NRC’s deadline for opening nuke waste dump is challenged

Benjamin Grove

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 9:15 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to revise one of its obscure technical rules that lawyers say prejudges the opening of Yucca Mountain.

Without naming Yucca, the 15-year-old agency rule predicts that a national nuclear waste repository will be constructed by 2025.

The NRC, which regulates the nuclear industry and would license and regulate Yucca, set the "waste confidence" rule in 1990 for the purpose of licensing and re-licensing nuclear power plants. As part of licensing and re-licensing, the agency must review how plants plan to dispose of waste in a safe and timely way. The rule provides the plant owners and agency a set guideline for a long-term waste plan.

But the rule also unfairly and prematurely assumes that Yucca Mountain will be deemed safe by the NRC, Nevada lawyer Joseph Egan said.

The state objects because the NRC would be responsible for conducting an objective three- to four-year review of an application for a license to construct the underground repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

So the agency should not have a rule that assumes the repository will be open in 20 years, Egan said.

In a petition filed with the NRC Tuesday, Egan argues that the NRC should set a new "generic" rule that doesn't set a specific date for the opening of a national geologic repository. Egan suggests a "simpler" rule that states waste will be removed from plants "well before storage causes any significant safety or environmental impacts."

The rule change effectively requests that the NRC state that on-site storage of waste at plant sites is safe until a viable permanent storage site can be licensed and opened -- even if that occurs decades into the future and the site is not Yucca.

"It's a highly significant paradigm shift that we're asking for," Egan said. "We believe that shift is already happening on its own and we're trying to push it along."

The rule change also seeks to capitalize on the recent comments of nuclear industry officials who have said Yucca is not vital to their plans to construct new U.S. nuclear plants.

"We want to make that official," Egan said.

Nuclear industry officials say they are as committed as ever to Yucca construction. The nuclear industry has been suing the Energy Department for not hauling their waste away to Yucca by 1998, as promised by Congress.

Egan said the rule change could ease legal as well as political and regulatory pressure on the Energy Department to complete Yucca.

But industry officials said the rule, if adopted, would have no practical effect on Yucca.

The Energy Department would still be obligated to construct and open the repository and the NRC would still be obligated to license and regulate it, said Robert Bishop, a lawyer for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading industry lobby group.

"The agency has to comply with the law," he said.

NRC officials could not be reached for comment.