Nevada wants ‘hard sell’ probe

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2004 | 10:56 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada is accusing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's staff of being partial to the Energy Department in an argument over whether or not the department followed the commission policy.

State officials want the NRC to investigate whether the commissioners or the agency's senior staff members have instructed employees to advocate for the Yucca Mountain project.

The commission will ultimately decide whether the Energy Department can store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The commission is supposed to be an independent evaluator of the project. The Energy Department has to prove the project is safe to get a license from the commission.

But Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects said "any small hope" the state had that the commission would make an independent evaluation "vanished" when NRC Staff Attorney Mitzi Young argued before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board last week.

Nevada officials claim the Energy Department did not follow the rules for posting a document database to support its application to build Yucca Mountain when it made millions of project documents public last month.

If the argument is upheld, it would delay the project. The department believes it did satisfy the rules and wants to move forward.

At the administrative hearing, before three judges, Nevada argued its point with the NRC attorney arguing against Nevada. A decision is pending. One judge questioned the NRC attorney about an apparent change of position.

Young said during the hearing that Nevada could not prove the department did not make all its documents available "as a result of good faith efforts" to the database. She said making the documents available would satisfy the rule.

But Judge Thomas Moore said Young took a different position at a June advisory review panel meeting where she said loading all of he documents into one central database would not happen overnight.

She said at the earlier meeting "I don't know how you substantially comply with the requirement if you wait until one minute before midnight to load a substantial number of documents in terms of making them available to the NRC and to the public."

Moore pointed out that this position contradicts what Young said during an earlier meeting on the database status, saying her comments at the hearing were "180 degrees from what you are saying today."

The state wants to know what led to the change and if anyone inside the commission is pushing for the project to go through.

In a two-page letter sent to NRC General Counsel Karen Cyr, Loux explained that Young told the hearing board that commission staff members were making a "hard sell" for the Energy Department's position on Nevada's challenge to the project's document database.

"When the board asked Ms. Young how she could profess that staff was remaining neutral while she was standing before the board advocating DOE's position -- a position the board thought was wrong under the law -- she answered, 'I know it's a hard sell.'th "

Loux said the commission staff should be "advocating only for compliance with the law by the applicant."

NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the commission will take Loux's request under advisement but could not offer any other details yet on what the next steps would be.