Energy Department hopes to meet deadline for Yucca application

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, June 3, 2005 | 9:34 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is clinging to hope that by early next year it could submit an application for a license for Yucca Mountain, a key step in the department's goal of opening the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository by 2012.

That's according to the first monthly Yucca status report the department filed this week with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is responsible for licensing and regulating the waste dump.

Last month the agency ordered the department to file reports at the first of every month outlining a "best good faith estimate" of when it would finalize its Yucca document collection and when it expects to file a license application.

In the two-page status report filed with the NRC on Wednesday, the Energy Department asserts that it still aims to file completed Yucca documents "during August 2005." It intends to file the actual license application "some six months" later, according to the report, which was signed by Donald Irwin, a lawyer with the Richmond, Va., law firm Hunton & Williams hired by the Energy Department.

Budget, legal and regulatory delays have long plagued the repository project. Amid other setbacks, the Energy Department a year ago said that it had completed assembling and organizing Yucca Mountain documents, after years of scientific research.

But Nevada objected on the grounds that key documents were missing, and the NRC's three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board agreed.

Filing the documents with the NRC is an important step. Commission rules require that the documents are completed and in order six months prior to the department submitting the Yucca license application. The documents will be put into a Yucca document database known as the License Support Network.

Acting Yucca Mountain project chief Theodore Garrish, who retired May 13, said several times earlier this year that the department aimed to have the documents in order as soon as possible, and the application completed by the end of 2005. He made a distinction that this does not mean the department would necessarily file the application by the end of the year.

Once the Energy Department files its license application, the NRC could spend up to four years reviewing it, considering Nevada objections, and hosting public hearings. If the license is granted, repository construction could take two to three years, or more. Department officials have said they still aim to open the repository by 2012, although Yucca critics say it would be much later.

Sun Washington reporter

Benjamin Grove contributed to this story.