Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

NRC is told quality comes first on Yucca Mountain work

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is now more focused on the quality of its Yucca Mountain work than on meeting a specific schedule, department officials told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Thursday.

The department is still working diligently to submit to the NRC an application for a license to construct the underground high-level nuclear waste repository, officials said. They still aim to submit it sometime next year.

But department officials would not give the commission a specific date during a quarterly management meeting at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md.

"It's going to be ready when it's done," Acting Yucca Chief Paul Golan told the commission. "A quality organization does things right the first time."

Golan said he is implementing a "trust but verify" culture for the Yucca program. The license application will be independently reviewed within the department before becoming final, Golan said.

The Energy Department is also seeking to organize its massive collection of Yucca research documents in preparation for submission to the NRC. Golan said the documents, too, will be independently assessed.

W. John Arthur, deputy director of the department's Office of Repository Development, said he may recommend certifying -- that is, finalizing -- the documents by the end of the month.

Under commission regulations, the department has to make all its documents related to the project public six months before it can submit the license application. This allows Nevada, the commission, the public and other interested parties to look through the material.

The documents are important because the Energy Department says its research proves that Yucca is a safe place to bury the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste. The NRC is charged with reviewing the massive data collection and determining whether Yucca is safe. The NRC is responsible for licensing, and ultimately regulating, Yucca.

Arthur said the collection contains 3.3 million documents, including about 1.5 million e-mails and about 1 million technical reports and analysis. Only about 1 percent of the documents in the database could be withheld as privileged documents, officials have said.

Other Yucca work continues, Arthur said. The department is continuing to develop a plan for dealing with broken fuel rods that arrive at Yucca after shipping, he said.

Officials are also updating the license application so it complies with the revised Environmental Protection Agency radiation protection rule released last month. Arthur said he did not believe any additional scientific work will be needed for the department to determine whether it can meet the new EPA radiation standard.

The department is also reviewing water infiltration studies because quality assurance documents that back up the research may have been falsified. The department discovered e-mails by U.S. Geological Survey employees in March that suggest Yucca several researchers did not follow proper procedures and "fudged" data, according to the e-mails.

Arthur said it would take at least until next April to finalize the water studies. The studies are important because critics have said water flow inside the mountain could ultimately cause radiation to leak from the repository.

The department agreed to brief the commission on an upcoming review of the e-mail issue and how it may have affect the project, but did not set a date.

Also at Thursday's meeting, the NRC said it has reviewed all 293 "key technical issues" -- a checklist of unanswered questions about Yucca science that department and commission officials have been working to resolve for several years.

Elmo Collins of the commission's Division of High-Level Waste Repository Safety said 256 have been "closed" and 29 need additional information.

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