Dec 14 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Keith Rogers Las Vegas Review-Journal


Department of Energy lawyers are forging ahead with their defense of a license application to build the nation's nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

They met a deadline last week for filing briefs on questions that Nevada's attorneys raised with a nuclear regulatory panel, which is tracking safety concerns about plans for turning the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into a burial site for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste.

The briefs were filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board despite the Obama administration's stance that Yucca Mountain is no longer an option for a repository. An internal DOE memo that surfaced last month also stated, "All license defense activities will be terminated in December 2009."

Nevada's top legal consultant, Marty Malsch, had hoped lawyers for the DOE would default by missing the deadline but was not surprised that didn't happen.

"As things now stand, they are pursuing the license application by defending their position in the briefs they filed," he said Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson confirmed that the Energy Department would use $197 million Congress appropriated this year for the pursuit of a license.

"Our mission is to support the licensing process, and that's what we're doing," Benson said.

Nevada also met the deadline by submitting a single brief that covered about 10 legal questions. Some of the state's arguments would obstruct the DOE's nuclear repository plans should the judges' panel rule in Nevada's favor.

"We argued that it is unlawful to postpone installment of the drip shields until 100 years," Malsch said.

He was referring to DOE's plan to cover metal waste containers with titanium shields to prevent corrosion and damage to the containers a century after they are stored.

"If we win on that, then they have to revise a major part of their license application," Malsch said.

He said the Department of Energy also is required to evaluate how radioactive releases would increase if there are no drip shields. It did not do so.

"If we win on that, we believe we would show the repository doesn't meet the standard" for radiation safety set by the Environmental Protection Agency, Malsch said.

Bruce Breslow, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects and the state's lead Yucca Mountain opponent, said another concern is that DOE failed to submit a detailed, final design for the repository as required by nuclear waste laws. Submitting an inadequate, preliminary design "would be like designing a nuclear reactor without the reactor in it," he said.

That is one of what now stands at 225 contentions filed by the state and approved by federal nuclear regulators from the Construction Authority Board.

The nuclear industry's lobbying arm, the Nuclear Energy Institute, has called for developing a new strategy for radioactive waste disposal. The spent fuel is stored at reactor sites across the country in pools and in dry casks above ground, a method that scientists expect will work for a century.

The parties have 30 days to file responses with the court. A hearing for oral arguments in the case is scheduled in Las Vegas in late January.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.

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