Lawyer: Nevada kept out of Yucca meetings

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005 | 11:17 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency has been quietly meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department to discuss the EPA's effort to comply with a court ruling that stalled a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, a lawyer for Nevada said today.

The state should be a part of the discussions, Martin Malsch told the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, a panel that advises the commission on waste issues. Ultimately, the commission would license and regulate Yucca, the proposed repository for high-level nuclear waste. The Energy Department is planning to submit a license application to the commission by year's end to construct Yucca.

"Nevada's requests to EPA to establish a public docket and to meet in public with interested stakeholders have gone unanswered," Malsch said.

The state has filed Freedom of Information requests to obtain documents from the meetings, which took place in recent months, but many of the documents delivered to the state have been redacted, he said.

The agencies have "drawn an iron curtain of secrecy around their deliberations," he said.

The state has asked for the EPA to be more open in general about its rule-making.

At issue is a 10,000-year radiation standard the EPA set for Yucca Mountain. A federal court last year said the EPA did not follow the law because it failed to set a standard that was consistent with a much stricter standard reccommended by the National Academies of Science.

The academies recommended that the repository radiation standard should cover the period in which the "peak dose" of radiation is emitted from waste stored at the mountain. That could be far longer than 10,000 years, Nevada officials have said.

The court ruling effectively directed the EPA to draft a new standard or better explain how its 10,000-year standard complies with the findings of the academies. The EPA is expected to release a draft of its new rule-making decision in late spring or early summer, but has not indicated to Nevada what the rule will look like, Malsch said.

"Let me express the hope on behalf of the state of Nevada that logic and sound science will prevail here," he said.

The waste panel today discussed its options for advising the five-member commission on the EPA rule when it is released. It will be important, panel member William Hinze noted, to build public confidence in the new standard.

"If we start changing these things, it's very important to bring the community, the world, the country into an understanding that we are still protecting the safety of the public and the environment," Hinze said.