Yucca licensing process could be delayed

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, April 14, 2004 | 10:54 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain could be delayed if the Energy Department does not provide better documentation of its technical analysis, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday.

After reviewing three reports intended to be included with the department's license application, a commission team concluded in a 30-page report that the license process could take longer than the expected four years if the department does not improve how it submits information.

The department anticipates submitting its license application for the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by the end of this year. The commission has three years, with a possible fourth year if approved by Congress, to review the application to determine if the department can build the repository.

"If DOE (the Energy Department) continues to use their existing policies, procedures, methods and practices at the same level of implementation and rigor, the staff's review of the license application could be significantly extended because of the need for a large volume of requests for additional information in some areas," Martin Virgilio, director of the commission's Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, wrote to the project's top official, Margaret Chu.

"This could, as a consequence, prevent NRC from making a timely decision regarding issuance of a construction authorization," Virgilio wrote.

That could push back the Energy Department's plan of having the repository open by 2010.

The department maintains it will meet its December deadline to submit the application. It aims to open the site by 2010.

"We will provide the NRC with all of the information needed to evaluate our license application," Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson said in an e-mail. "There is nothing in the report which questions the underlying soundness of our science."

The Energy Department had planned for a three-year NRC review of the repository and expects to build the facility in 18 months to two years. If the department meets its schedule, the site would open by 2010.

However, lawsuits, the lack of funding and the licensing process could all delay the timetable.

When it reviews the license application, the commission needs to understand the department's technical explanations and determine it has given enough information to justify that explanation, according to the report.

C. William Reamer, director of the commission's High Level Waste Repository Safety Division, who approved the report, emphasized the report's findings do not determine the adequacy of the department's documents to get a license. The license itself will be reviewed as a whole once submitted.

The report says the Energy Department has improved the way information is compiled and submitted, but more changes need to be made or else the process will go on longer.

"The ball is in DOE's court," Reamer said.

The report found that in some cases, the department did not explain clearly enough how it reached a conclusion and in other instances the department had a clear explanation of an answer but not enough information to support it.

The commission has questioned the department's information documentation process before but this is the first time it has said the review process could go longer.

"Those who want to see nuclear waste buried at Yucca Mountain claim that the opponents of the dump are to blame for delaying the project, but it is clear that DOE's own actions are the real culprit," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "This report is a shot across the bow to DOE that says unless things change significantly, NRC will have no choice but to demand the materials needed to fully evaluate a license application for the site."

Nevada attorneys will question the quality of the Energy Department's information during the licensing process, which will have administrative court hearings.

Joe Egan, of Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch and Cynkar, the Virginia law firm hired by the state to handle Yucca legal issues, said it is clear from the missing information that the department is "not used to the NRC culture."

"It's like when you're in school, if you read a book and do a book report and it's only half a page, it doesn't mean you don't know the book, but you may not know it," Egan said.

He said some of the information the commission would want to see may not exist because the right work cannot or has not been done.

Bob Loux, executive director of the state Office of Nuclear Projects, said this reports asks the department "Where is the meat on the bone?" and plainly says the department has not done an adequate job in its technical documentation.