The Department of Energy will not complete the supplemental environmental impact statement that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requested be completed to support its review of the Yucca Mountain licensing, although DOE will give NRC all the technical information it has on the EIS and suggested the NRC prepare the report itself. DOE had indicated previously that it would complete the supplemental EIS, but according to a letter from late last week, signed by William Boyle, director of the Office of Used Fuel Nuclear Fuel Disposition Research and Development, this does not appear to be the case anymore. DOE is arguing that since it submitted a groundwater EIS in 2008, it does not have to update the EIS to fulfill its Nuclear Waste Policy Act legal obligations. “The Department respectfully notes, however, that the NRC is the ultimate adjudicator in this proceeding, and that the NRC, rather than the Department, must eventually determine whether any groundwater analysis is ‘sufficient,’ and whether adoption of the Department’s environmental review, as supplemented, is ‘practicable,” Boyle wrote. “Accordingly, the Department respectfully submits that it will provide to the NRC an updated version of the report it provided to the NRC on July 30, 2009, titled, Analysis of Postclosure Groundwater Impacts for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada. This updated analysis will, in the view of Department staff, provide the NRC with substantially all of the technical information necessary to inform a draft EIS.”
The NRC issued an Order in November setting forth a pathway to re-start the Yucca Mountain licensing review, including the request for a supplemental EIS from DOE on groundwater issues to satisfy requirements set forth in the National Environmental Policy Act. DOE had initially planned to move forward with the NRC’s request for the study. Assistant Energy Secretary for Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons told House lawmakers in January that the Department had taken steps to prepare the EIS, although it appears DOE will not complete the EIS.
