Although it has yet to officially rematerialize, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing to review the Energy Department’s application to license the planned Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear-waste repository in Nevada.
The regulator announced this week it will spend some $110,000 on “information-gathering activities,” to include a virtual meeting of the commission’s Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel, which will gather input about resurrecting a voluminous database — the Licensing Support Network — containing roughly 4 million documents intended to support the adjudicatory hearing the NRC would be charged to conduct if DOE reactivates its Yucca license application.
“These next steps involve information-gathering activities related to the suspended adjudication on the application,” the NRC stated in a Tuesday press release. “These activities will enable efficient, informed decisions in support of executing any further appropriations of funds for the High-Level Waste Program.”
The virtual meeting is not scheduled yet, but an NRC spokesperson said Wednesday it would likely take place sometime in the fall.
Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as the sole repository for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. The George W. Bush administration in 2008 filed an application with the NRC to license the repository. The Barack Obama administration pulled the plug on that application in 2010, and the Donald Trump administration wants to resume the licensing process in fiscal 2018.
Congress is split about whether to let that happen. The House has approved a 2018 spending bill that would give DOE the $120 million the White House is seeking for Yucca licensing. The Senate’s 2018 energy spending bill, approved by the chamber’s Appropriations Committee last month, provides nothing for Yucca, but would allow DOE to move forward with at least one consolidated interim storage facility for spent fuel.
