Court orders common ground on Yucca documents

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005 | 9:42 a.m.

WASHINGTON-- An administrative court wants the lawyers for Nevada and the Energy Department to find common ground regarding the handling of millions of Yucca Mountain project documents destined for a federal database.

Lawyers for the state expected to have to raise numerous complaints about documents the department marked as "privileged" information that may not deserve the distinction, which would drag out an already delayed process even longer.

But on Tuesday, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a board within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said it needs to set specific criteria for marking documents privileged to avoid "hundreds, if not thousands" of disputes.

"Mindful of the enormous task that looms before us, it is incumbent on this board to develop procedures to manage and to resolve efficiently a very large number of privilege disputes," the board's decision notes.

The board gave Nevada, the department and the commission 40 days to submit an agreed upon procedure for handling the documents.

Last year, the board rejected the department's first attempt to finalize its documents based on objections raised by the state. The database, known as the License Support Network, is supposed to contain all documents related to work on the application, from lengthy technical documents to e-mails between department employees. The commission cannot start work on the project's license application, once submitted by the department, until six months after the documents are finalized.

As an example of the many problems, Nevada's lawyer Joe Egan cited the database's classification of 2,200 documents on Alloy 22 as privileged information. Alloy 22 is the metal to be used to make the storage containers for the nuclear waste. There was no indication as to why users could not see those documents about Alloy 22, Egan complained.

Egan and the state's other lawyers also have complained that the department has refused to provide them with a copy of the software the department uses to sort through its documents.