By KEITH ROGERS -- Las Vegas Review Journal
The Yucca Mountain Project has survived Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto, but the Energy Department must clear another procedural test -- and another challenge from Nevada -- before it can begin building the nuclear waste repository.
The department is required to submit a construction license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Energy officials say the detailed application, which must include design specifications and a construction schedule, will be ready no sooner than December 2004.
Nevada officials, however, say the Energy Department has only three months to put the documents together, and federal legislation seems to back them up.
"The secretary shall submit to the commission an application for a construction authorization for a repository at such site no later than 90 days after the date on which the recommendation of the site designation is effective," the Nuclear Waste Policy Act states.
Tuesday's Senate vote to override Guinn's veto made the site designation official. Just hours after the Senate vote, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis restated Secretary Spencer Abraham's promise that only a "full and complete application" will be submitted to the NRC, even if it takes through 2004 to prepare one.
"We don't see any significant issue will arise from the 90 days," Davis said. "The fact of the matter is we've already missed one deadline, in 1998, to accept the waste."
Bob Loux, Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency chief, said his office is investigating how to force the Energy Department to adhere to the required 90-day period for submitting a substantially complete license application.
"They seem to believe the element of the law they don't like, they don't have to obey," he said. "The laws we have to live with every day they believe apply selectively to them. In essence, they think they're above the law."
Jeff Ciocco, senior project manager for the NRC's High-Level Radioactive Waste Branch, says the Energy Department is obligated to meet the 90-day application filing requirement.
"The NRC isn't required to take any action if DOE doesn't submit a license application within 90 days," he said in a telephone interview.
He added that the Energy Department must make documents supporting the application available electronically to the NRC six months prior to submittal.
The application must include general information about Yucca Mountain; a schedule for construction of the repository and receipt of the waste; where the waste will be placed within the repository's maze of tunnels; and a safety analysis that describes the repository's dimensions, material properties and specifications.
Nevada officials say the application should include a detailed design that shows how the tunnels will be spaced and how hot or cold the repository will become as the waste decays.
Once the construction license application is submitted, the NRC could begin a licensing review that would take several years to complete.
If the NRC determines the application is incomplete, it will be sent back to the Energy Department for correc- tions.
"What normally happens, if we have questions ... then we ask the applicant to answer those questions. There might be more than one round," NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said.
NRC staff can reject the application if it demonstrates that both below-ground and above-ground operations cannot be conducted safely.
If the application is ruled complete, it will be accepted by entering it into a docket with a notice that gives the public, including Nevada officials, a chance to intervene in a hearing process.
Gagner said the hearing will include a number of sessions and will be held in Nevada. It will be "very extensive," she said, although she could not specify how much money the NRC plans to spend to conduct the sessions.
A three-member licensing board, appointed by the NRC's Atomic Safety License Board Panel, decides whether to recommend construction to the five-member NRC.
The licensing board can hold all issues to the scrutiny of a public hearing, including those pertaining to the suitability of Yucca Mountain, despite Tuesday's Senate vote authorizing the site.
Another issue of contention for the state is the length of time the repository would be required to contain the waste. Some of the nuclear materials that would be stored inside Yucca Mountain won't reach their peak dosages for 300,000 to 800,000 years, or longer in some cases. Yet the repository would be required to safely contain the highly radioactive wastes for only 10,000 years.
Other issues Nevada officials are concerned about include the size and shape of a proposed 11-mile buffer zone around the mountain. The Energy Department says radioactive materials that leak from the site would be diluted in the zone's groundwater.
The buffer zone, according to state officials, contradicts the original intent of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which calls for the mountain's natural geology to contain the waste and all radioactivity.
If the NRC denies the license, the Energy Department can submit another application for review, starting the cycle over again. There is no limit to how many times the Energy Department can submit new applications, Gagner said.
Eventually, the Energy Department will need NRC approval to receive spent fuel from commercial power reactor operators and load it into the tunnels of the Yucca Mountain repository.
The Energy Department also will need a license modification to close the repository once it has been filled with the highly radioactive used fuel assemblies.
The second licensing phase will come as construction of the repository nears completion. At that time, just prior to 2010 under the current schedule, the Department of Energy must submit an application for a license to receive up to 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste, most of which is spent fuel from commercial power reactors across the nation.
If that license is granted, the Energy Department can begin loading the canisters of spent fuel into the repository's tunnels.
In the third licensing phase, after the repository has been filled with waste containers, estimated to be sometime after 2034, the Department of Energy can apply for a license amendment to decommission and close the repository.