COURT FILING CALLS FOR NRC TO RESUME YUCCA LICENSING WITHIN 30 DAYS

Challengers to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s close out of the Yucca Mountain licensing process are calling for the court to compel the agency to start up its review of the repository within 30 days of a court order. The legal brief came after the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit released an expedited schedule last month in a petition to force the NRC to act. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the NRC to release its findings on the repository within three years of the application’s submission, a deadline that passed earlier this year. However, the agency closed out its review of the Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain license application this fall before releasing any regulatory conclusions, citing budgetary concerns. Petitioners argue that “it is unreasonable for the NRC to spend available money to shut down a project the law requires it to complete, and then claim that it may stop complying with the law because it might not get enough money from Congress to pursue the project in the future.”