Nevada Readies Defense
Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
11/21/2014
While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has played a significant role in blocking the Yucca Mountain repository intended for his home state from moving forward, cracks are beginning to appear within his own Senate leadership team over the direction of the project. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Senate’s fourth ranking Democrat, this week urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to “thoroughly consider” the Yucca Mountain licensing review. In a letter addressed to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane, the Senate Majority Conference Secretary inquired to the status of the review, as well as to the need for additional funding to complete the review. “With countless work hours to date spent by the NRC on the licensing application and billions of dollars spent at the Hanford Nuclear reservation and at nuclear waste sites across the country in efforts to treat and package nuclear waste that would be sent to Yucca Mountain, it is imperative that the Yucca mountain licensing application is thoroughly considered by the NRC,” Murray wrote. “I urge the NRC to continue its work to complete the SER and respectfully request a written response to my questions relating to the licensing process.”
In its latest update to Congress on the licensing review, the NRC maintained it will have enough funding to complete the Safety Evaluation Reports, which look at the overall safety case of the project, within its January 2015 self-imposed deadline. The Commission has also directed the staff to be prepared to supplement the Environmental Impact Statement if sufficient funds remain after completion of the SER. The funds, however, would not sufficiently cover the adjudication process needed to discuss contentions brought forth by stakeholders. Regardless of funding, the adjudication process will have it owns degree of difficulty, especially with the Department of Energy unwilling to defend its application. According to NRC spokesman David McIntyre, the NRC will respond to Sen. Murray in due time.
Nevada Report Highlights Yucca’s Re-emergence
Meanwhile, a report from the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, approved for release this week, calls for a renewed focus from the state in its fight against the Yucca Mountain licensing, especially in the face of what the report alleges as government collusion between the NRC and DOE to push the project forward. The Commission’s report, which is statutorily required every two years, comes at a time when Yucca supporters have a renewed vigor due to upcoming changes in Senate control and the recent findings of the NRC’s Volume Three Safety Evaluation Report, which found that the design would meet public safety standards for a million years post-closure.
The report characterizes the revitalized Yucca Mountain project and its threat to Nevada in hopes of maintaining funding for the state’s defense against the project. “It is imperative for the Governor and Legislature to assure that the Attorney General and the Agency for Nuclear Projects have the funds and resources needed to protect the State in this critically important licensing proceeding,” Commission Chairman Richard Bryan said in the draft report. The official report is scheduled for release next week. “No one else is going to look out for Nevada’s interests if we fail to do it ourselves,” Bryan said. Nevada has maintained a long-time opposition to the location for nation’s high-level waste. Most recently, the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee approved a $1.4 million funding request from the Attorney General’s office and the Agency for Nuclear Projects to combat the results of the NRC’s SER.
The Agency for Nuclear Projects has already taken aim at the Volume Three conclusions by calling into doubt what it deems circumstantial findings, according to Executive Director Robert Halstead. “I interpret [their conclusion] as the NRC staff saying in Vol. 3: If DOE builds the repository the way they say they will build it (including the technically difficult installation of thousands of titanium drip shields, one over each waste package, costing perhaps $5-15 billion); and if we overlook the deficiencies in the DOE EIS groundwater analysis regarding impacts beyond the site boundaries (to be addressed later in an EIS supplement prepared by NRC staff); and if all of DOE’s data are accurate and DOE’s calculations are correct; and if our limited spot checks on DOE’s calculations (the TSPA) are correct; and if there are no unidentified or unexpected features, events, and processes (FEPs) that are significant to safety; if there are no significant human errors or intentional human-initiated events, then we (the NRC staff) believe with reasonable expectation that the contamination of groundwater that will result from the release of radionuclides from the repository will not cause humans to receive radiation doses in excess of the regulatory limits established by the EPA,” Halstead said in an email to RW Monitor this week. “Nevada’s review of the SER will be looking at the NRC staff findings and conclusions, including all of those ifs, and the adequacy of the EPA radiation protection standards, which are still a matter of unresolved litigation.”
NRC Staff Biased?
The report also features a section that aims to discredit the NRC’s safety review as tainted due to the NRC’s alleged close relationship with DOE. “Nevada certainly cannot rely on the NRC or the NRC’s staff to impartially and objectively evaluate DOE’s license application and its wildly optimistic conclusions regarding the site’s suitability and safety,” Bryan said in the draft report. The report goes on to list a series of examples of alleged inappropriate DOE/NRC interactions regarding the license application preparation, including what the report describes as secret meetings without a Nevada representative present and pressure the agencies applied on the Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation health standard.
According to the report, the alleged bias by the NRC Staff discredits its findings in the SER. “As such, the fact that NRC staff – and the NRC as an agency – has a history of bias and inappropriately close relationships with DOE on the Yucca Mountain project bears directly on the credibility of any staff findings and views expressed in the SER,” the report said. “Without a full airing of Nevada’s contentions, the opportunity to challenge and contest the NRC’s staff’s conclusions and the ability to cross examine staff in the adjudicatory proceeding, the SER must necessarily be seen as a flawed and significantly compromised document that must be judged in the context of the historical relationship of NRC staff with its DOE counterparts.”
The NRC, for its part, maintained that the SER is only a part of the licensing process. “The Nevada document repeats some old claims and appears to contain no new information,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said this week. “The NRC has clearly and repeatedly stated that the Safety Evaluation Report now being completed, including the recently published Volume 3, is only part of a comprehensive licensing review, and that an NRC decision on whether to authorize construction of a repository could come only after completion of the adjudication of the nearly 300 contentions raised by Nevada and others, supplementation of the Environmental Impact Statement, and a thorough review of the staff’s work and the adjudication by the Commission.”
