Yucca licensing application facing another delay

Suzanne Struglinski

Monday, Aug. 1, 2005 | 10:57 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The license application for the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump may not be filed until March 2006, if not later, pushing the dump further behind schedule.

The Energy Department today is expected to submit an updated Yucca Mountain schedule to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. An Atomic Safety Licensing Board judge ordered the department to file monthly status reports starting June 1.

Department spokesman Craig Stevens said there is no set timeline or a specific date as to when the department will submit the application for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. There are a lot of pre-licensing matters that need to be resolved first, he said.

"The process is going to drive the schedule now," Stevens said. "I wouldn't even talk dates at this point."

Stevens said department staff will go over everything meticulously before turning in the application. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has insisted the application and the document collection be in top shape so the department can try to avoid additional obstacles and delays down the road, Stevens said.

A department official disclosed the new March 2006 target date for the license application to the Associated Press on Sunday, but that estimate is based on when it would finalize its document collection.

The department aimed to submit the application by December 2004, but legal and financial complications forced it to miss that deadline.

Submitting the license application by March 2006 could be difficult as well. Several outstanding issues need to be resolved before the department could complete the license application or finalize its document collection with the commission.

Under commission rules, it cannot docket the project's application until six months after the department publicly releases all its background documents that support their research. The department must finalize its collection through the Licensing Support Network, a document database that can be accessed by the public.

The department has been giving thousands of documents to the commission to put into the database since earlier this year, but the Atomic Safety Licensing Board is still considering how specific documents must be labeled and loaded into the network.

Until the board issues its document guidelines, it is unclear what exactly needs to be put into the database in certain categories such as employee concern files and those deemed as confidential under the attorney-client privilege.

Department lawyers said July 20 that the department would comply with the board's format for the documents. The department wanted to finalize its documents database by the end of this month, but under the updated timeline, it would not do so until September or later.

A September certification would push the license application submission to at least March, but department lawyers have also told the board they may go beyond that six-month period before turning in the application.

In addition to outstanding specifics on the documents, the Environmental Protection Agency may not issue a new proposed radiation standard until September.

The EPA needs to set a new standard for the proposed nuclear waste repository because a federal court threw out the 10,000-year radiation protection standard last year.

EPA spokesman John Millett said he can provide no update on the standard's progress beyond saying the agency is working in it.

Once the proposed standard is announced, it will be at least several months before it is finalized. There will be a minimum of 90 days for a public comment period before a final rule is issued.

Some Yucca supporters say that depending on what the EPA proposes, the department could file a license application with the 10,000-year protection standard as a base and then update it later as necessary. But Yucca critics, who want to see a stronger protection standard in place, say the department may need to go back to square one with its documentation.