Senators warn plan could distract NRC from licensing reactors

Senators warn plan could distract NRC from licensing reactors

Washington (Platts)--14Sep2006

Senior Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
warned Thursday that New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici's plan to
authorize more than 30 interim storage sites for spent nuclear fuel could
distract the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from processing a wave of
applications for nuclear reactors.

It also would distract the Department of Energy from preparing an
application for permanent storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, they added.

Senator James Inhofe, the committee chairman, and Senator George
Voinovich, the chairman of the Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety
subcommittee, said they were further concerned that licensing requirements
arising from the Bush administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership will
strain NRC's resources.

Their comments came as Nuclear Energy Institute President Frank "Skip"
Bowman told the subcommittee that 12 utility companies plan to file 19
applications with NRC for 30 reactors.

"These provisions require a lot from NRC in a short time," Voinovich said
at a subcommittee hearing on the commission. "This committee has worked very
hard to give NRC the resources and reforms needed so that it can efficiently
review new reactor applications. But now I am afraid that these waste
proposals have the potential to move us backwards and could end the nuclear
renaissance before it begins."

As for DOE, the Ohio Republican said GNEP and the interim-storage
proposal, which Domenici included in the Senate fiscal 2007 energy and water
development appropriations bill, "could take the focus away from Yucca
Mountain, delaying or ending that important project."

Inhofe agreed. "We need to open Yucca Mountain as quickly as possible,"
the Oklahoma Republican said. "Though I find the interim storage option
intriguing, I am concerned about the impact on our resources of shifting the
debate from long-term storage to interim storage. I believe that this must be
fully debated on the Senate floor and not attached to an omnibus
appropriations bill."

Both Inhofe and Voinovich said they doubted that DOE could meet a
provision in the appropriations bill that would require the department to
submit applications for more than 30 interim storage sites within 300 days of
enactment of the legislation.

Similarly, they said NRC likely would be unable to review the
applications within 32 months, as stipulated in the funding bill.

Edward Sproat, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
Management, appeared to concur, telling the subcommittee that the
interim-storage requirement would be "very difficult to perform" and "highly
distracting" for his office as it attempts to meet a recent DOE commitment to
submit a license application for the Yucca Mountain repository to NRC by June
30, 2008.

Luis Reyes, NRC's executive director for operations, said the commission
has "neither the monetary resources nor the necessary employee resources" to
support the reviews of interim storage sites envisioned in the appropriations
bill. Reyes also called the bill's timetable for reviewing the applications
"very short and likely not achievable."

Reyes estimated that reviewing more than 30 applications for interim
storage would cost NRC $300 million and require it to hire more than 200
employees. The estimate for added funding is equivalent to 40% of the
commission's $742-million budget in fiscal 2006.

The fate of Domenici's proposal will be determined when the Senate and
House meet to reconcile their separate energy and water development bills or,
alternatively, negotiate an omnibus funding bill covering DOE and other
agencies. With time running out for enactment of legislation this year,
Congress is considered likely to combine funding for a number of agencies in
one bill.

NEI's Bowman told the subcommittee that the nuclear industry supports the
idea of interim storage while the government pursues the permanent repository
in Nevada, but would prefer that such storage be limited to "one or two" sites
where spent fuel recycling and reprocessing facilities also could be installed
at some point.

Domenici, who chairs both the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and
the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, said earlier
this month he intended to introduce a "Fix Yucca" bill, although the senator
acknowledged there was not enough time for the Senate to approve it this year.

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