can move forward.

He added that the department will still do "confirmatory research" after the license application is passed over to the commission to continue to look at the project.

In the letter, the department lists about 130 remaining questions, which have been placed into different categories called "bundles" and gives the corresponding dates they will be sent to the commission. The Energy Department created the bundling program in June as a more efficient way to answer the questions. Related technical problems were placed into a category to be answered together.

A bar graph illustrates that the bulk of the remaining questions will be answered in April, May and June next year, right around the time the Energy Department will have to start loading documents supporting the license application into an Nuclear Regulatory Commission computer network set aside just for that purpose.

Nevada protested the original schedule since some of the answers would have come after the license application submission.

Bob Loux, executive director of the state Nuclear Waste Project Office wrote the commission in October saying it was just another way for the Energy Department to "bend the rules" on the project.

Some of the questions will be answered in July and August, after the six-month mark preceding the application.

Loux said Thursday this is now a "wait and watch situation" since it will ultimately be up to the commission to decide if it will accept that information and what will be approved.

"These (dates) are only when DOE submits them to NRC," Loux said. "Because DOE submits them doesn't mean it's the end of the hunt."

Loux said the NRC has already told the Energy Department that it needs more information on one key technical issue which address the question of the threat of a crash of a military plane at the site.

Amy Spanbauer, spokeswoman to Rep. Jim Gibbon's, R-Nev., said it wasn't surprising that the Energy Department wanted to speed up the process.

"The questions remains that if in speeding up the process, does it come at the cost of good, sound science? Is good, sound science going to fall by the wayside?" Spanbauer asked.

Spanbauer said that with anyone trying to speed up their work, things may get overlooked and that Energy Department "hastily and speedily" trying to get the remaining answers to the commission is no different.

David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the Energy Department "should not be adhereing to some artificial time table."

"For the health and safety of Nevadans, isn't it worth taking the time to complete the science, to answer all the questions as thoroughly as they can?" he said.

Cherry said the department is clinging to the 2004 license deadline "like a life preserver."

"They never want to admit there is a possibility they are behind schedule," he said.

Brendan Hoffman, a Public Citizen organizer on nuclear energy and waste issues said he agrees all the items needs to be addressed but that the December 2004 deadline is "arbitrary" and doing the work faster does not mean they are doing them right.

"They are trying to put on the illusion that they are doing the right thing," Hoffman said. "They are trying to hoodwink the public. Where are they going to cheat to get these in on time?"

Hoffman used the analogy of someone building a house. If a contractor came in and said he could build it twice as fast as he previously thought: "it would raise my eyebrows."

"They are breaking Bush's promise of this being based on sound science again," Hoffman said.

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