State argues to get all documents on Yucca Mountain made public

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, May 4, 2005 | 11:15 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- An attorney for Nevada was to argue today at an Atomic Safety Licensing Board hearing that the Energy Department needs to make certain Yucca Mountain project documents public.

The board's eventual decision will determine if the department has to hand over certain documents it does not want to load into a database right away.

A ruling in Nevada's favor may further delay the nuclear dump planed for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Attorney Charles Fitzpatrick of Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch and Cynkar, the law firm hired by the state to handle Yucca issues, was to appear before the board at a hearing this morning.

The state argues that the department needs to follow the rules pertaining to the Licensing Support Network, a document database that is supposed to include everything related to the proposed nuclear waste dump.

Attorney Joe Egan, who also represents the state, said he wants to get the "maximum disclosure of information that the law permits."

If the board sides with Nevada, it may take longer for the department to finalize its documents in the database, but Egan said this is not a tactic just to delay the project more.

"This is information we believe is really important to see," Egan said.

The database is supposed to contain all Yucca Mountain documents related to work on license application, ranging from scientific data documents to e-mails between department employees. The commission cannot start work on the project's license application until six months after the documents are finalized. The department has not yet submitted its license application.

E-mails have been the subject of the the most recent controversy in the Yucca debate. In March the Energy Department discovered messages sent by U.S. Geological Service employees that suggest they falsified technical data on how water flows through the mountain. The department discovered the e-mails while going through documents to put in the database.

The department wants to finalize its document collection by the end of June so it would be able to submit the license application by the end of the year. The department's lawyers argue it does not have enough time to make certain documents public when it finalizes the database but would make them available later.

Egan said the state believes the department is working with an "artificial deadline" and should be required to put everything in the database at once, as the law states.

In January, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which operates within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ordered the Energy Department, the state and other Yucca critics, to find common ground on how to handle millions of federal documents expected to be loaded into database.

The board wants to set guidelines to avoid "hundreds, if not thousands" of contentions Nevada would likely raise during licensing hearings on documents the department would have left out of the database claiming attorney-client privilege or other special classifications, according to the board's decision in January.

Lawyers with Virginia-based firm Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch and Cynkar have been meeting with lawyers from another Virginia law firm, Hunton and Williams, which represents the Energy Department on Yucca licensing matters.

The lawyers generally agreed on how the department should process documents that go into the database but today's hearing will try to resolve their remaining disagreements.