Jul 2 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Laura Lundquist The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho



Idaho officials are cheering news that a bid to pull the plug on a proposed national nuclear waste dump has stalled, concerned that eliminating the site could delay removal of nuclear waste from the state.

A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission legal panel on Tuesday denied a request by the U.S. Department of Energy to withdraw its application for the Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada.

The three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board said there's no evidence the site is unsafe and that Congress, not Energy Secretary Steven Chu, has the authority to yank the application.

The request now goes before the full NRC. But Idaho's congressional delegation has already joined those from Washington and South Carolina in supporting the panel's ruling.

 U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R- Idaho, said in a press release that Chu could not withdraw the application without the approval of Congress because Congress had selected and approved the site.

Nevada officials, led by Robert Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, have fought the project for 30 years, including filing challenges to the license application. Their main concerns include potential transportation accidents and radiation emissions from Yucca Mountain. The site experiences earthquakes, which violates the repository siting criteria of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But Simpson maintained that the site "is demonstrated to be a safe, suitable repository for our nation's spent nuclear fuel and defense waste."

The Bush administration submitted the license application in June 2008 and hoped to have the repository operating by 2020. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, questioned Chu during a March Senate budget hearing about the time it would take to develop alternatives.

"We can move in a way that won't take as long as the previous experience," Chu said, according to a video of the hearing posted online.

Crapo was concerned because the DOE has a binding agreement with Idaho to remove all spent nuclear fuel from the state by January 2035. While Idaho generates some fuel, it also accepts and stores waste from other states. According to the 1995 settlement agreement, the DOE can store up to 55 metric tons in Idaho at any one time. Susan Burke of the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said Idaho is about halfway to that limit, which itself is a fraction of the 77,000-metric-ton storage capacity of Yucca Mountain.

No spent fuel has been sent out of state yet; that awaits a national repository. Erik Simpson of CH2M-WG Idaho said the Idaho Cleanup Project has shipped some low-radiation waste to Carlsbad, N.M., but that site cannot accept spent fuel and other high-level radiation waste. So, it remains in storage in Idaho.

Nicole Stricker of the Idaho National Laboratory said any delay is not a safety concern.

"The safety issues with storing spent fuel are not a mystery," Stricker said.

If any spent fuel remains in Idaho after the 2035 deadline, Burke said the DOE will pay the state a penalty of $60,000 a day.

After making campaign promises to shut the site down, President Barack Obama began cutting Yucca Mountain funds out of the national budget in 2009. The DOE then filed a request with the NRC to revoke Yucca's license application on March 3. The move was greeted by cheers from environmental groups and Nevada officials, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

But Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican and ranking member of the Senate Energy Subcommittee, supported the panel's stand, saying the president's decision to pull the application was "purely a political one."

Chu established the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future in January to investigate nuclear storage options and told Crapo he anticipated a report by the end of the year. But Jennifer Lee of the DOE said the commission is not a siting commission and wouldn't comment on site alternatives. Before choosing Yucca Mountain, Congress considered sites in Texas and Hanford, Wash. South Carolina has a weapons storage site at Savannah River.

(c) 2010, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services  To subscribe or visit go to:  www.mcclatchy.com/