Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004 | 11:14 a.m.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission handed Yucca Mountain another setback Tuesday, saying the Energy Department did not have all of its project documents in order when the 5.6 million pages were submitted in June.
The action cast renewed doubt on the department's plan to open the proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada by 2010, although Energy Department officials vow to stay on schedule.
It also cast further doubt on whether the Energy Department ultimately can defend and document years of research on the first-of-its-kind project, Yucca critics said.
The NRC ruling demonstrated just how difficult it will be for the department to obtain a license for Yucca in the coming years, said Joe Egan, an attorney who is leading a court challenge against the project for Nevada.
"There is no doubt that the license application will be just as much a piece of trash as this initial certification was," Egan said today.
"The practical effect is really a sort of loss of confidence," Bob Loux said of the NRC action. Loux is executive director of Nevada's Yucca watchdog group, Agency for Nuclear Projects.
At issue were the Yucca documents submitted by the Energy Department to the NRC on June 30. Federal rules require the department to submit the material -- backup work for its license request -- for public scrutiny on an Internet database.
The NRC ruling could result in a project delay because it delays the Energy Department's bid to win NRC approval of an application for a license to construct Yucca. The NRC cannot officially recognize that application until six months after the NRC certifies the documents, according to federal rules.
The Energy Department had hoped the NRC would promptly "docket" the license application when the department submits it at year's end.
Department spokesman Joe Davis said the department would submit additional documents within about 30 days in an effort to win the NRC's certification.
But Davis reiterated that the department remains dedicated to all its project deadlines.
"We are still working toward our goal," to open Yucca by 2010, Davis said.
Colleen Curran, a spokeswoman for Bechtel SAIC in Nevada, declined to comment on how Tuesday's ruling affects the company, which is due for a million-dollar bonus if DOE submits the license application by the end of the year.
"The certification issue is purely DOE," she said.
Energy Department officials aim to open the world's first permanent underground repository for high-level nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
They have said they aim to keep the project on track despite budget shortages in recent years and a recent federal court ruling that favored a Nevada challenge to the project.
"It has not been a good six months for the Department of Energy," Loux said. "The project's dead -- they just don't want to admit it yet."
Energy Department officials have said the project is nowhere near dead.
In this latest setback, however, the Energy Department had certified on June 30 that it was making available to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission all pertinent Yucca documents. The department handed the NRC 1.2 million documents.
But Nevada officials challenged the department. They said the Energy Department was depriving the public of millions of additional documents as well as the public's six-month comment period.
In a 54-page ruling released Tuesday, the NRC's three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board essentially agreed. The panel threw out the department's bid to certify the documents until all the paperwork is in.
The department withheld about 1 million documents that are still under review, mostly for "privacy and privilege" legality reasons, Davis said.
Some of the documents contain sensitive "pre-decisional communications" between project officials and department lawyers that needed further checking before public release, Davis said. Other documents contain personal information about project officials, he said.
It's good news that the department plans to stick to its timeline, said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading pro-Yucca lobby and nuclear industry advocacy group. There's no reason the NRC action Tuesday should delay the Energy Department's plan to submit the Yucca application by year's end, Kerekes said.
Anti-Yucca groups said the NRC panel ruling on the lack of documents was another indication of project bungling.
"There are a lot of eerie similarities between the way that the Bush administration has rushed this process, and the way they have rushed the science," Sierra Club spokesman Eric Antebi said.
The NRC's ruling means that the NRC would not docket the Energy Department's application until after Election Day. Nevada Democrats say that may bode well for the state if John Kerry wins, because Kerry pledged to stop Yucca Mountain.
Kerry has said he would revoke the license application.
"John Kerry has to become president for the benefits of this (NRC) ruling to come to fruition," said Sean Smith, Kerry Nevada spokesman.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said, "This is a setback for President Bush's effort to bury nuclear waste in Nevada."
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