Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Panel explores eventual fate of Yucca Mountain records

Yucca Mountain

U.S. Department of Energy

Yucca Mountain is located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Yucca Mountain

The U.S. Energy Department plans to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, an extinct volcano about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Launch slideshow »

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A three-judge panel in charge of hearing disagreements associated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s proposed Yucca Mountain Waste Repository is trying to figure out how to dress a turkey before it’s dead.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Construction Authorization Board held a hearing Wednesday to explore what would happen to all the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump records should Congress yank the funding for the controversial dump.

President Barack Obama has said the Yucca waste depository is “off the books” and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid says it’s dead. But the Department of Energy continues to pursue a license to build it — although its filings in recent months have tapered off sharply, according to board chair and federal Judge Thomas Moore.

But the dump plans could die if funding is eliminated from the federal budget.

The president is expected to unveil his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011 on Monday, and it is expected to include drastic cuts to the Energy Department’s Yucca Mountain project.

That would be a big win for Nevada, which has fought the dump, planned 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for more than 20 years.

The state has no nuclear energy plants and believes the site is unsuitable for a nuclear waste dump because of its proximity to the state’s economic hub and because the safety measures meant to protect public health are unrealistic or implausible.

But the decades of research on the Yucca project have resulted in important discoveries for long-term nuclear waste storage in general.

The board fears that if the Energy Department was forced to abruptly abandon its quest for a license for the waste dump, decades of research could be lost forever.

After all, that waste has to be stored somewhere and the Energy Department’s database isn’t set up for long-term storage. It would take many years and millions of dollars to re-do all that research if it was inadvertently lost or became inaccessible.

The Energy Department’s private lawyer, Donald Silverman, said the agency has no plans for what to do if federal funding is pulled. He said the agency has enough funding to see it through its plans for the 2010 fiscal year, which ends in July, and that the agency has no planning assumptions for the 2011 fiscal year.

Lawyers for Nevada agreed it was premature to hold a hearing for “rumors and unsubstantiated media reports.”

The President’s budget announcement next week won’t lead to any immediate action by the Energy Department, Nevada’s private attorney Martin Malsch said.

Even if the President called for zero funding for the Yucca license application in his budget, that doesn’t mean Congress will oblige, said Malsch, the private attorney hired to represent Nevada in the Yucca proceedings.

It could be months before anything is known about Yucca licensing funding and, in the meantime, the Energy Department is expected to continue its pursuit of a license to build the facility.

Still, the board appeared convinced that major cuts to the Energy Department’s Yucca budget were coming and the Department had at least some contingency plans for how to deal with documents and contracts related to the license application.

“We expect that when that budget is released, you’ll provide us that information,” Moore said. “Its (contents) are already known. It’s just not public. So there’s no reason for gnashing of the teeth over (the plans) becoming public.”

The judge asked that the Energy Department deliver to the board by Feb. 4 information about what it plans to do with the millions of documents and research reports associated with the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository license application. He also asked whether it can create a formal archive of the records and relay copies to the administrator of the online database on Yucca Mountain issues.

The Energy Department is responsible for generating nearly 99 percent of the millions of pages of documents associated with the license application.

The state objected to what it called special treatment the Energy Department was getting in the case, saying that the board didn’t show any leniency toward several parties that couldn’t or didn’t comply with certain regulations or orders earlier in the Yucca license application process.

“If any other party was rumored to be pulling out, we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “We wouldn’t be working to protect that party. It is not appropriate for the board to order the (Energy Department) to protect itself.”

But the board defended its position, saying there was too much time and money invested in the Yucca Mountain license application to simply let it die.

“The sole purpose we’re here is to protect that LSN asset,” Moore said, referring to the online database. “I don’t see any problem in seeing what (the Energy Department) says.”

The board also wrapped up the second day of hearings on objections to the

Energy Department’s license application.

The state of Nevada brought 11 complaints to the board, ranging from legal questions about whether the Energy Department should have a role in the safety plans for moving waste from power plants to transport trucks to whether the agency would satisfy safety permit requirements by installing a key safety feature (man-made “drip shields”) 100 years after the nuclear waste begins arriving in the facility.

The state also asked the board to decide if the Energy Department’s contention that the entire barrier system, which consists of the rock above and below the waste, as well as a series of man made barriers, could be deemed reliable without first analyzing key pieces, such as the drip shield, independently.

The drip shields were brought up again and again in complaints from the state, which contends the Energy Department’s plans are little more than pipe dreams.

The state further objects to the agency’s plans to wait to install the apparently necessary shield 100 years after the waste arrives in Nevada and to plan to use it in the design without first figuring out if its failure would put public health at risk.

“If the drip shield doesn’t work, you have catastrophic failure,” Malsch said.

The Energy Department contended that it had designed the drip shields to provide protection in conjunction with other engineered components and the natural barriers.

But the agency contends it does not have to test each barrier component independently.

Nevada and the panel of judges found the plan not to do any analysis of how the system would work without the drip shields ludicrous.

“How can you tell if the whole system works together and is not dependent on a single barrier if you don’t test them independently,” said Judge Richard

Wardwell, who sits on the board. “That’s common engineering practice.”

Nevada also protested the Energy Department’s submitted plans for removing the waste from Yucca Mountain, should it become necessary.

The agency contends the facility isn’t being built for waste to be put in and out all the time, but as a long-term storage facility. It only has to show it has preserved the ability to remove the waste and provide a description of how removal could be achieved.

“It’s perfectly normal for applicants for power plants to have procedures for creating a plan but no plan,” said Donald Silverman, the private attorney representing the Energy Department.

The board did not say when it might make a ruling on any of the 11 disputes discussed in the hearing.

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