Yucca project lagging

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, March 25, 2003 | 11:08 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is scrambling to keep the next phase of the Yucca Mountain project on schedule but is a few months behind, a department official said today.

The department may have to submit its application for a license to construct the proposed controversial nuclear waste repository to the Nuclear Waste Commission sometime in 2005, rather than December 2004, as planned, said Abraham Van Luik, senior policy adviser in the department's repository development office.

Van Luik spoke today at a meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. The panel advises the NRC on Yucca issues and meets regularly to discuss Yucca safety and licensing. The NRC is responsible for licensing Yucca and, ultimately, for regulating it.

Project delays are directly due to a "funding fiasco" in Congress -- lawmakers did not finalize the current fiscal year budget until February, four months late. That delayed funding to federal departments and put projects behind schedule.

Energy Department officials are trying to make up the delay, Van Luik said. But before the department can apply for a Yucca license it must complete the project design, scheduled for the middle of next year. And finishing design safety analysis by the end of 2004 will be a "Herculean task," Van Luik said in an interview after his presentation.

"We're talking about thousands of drawings," he said.

The Energy Department is also behind schedule on resolving a list of "key technical issues" -- dozens of outstanding scientific questions about the planned repository's ability to safely isolate waste from humans and the environment for 10,000 years or more.

Congress, which with President Bush last year approved Yucca Mountain as the safest place to construct a first-of-its-kind national nuclear waste dump, is putting pressure on the department to keep Yucca on track to open by 2010.

That timeline is "very optimistic" and likely assumes that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not take a full four years to review and approve Yucca, Van Luik said in an interview.

The NRC's Yucca panel began a three-day meeting today.