NRC might need more time on Yucca

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, May 28, 2004 | 9:19 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- How long the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will take to review the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project license application largely depends on the quality of the application, the commission chairman said Thursday.

Chairman Nils Diaz has not ruled out using an additional year on top of the three years allocated to the commission.

"Given that the Department of Energy is telling us they are going to deliver an application in December and given the fact the we have insisted that application be as good as it can be, if it is a very good application and is delivered on time, we are going to try our best to do it in three years, but we will (definitely) do it in four years."

Energy Department officials have repeatedly said they intend to submit the license application for the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, on Dec. 23.

Under federal law, the commission has three months to "docket" or accept the license, then three years to review the license from the point. It can ask Congress for an additional year if it can justify the need.

Diaz said three years is going to "very tough" and the overall review is going to be "very, very difficult to handle" the review because of its sheer size, but the commission will do all it can to meet the three-year deadline.

The commission has consistently told the department the technical documentation that the department intends to include with the application needs to be improved or the review could take more than four years.

The Energy Department intends to accept waste at the site in 2010 and is on a strict schedule to meet that deadline. It has repeatedly said if it does not turn in the license application at the end of this year, it will not be able to open the site on time.