December 20, 2007
Yucca Mountain: One Up, One Down

By Dave Maxwell

A giant step forward and a giant step backward. That might be what the Department of Energy is feeling this week in regards to efforts to apply for a license for the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste complex and repository. On December 13, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled in favor of the DOE that the Licensing Support Network (LSN) was complete enough to make application.

In oral arguments before the three-man NRC panel in Las Vegas in early December, the state of Nevada had argued that a number of key documents and studies needed for the LSN had not yet been completed and should be sufficient for the NRC panel to refuse to grant the license application until those studies were completed and added to the LSN documents. The LSN is a database of documents that may be used as evidence during the license application process and must be made available to the public. This database must be certified as complete at least 6 months before the license application for construction at Yucca Mountain can be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

However, on December 18, Congress took a very deep bite out of the Yucca Mountain project, cutting the DOE spending budget by 22 percent.

Ward Sproat, project director said only recently that deep cuts would cause the DOE to rethink its once “set in stone” date of June 30, 2008 of filing a repository license application, which would be a big step forward for the troubled and oft-delayed effort.

President Bush planned to set $495.5 million aside for Yucca Mountain, but lawmakers allocated no more than $86.5 million in a year-end wrap-up bill that would keep the government funded through September 2008. Sproat also said that a $100 million reduction “would be very serious,” but did not comment further on what that meant.

The $516 billion year-end spending bill marked the 13th consecutive year that Congress has reduced a president’s budget for the Yucca project. In that period, spending for the project has been cut back a combined total of $1.3 billion

In their decision to accept the 3.5 million documents in the LSN database, the judges' two-page ruling stated, “Nevada’s legal position is incorrect,” Federal regulations give DOE the ability to add finalized documents to the electronic library even after it is certified as being complete, they said. The LSN can be found on the Internet at www.lsnnet.gov.

Nevada Senator Harry Reid was also not pleased with the ruling of the NRC and said in a press release December 12, “I’m disappointed the judges for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided in favor of the Department of Energy and allowed the LSN to be certified. It is clear that the LSN is not complete and that DOE is playing hide the ball with key documents in order to prevent the State of Nevada from having all the information it needs to oversee and challenge the licensing application process. DOE knows that they need to cheat and hide information because they know they will lose on substance in the end. It is time for the DOE to stop playing games with the most dangerous substance on the face of this earth and its failed pursuit of Yucca Mountain so that we can move on to resolving the underlying problem of what to do with our country’s nuclear waste. I will continue working to ensure the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain never becomes a reality.”

At the same time as cutting back the Nevada project, the Congressional bill also calls for an $8.2 million reduction in a waste account at the NRC, “given the almost certain delay in the Department of Energy filing a license application for the Yucca Mountain repository.”

The new spending bill calls for the DOE to devise plans to take custody of nuclear waste stored at 14 shutdown reactors in nine states, consolidate the material at a federal site, an active reactor or some volunteer interim location.

With the new budget cuts of Congress, critics of Yucca Mountain had something to shout about, including Senator Reid. In a prepared statement he said, “I am proud that I was successful in cutting off Yucca’s budget. It is clear that the Yucca Mountain Project is a dying beast and I hope that this cut in funding will help drive the final nail into its coffin.”

Others in Nevada’s Washington delegation expressed similar thoughts. “This is another battle we have won, but we still have a war to fight toward killing it once and for all,” said Representative John Porter, R-Nev. Democrat Representative Shelley Berkley said, “The White House is in a mad rush to move forward on the license for Yucca Mountain by next summer, regardless of the danger, and I hope this cut will slow their reckless drive.”

State of Nevada officials say the planned 77,000 tons of high-level spent nuclear fuel and other forms of highly hazardous waste to be stored at Yucca will pose threats to the health and safety of residents. DOE officials on the other hand, say their LSN package would show the repository could be operated safely.