The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is suspending its search for sites in Nevada that could host hearings on the license application for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository until the agency knows whether it will again need such a facility.
Commissioners unanimously concurred with a staff recommendation to defer further work on siting the hearing space, but they rejected a proposal to spend $212,000 to improve the online database that contains documents related to the license adjudication.
The NRC in 2005 began leasing a facility near McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas that would host the adjudication after the regulator in 2008 received the Yucca Mountain license application from the Department of Energy. The annual cost of the lease was estimated at $440,000, plus $2.4 million to prepare the facility for the hearing itself, according to the Government Accountability Office. However, the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel in 2011 dismantled the facility after the Obama administration suspended the adjudication.
The Trump administration has sought to revive the licensing process, though it has not yet persuaded Congress to provide the necessary funding for the NRC or DOE. Nonetheless, the commission last year directed staff to look for potential venues in Nevada and whether a “virtual courtroom” could be set up at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., that would allow remote participation.
The agency would like to conduct hearings within the impacted state. However, the General Services Administration said the federal government does not presently own or lease facilities in the Nevada municipalities of Las Vegas, Reno, or Pahrump that would meet the NRC’s needs for hearing space. The GSA could look for available commercial space, but would prefer to do so within six to 12 months of the time the venue would be needed, given the “changeable nature of the commercial real estate market,” according to an Aug. 16 memo to the commission from Secretary of the Commission Annette Vietti-Cook.
Staff also identified two headquarters spaces that could be used for the hearing, linked via “virtual courtroom technology” to one or more satellite facilities in Nevada.
“Concerning the possible Nevada hearing facility, in light of the cost of undertaking the next step of instituting a search for available commercial space and the limited shelf life of the information produced, as well as the current uncertainty about the timing of any restart of the [high-level waste] adjudication, we recommend that further action be deferred until there is more certainty about the timing of the need for a Nevada-based facility,” Vietti-Cook wrote.
In notational votes taken from Aug. 23 to Oct. 11, the five commissioners approved that recommendation.
“[G]iven the limited ‘shelf life’ of information regarding available commercial retail space, I approve the recommendation that further action on possible hearing facilities be deferred until there is greater certainty about the timing of the need for such facilities,” Commissioner Annie Caputo wrote.
Caputo joined commission Chairman Kristine Svinicki and Commissioners Jeff Baran and David Wright in denying the request to use money from the NRC’s Nuclear Waste Fund balance to pay for enhancements to the Licensing Support Network (LSN) Library.
The LSN was a stand-alone database of nearly 3.7 million documents filed in the NRC’s licensing proceeding for Yucca Mountain. It was retired when the proceeding was suspended and moved into the NRC’s online documents database in 2016.
As the potential has grown for the adjudication to resume, the NRC and its LSN Advisory Review Panel (LSNARP) have considered options for reconstituting the Licensing Support Network. While that has yet to happen, a meeting on the matter in February addressed some concerns — primarily from Nevada state officials — about the current function of the LSN Library. Those included the system’s response time, screen size, and other usability issues.
Staff projected it would cost $212,000 to make nine enhancements recommended by a working group headed by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel and NRC Office of the Secretary. These included establishing a means for stopping a search in progress; developing an option for printing, exporting, or downloading search results; building a PDF preview option; and increasing the size of the text box for searches.
That amount would be nearly half of the $443,310 the agency had left from the Nuclear Waste Fund as of August. The fund is intended to pay for licensing and then construction of Yucca Mountain. The NRC has spent most of the $13.5 million it had on hand in August 2013 when a federal court ordered it to proceed with the licensing process; it will not get any more money unless it is appropriated by Congress.
Given that uncertainty, and other pressing needs such as potential litigation, the fund is best used elsewhere, commissioners largely agreed.
The NRC was among the defendants in the state of Texas’ 2017 lawsuit seeking to force the federal government to move ahead with the Yucca Mountain repository. That federal lawsuit was dismissed in June, but Nevada more recently has asked a federal judge to require that Commissioner Wright recuse himself from any adjudication of the Yucca Mountain license application.
“As the staff notes, the agency is involved in ongoing litigation, the costs of which are drawn from the agency’s limited remaining NWF resources,” Svinicki wrote. “The potential also exists for future litigation. In light of this uncertainty and the question of whether improvements made now to the LSN interface would require further modification in the future, our fiduciary duty can reasonably be cabined to preserving the remaining funds for litigation support.”
Commissioner Stephen Burns was the sole supporter for spending the money on the improvements. He did not provide reasoning for his position in a Sept. 19 response sheet.
