The U.S. Energy Department has officially supported keeping millions of documents related to licensing of its planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., in their current home in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s public electronic records database.
Other parties, though, said this month more consideration is necessary before a final decision is made.
The Licensing Support Network (LSN) was closed in 2011 after the Obama administration halted the licensing proceeding for the waste disposal site, and roughly 3.7 million documents were eventually shifted to the NRC’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
With the Trump administration striving to revive Yucca Mountain, the NRC has been reviewing options for a means to give parties access to existing and new documents in the agency’s potentially resumed adjudication of the DOE license application.
NRC staff in December published a report providing four options for reconstituting the system: leaving current documents in ADAMS and sharing new documents by mail or other “traditional discovery” routes; employing the searchable ADAMS LSN Library for access to all documents; placing the library in the Cloud; and completely rebuilding the network. Members of the LSN Advisory Review Panel (LSNARP) met in late February to discuss the options.
“Choosing from the reconstitution options identified in the Information Paper, the Department most strongly supports the reconstitution option identified as ‘Option 2,’” Levi McAllister, a partner at the law firm Morgan Lewis, which is representing DOE in the matter, said in a March 23 letter to LSNARP Chairman Andrew Bates.
In a separate March 23 letter, the Nuclear Energy Institute reaffirmed its support for that option, specifically using the NRC’s Electronic Information Exchange to file documents.
Representatives from the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and Eureka County, Nev., said in their own letters that before making a final decision the panel needed several more meetings and possible guidance from a group of technical experts.
The question could be moot if Congress refuses to provide DOE or the NRC any funding for Yucca Mountain – as it did in the current fiscal year.
