DOE turns in its Yucca assignment

Suzanne Struglinski

Thursday, July 1, 2004 | 11:08 a.m.

The Energy Department has released more than 5.6 million pages of documents about Yucca Mountain in preparation to apply for a license to build a nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The documents can be viewed on the Internet at:

There are also public computers available to look at the documents at:

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department sent almost 6 million pages of Yucca Mountain information to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wednesday, marking an anticipated, though late, first step in the project's license application process.

Nevada attorneys will now carefully search the documents, which are available to the public, to make sure the department sent everything that is required by law to be in the commission's database.

Under federal regulations, the department has to tell the commission everything it knows about the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, six months before submitting the project's license application.

"We've think we've done a very good job here," said David Garman, acting Energy undersecretary. "I have high confidence we've included everything the NRC requires of us."

The department sent all of its information, 1.2 million documents made up of 5.6 million pages, into a computer database known as the License Support Network Wednesday. The department missed its self-imposed deadline of June 23 in order to get the application in by Dec. 23, but certifying all the documents were there Wednesday will allow the application to come by Dec. 30, Garman said.

"We wanted to go for greater precision and accuracy," Garman said. "Part of it was just the sheer number of documents."

Attorney Charles Fitzpatrick of Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch and Cynkar, the Virginia law firm hired by Nevada to handle Yucca Mountain legal issues, said Nevada staff will go through the database to make sure it is accessible and has the key documents the state believes should be included.

Fitzpatrick said the state has specific things it will look for, but he declined to say what those were.

If state officials have objections, they can file those with a hearing officer, who is expected to be named in the next few weeks.

Nevada has concerns about the quality of the documents since the Energy Department's estimate has gone down by millions of pages in the last few months, but Fitzpatrick said the state's legal counsel did not want to be "premature in what we do."

"We are not going to rush into this in the next two days," he said.

The commission now has 30 days to turn in its own documentation while the state and other parties allowed to participate in the process have 90 days to get their documentation online.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said the amount of information is overwhelming.

"We're talking about 5.6 million pages -- 1,000 miles of paper -- all to be consumed by the general public seeking to obtain answers to their questions about public safety," Gibbons said. "I can't help but wonder what flaws will become apparent deep within the colossal mountain of documents."

Because of the later submission, Garman said he believed the department sent an "extremely honest" batch of documents that will be useful to the public.

The documents could also play out in Nevada's legal challenge. The state, trying to stop the project, has filed a series of lawsuits, which are pending in federal court.

"The reality is, the questions about Yucca will ultimately be answered by the courts in the form of a few pages," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. spokesman Adam Mayberry.

Rod McCullum, senior project manager for waste at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying group, said submitting the documents Wednesday keeps the program on track for handing in the license by the end of the year.

"This is a very clear and definitive indicator that the licensing process is on schedule," McCullum said.

McCullum said posting all these documents is meant to save time since lawyers would normally ask for a lot of them during discovery periods of a case. Now, everything is already there.

"These get down to the nitty gritty on how DOE (Energy Department) got to an answer," he said.

NEI will also look through the database to see what the department posted because the group will post its own documents in 90 days.

The plethora of documents includes e-mails, letters, technical documents, scientific reports and various documents from 20 years of research on the mountain.

It includes information on all 293 key technical issues agreements, the areas the department and the commission agreed needed more answers.

So far, 101 have been deemed closed by the commission, meaning it has enough information to review the work, said Michael Voegele, the project's chief scientist. The remaining issues are in various stages of consideration by the commission and all e-mail exchanges between staff members of both agencies and other information on their progress are included in the millions of pages, Voegele said.

Garman said this is the first action in what is expected to be a three to four year process.

"The burden will be ours to prove our case that the repository is worthy of an NRC license," Garman said.

Garman admitted the department included documents that do not support the project, but that they need to be taken into context of the whole project.

"You're going to see both sides," Garman said. "That's the way it ought to be. The caveat is that they need to be considered together."

The department included scientists' complaints on aspects of the project.

"These are old issues, but when you're holding an e-mail in your hand, it tends to give some of these old issues new life," Garman said. "It kind of makes it real and in the minds of some it reinvigorates the story, it breathes new life into the story."

He said part of the peer review process is to pick the project apart, and the department included the critical statement to make sure it evaluated all sides.

Garman said the department will continue to submit documents to the network, and that if will make another certification when its submits the application six months from now. He said the department is still looking at some documents it would include on the network later. The commission can also ask for more data.

"This is not a one-time deal," Garman said. "This is an ongoing aspect."

But Fitzpatrick said the additional information is going to be huge point of contention.

He said the recent change to the regulation stipulate the parties do not have to send duplicate documents and they can only add documents created after the initial certification.

"That's a key difference," Fitzpatrick said.

He said information is bound to pop up later, but everything the department had prior to Wednesday needed to be in the database now.

Once the department submits the application in December, if it meets its goal, the commission will have three months to review it.

The NRC can decide to put it on its docket or send it back to the department with questions. Once on the docket, expected to come around March 2005, the commission has three years to review it, with an optional additional fourth year if Congress allows one.

The department would know by 2008 or 2009 if it receives a license to build the repository, but it also needs a license to accept and store waste inside the mountain. The department plans to open the site in 2010.

The whole process depends on adequate funding from Congress, which faces serious problems so far this year, and a favorable outcome from the six legal challenges brought by the state against various aspect of the project. The outcome of the November presidential election could also change things, because presumptive Democratic candidate John Kerry has come out against the project.

The state will also challenge the application during administrative hearings before the Atomic Safety Licensing Board. The five commissioners would then have the final approval of application.