Panel to evaluate state’s challenge of Yucca database

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, July 9, 2004 | 9:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A three-person panel will evaluate the state's challenges to the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project document database.

Federal law requires only one officer to evaluate them.

Using the panel shows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking the matter seriously, said Joe Egan, a lawyer who represents Nevada on Yucca issues.

"This elevates its importance," Egan said. "It has put a little more gravitas to it."

G. Paul Bollwerk, chief administrative judge of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, on Thursday appointed board members Thomas Moore, Alex Karlin and Alan Rosenthal to serve on a panel that will hear concerns about the document database.

On Wednesday, the commission appointed Bollwerk to be the pre-license application presiding officer, a position required by law, but gave him authority to delegate the responsibility.

Bollwerk named the three-person panel within the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that will handle "pre-application matters" for the department's planned nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Steve Frishman, technical policy coordinator for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said he did not read anything into Bollwerk's move because three-person panels are common in licensing proceedings.

"I don't know whether its good or bad," Frishman said. "But now we'll get a judgment out of three people instead of just one."

The state will today file its official objection to the department's database. Nevada's lawyers have been criticizing the database since last week but a 25-page document expected to be sent to the commission headquarters in Rockville, Md., today will outline all their concerns.

At issue is the department's claim on June 30, that it "certified" a database of 5.6 million pages of documents related to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project by posting them on a Web site it created.

Department officials want to file the license application with the commission by the end of the year and commission rules require the documents to be made public six months before the department can file it.

Department officials believe they have met the deadline, but Nevada's lawyers and other Yucca opponents believe it has not because not all of the documents are available on either the department's Web site or one run by the commission. During the licensing hearings, Nevada will have to base its arguments against the project on the documents in the database.

The department has yet to send the commission all of the documents for the official database and is still sorting through documents to determine if some need to be deleted, officials said.

The department will have a chance to respond to Nevada's contention and a hearing by the board is possible, but Egan said the state will not request one.