Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
4/11/2014
Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) accused the Department of Energy this week of attempting to drain the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Nuclear Waste Fund appropriations so it cannot complete the Yucca Mountain Safety Evaluation Reports. During a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing, Johnson noted DOE’s change of heart towards completing the supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on groundwater issues requested by the NRC in an order from last year as evidence to DOE’s plan. “From where we are sitting, it seems like there is an orchestrated campaign by [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and the Administration to run the funding dry at NRC so it cannot complete the Safety Evaluation Report,” Johnson said. “This is happening because once that Safety Evaluation Report comes out saying that Yucca Mountain is safe for a million years, then opposition by Sen. Reid will be made mute, and there will be no choice but to move forward with Yucca.” Reid has been a long time opponent to Yucca Mountain, and he played a major role in the shuttering of the site in 2010.
Moniz denied that any type of influence guided DOE’s decision against completing the supplemental EIS. “I can flatly state there was no consideration of that type in that decision about [NRC] completing that, because we are doing the lift in terms of the update of all the technical information,” Moniz said. The Secretary argued that in discussions within DOE and with NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane it was determined that NRC would be in a better position to complete the EIS. “As the adjudicator, we felt it was better if they formally ran the process, but we fully support the information requirements, and in fact, we were in the public hearing on Monday presenting the groundwater technical process,” Moniz said. He also argued that the completion of this step was not “resource intensive” because DOE would be doing the most difficult portion by updating the technical information.
DOE Set to Deliver Yucca Info to NRC ‘As Early As the End of April’
Meanwhile, DOE plans to deliver the technical report containing information needed to complete the Yucca Mountain groundwater supplemental EIS to the NRC “as early as the end of April,” said William Boyle, DOE’s director of the Office of Used Nuclear Fuel Disposition R&D, during an NRC public meeting this week. The NRC held the meeting to better understand what DOE would be submitting after it said in a letter in late February that it would not complete the supplemental EIS that NRC had requested to support the Yucca Mountain licensing review. According to Boyle, DOE’s technical report will feature most of the same information that originally appeared in its 2009 report. “The physical world for the most part has not changed in that part of Southern Nevada,” Boyle said. “It’s still in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada [mountains]. It’s still a desert, and so the two reports, the one from 2009 and 2014, will look the same.”
It remains unclear whether the NRC will be able to complete the supplemental EIS in DOE’s stead. The NRC staff at the meeting did not say if the Commission would complete the supplemental EIS or what it would cost to complete it, because the Commission has not yet issued a new direction forward. The NRC issued an order in November setting forth a pathway to re-start the Yucca Mountain licensing review, including the request for a supplemental EIS from DOE on groundwater issues to satisfy requirements set forth in the National Environmental Policy Act. DOE had initially planned to move forward with the NRC’s request for the study, but in February, DOE argued that since it submitted a groundwater EIS in 2008, it did not have to update the EIS to fulfill its Nuclear Waste Policy Act legal obligations.
LSN Almost Complete
Also related to the completion of the Commission’s Yucca order, the NRC staff has almost completed uploading the Licensing Support Network document collection into a non-public ADAMS library, according to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane’s monthly update to Congress on NRC Nuclear Waste Fund expenditures. “The effort to load the LSN document collection into a nonpublic ADAMS library, along with related project tasks, is now expected to be completed ahead of schedule in mid-April 2014, barring any unforeseen technical or process issues,” Macfarlane said. “Further, consistent with the January 24, 2014, Staff Requirements Memorandum (SRM) issued by the Commission, staff is collecting additional data on three months of actual expenditures on completing and issuing the SER and EIS. If actual costs are consistent with initial estimates, the January 24, 2014, SRM directs that an appropriate portion of the $2.2 million in recently deobligated Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) funds should be allocated to activities necessary to make the LSN documents publicly available.”
Macfarlane also updated Congress on the estimated costs associated with other aspects of the licensing review currently in process by the NRC staff. The numbers reported by the NRC staff back in September 2013 estimating the cost of completing the remaining Safety Evaluation Reports volumes at $8.3 million and the cost of completing the loading of the LSN document collection at $700,000 still remain valid, Macfarlane said. Macfarlane also indicated that other fees have been added to the project. “In addition, staff estimates that related activities such as the cost of work performed by NRC attorneys on Federal court litigation following the issuance of the mandamus order, stakeholder outreach, and other support efforts will require approximately $750,000 over the course of the project,” Macfarlane said. This would bring the estimated total expenditures for the licensing review to approximately $10.4 million. The NRC currently has approximately $12.4 million in unexpended funds appropriated to the Yucca Mountain licensing review.
