There is no need to rebuild the database of documents for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of the license application for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, according to the lobbying body for the nuclear industry.
The Nuclear Energy Institute earlier this month threw its weight behind keeping the Licensing Support Network (LSN) within the NRC’s online documents system, with a fully automated means of adding, revising, or deleting documents.
That option “offers access to both existing and new documentary material to both adjudication participants and the public at the lowest cost, shortest implementation timeframe, and lowest risk score,” Rod McCullum, senior director for fuel and decommissioning at NEI, wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to Andrew Bates, chairman of the Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel (LSNARP).
The Licensing Support Network was a searchable online system for evidentiary documents in the NRC adjudication of the Department of Energy license application to build an underground repository at Yucca for diposal of spent reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The NRC closed the system in 2011 after the Obama administration suspended licensing. At the time the system held nearly 3.7 million documents, which have been placed in a LSN Library within the NRC’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
With the Trump administration looking to restart Yucca licensing, the agency in December issued a staff report offering four options to reconstitute the Licensing Support Network: keeping the existing system in ADAMS and sharing additional documents by means such as mail or email; using the searchable ADAMS LSN Library; moving the library to the Cloud; and rebuilding the network.
The Nuclear Energy Institute and the other 19 LSNARP members had until Feb. 13 to offer thoughts or new proposals in response to the NRC staff report.
Members of the LSN Advisory Review Panel include one city and nine counties in Nevada, one California County, the state of Nevada, the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, four Native American organizations, NRC staff, DOE, and NEI.
The only other response by the deadline appeared to come from the state of Nevada, which strenuously objects to housing radioactive waste from other states. In a Feb. 6 letter to Bates, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Robert Halstead did not offer a proposal, saying instead the matter could be discussed at an upcoming LSNARP meeting.
In a Thursday telephone interview, Halstead said his agency is closely evaluating the options put forward by the NRC and considering some of its own. He and three staffers will travel to NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., for the Feb. 27-28 meeting: “We’re taking it very seriously.”
The meeting will include an update on the status of the NRC adjudication of the Yucca Mountain licensing, along with discussions of all four options laid out in the NRC report, according to the official agenda.
In a Feb. 20 letter to Halstead, Bates said no LSNARP members offered notification of plans to present a system reconstitution option that was “substantially different” from those in the NRC report.
Halstead said the meeting should not be a forum for the NRC to pressure LSNARP members to pick one of the options, but rather should establish a process for selection. It is crucial to build a system that provides for an orderly licensing proceeding, according to Halstead.
“Our position is there’s plenty of time do this right,” he said.
The NRC has just over $500,000 remaining in its available Nuclear Waste Fund balance to fund licensing proceedings for Yucca Mountain. Actual adjudication would be dependent upon new funding from Capitol Hill. The agency requested $30 million for the current 2018 budget year and $47 million for fiscal 2019 to pay for the work. Congress has yet to approve a full fiscal 2018 budget, leaving the NRC with no new Yucca money, and has not issued its own appropriations bills for 2019.
