The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its final supplement to the Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain environmental impact statement (EIS) late Thursday, finding the impact to groundwater from any potential spent nuclear fuel leaks and high-level nuclear waste at the planned nuclear waste repository in Nevada would be “small.”
DOE submitted its final EIS in 2002, and its construction application in 2008, when NRC found that the EIS did not adequately characterize groundwater impacts. The department ultimately deferred to NRC on the supplement, and under the Obama administration canceled the project.
Thursday’s 301-page supplement analyzed potential contaminant releases from the repository that could be transported through the volcanic-alluvial aquifer in Fortymile Wash, the Amargosa Desert, and the Furnace Creek/Middle Basin area of Death Valley.
The commission, which released a draft supplement in August 2015, found in the final report that the peak estimated annual individual radiological dose over a 1-million-year period at any of the evaluated locations would be 1.3 millirems. NRC staff estimates that normal background radiation registers at 300 millirems per year.
“Based on conservative assumptions about the potential for health effects from exposure to low doses of radiation, the NRC staff expects that the estimated radiation dose would contribute only a negligible increase in the risk of cancer or severe hereditary effects in the potentially exposed population,” the supplement reads. “Impacts to other resources at all of the affected environments beyond the postclosure compliance location from radiological and nonradiological material from the repository would also be SMALL.”
The House energy and water spending for fiscal 2017 calls for $170 million to carry out Yucca Mountain licensing activities, while the Senate version is absent any Yucca funding, instead proposing $61 million to fund DOE’s consent-based siting effort for nuclear waste storage. The House version rejects appropriations for consent-based siting.
In a March letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, House GOP lawmakers urged DOE to restart plans for the Yucca Mountain repository. Penned by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and panel member John Shimkus (R-Ill.), the letter came two weeks after the pair requested that the Government Accountability Office determine what federal resources are available for the NRC license review at Yucca.
According to the latest NRC numbers, the agency has about $1.4 million in remaining unobligated funds from the Nuclear Waste Fund, which represents funding left for license application review of the national repository. NRC estimates that it would cost $330 million to finish the license process, which has been suspended.
NRC received more than 1,200 comments during the 91-day public comments period for the draft supplement. The final supplement also analyzed impacts on minority and low-income populations in the Amargosa Valley and Death Valley National Park areas, concluding that these groups would not be affected any differently from the general population.
