Work halted on NRC data for Yucca Mountain

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, July 7, 2004 | 9:37 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Work on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's database of Yucca Mountain project documents will be halted until the commission appoints a pre-license application officer, according to a letter sent Tuesday.

This means the commission's progress indexing the Energy Department's documents, as well as Nevada's objections to the database, will have to wait until an officer is named. The appointment is expected to come next week.

An Energy Department request to delete some documents that contain private information, such as Social Security numbers, also will have to wait, Daniel Graser, administrator of the commission's Licensing Support Network, wrote to Commission Chairman Nils Diaz Tuesday. Graser said he does not have the authority to delete information from the database.

Graser wrote that he had deleted some documents at the department's request before the database was certified as complete, but now, under law, the pre-license application presiding officer must be involved in any changes.

The Energy Department declared as certified the database of 5.6 million pages of documents related to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project, posting the documents a Web site, but has yet to send all of those documents to the commission to put on the official database that will be used during the license hearings.

The department plans to give the commission a license application for the Yucca project, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, proving it can safely store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste inside the mountain.

Graser said he will not make the department documents available on the commission's network and that the department's efforts to see what other documents may contain private information could delay its availability for an "indeterminate period of time."

Commission spokeswoman Sue Gagner said this means Graser will not finish indexing the records that he has until the officer determines how to handle it.

Attorney Joe Egan, who represents Nevada on Yucca issues, said the "NRC is following its own rules to the letter."

He said Nevada will have to wait to contest the certification until an officer is named.

Members of Nevada's congressional delegation said they are troubled by the confusion and problems surrounding the documents and on Tuesday they complained to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

"The purpose of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-- regulation is to make the documentation easily available publicly as a substitute for a protracted legal discovery period," the delegation wrote to Abraham. "However, with the current status of the NRC Licensing Support Network, it is difficult to comprehend how the objectives of the NRC regulation will be met."

Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev. and Harry Reid, D-Nev., along with Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. wrote that the information on the Web site should contain safety, health and security questions and " at the very least, provide an index, site map, or bibliography to assist Congress and the American public in locating the documents of concern."