Washington (Platts)--30May2008

The US Department of Energy is expected to send a waste repository
license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, over two
decades after the submission would have had to been made for DOE meet its
original target of having a facility operational by January 31, 1998.

An official with the DOE repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada,
confirmed the Tuesday submission, noting it would be sent to NRC for review 27
days before the program's self-imposed June 30 deadline.

DOE has spent 20 years and more than $10 billion studying the desert site
roughly 90 miles outside Las Vegas, the state's population center, according
to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

If licensed by NRC, tunnels constructed deep inside Yucca Mountain will
be used to dispose of 70,000 metric tons of utility spent fuel and defense
high-level waste.

The amount of waste disposed of there will climb higher if Congress lifts
a statutory 70,000 mt cap as DOE and the nuclear power industry are expected
to push for. Both say the site is capable of safely handling much more waste.

Under contracts DOE signed with nuclear utilities in 1983, it was
supposed to begin disposing of their spent fuel by January 31, 1998.

DOE's latest target date for the start of repository operations -- 2017
-- officially fell by the wayside late in 2007 when Congress slashed the
program's fiscal 2008 budget by 21%.

DOE waste program director Edward Sproat now refuses to project when a
facility might be ready, saying that date cannot be determined until Congress
fixes the program's funding mechanism, though some projections have pushed
that date out to the mid-2020s.

The DOE program relies on budget allocations from Congress even though
most of its funding comes from a federal trust fund lawmakers set up in 1983
to bankroll the project.

Nevada, which has spent decades trying to kill the Yucca Mountain
project, already has told an NRC advisory board it will file at least 650
contentions opposing the facility.

The number is nearly five times the previous record of 138 contentions
filed in the Private Fuel Storage licensing proceeding.

The controversial Yucca Mountain project is the first repository planned
above a water table and will be required by federal regulations, as drafted by
the Environmental Protection Agency, to limit radiation releases for 1 million
years.

EPA, however, has not yet promulgated the standard, which has lingered
in interagency review for more than a year. EPA initially planned to issue the
radiation protection standard in late 2006.

NRC, whose own repository licensing requirements must reflect the EPA
standard, can consider the DOE application before an EPA standard is in place.
The EPA standard, however, must be issued before NRC can license the facility.

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com