IN ENGLISH
---------------
Court Ruling Adds To Setbacks For Yucca Mountain Application
A US court has turned down a request to reconsider its recent decision on the
compliance standard for the planned used fuel repository at Yucca Mountain in the state
of Nevada.
The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused without comment a request
by the US Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to reconsider a decision made in July on the
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) compliance standard for Yucca Mountain [see News
in Brief No. 24, 24th August 2004 and Feature No. 5, 4th August 2004].
In its 9th July ruling, the court said that EPA’s standard improperly deviated from a
recommendation by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that the compliance period
during which the repository design must be able to limit the release of radionuclides within
several kilometres of the site should encompass a period beyond 10,000 years.
In a separate decision announced on 31st August, a pre-licensing hearing board of the Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) of the country’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
unanimously ruled that the electronic database required for the Department of Energy’s (DOE)
licence application was seriously flawed. The decision effectively “stopped the clock” on the
licence application process.
By law, the DOE must post the database on NRC’s web-based Licensing Support Network
(LSN) six months before the NRC can docket (formally register) the licence application.
Docketing officially starts the licensing process and the LSN submission must contain virtually
all submissions on which the DOE intends to base its application. The three-member ASLB
panel ruled that the submission to the LSN was not complete. The NRC said it plans to make
the entire decision available on its website (http://hlwehd.nrc.gov/Public_HLW_EHD/home.asp).
A link to the decision has already been posted on the website of a US environmental group,
Public Citizen (www.citizen.org/pressroom). Click on the Yucca Mountain press release and the
link is currently available at the end of that document.
The ASLB’s decision was based on a 12th July motion filed by the state of Nevada, which made
a number of accusations against the DOE including that it failed to make all of its documentary
material available.
The DOE responded to the charges on 22nd July, “asserting that its certification and
documentary production fully complied with the regulations”, but the ASLB said DOE’s
arguments were “without merit”. The ASLB concluded: “That because of the incompleteness of
its (DOE’s) document review and production, the many years in which DOE has had to gather
and produce its documents, and the fact that the date of production was effectively within DOE’s
control, DOE’s document production on 30th June 2004 did not satisfy its obligation to make, in
good faith, all of its documentary material available (in line with federal regulations).”
The board pointed out that in its certification, DOE stated it had made available 2,090,474
documents. Of these, approximately half were available with full text and headlines, and the
other half were only headlines, with no text. Only about 500,000 documents had actually been
placed on the official LSN server; the rest were available only on DOE’s own web site. The
board also found that a large number of documents were missing from both web sites.
Court Ruling Adds To Setbacks For Yucca Mountain Application
The DOE has not yet publicly responded to the ASLB ruling.
NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner told NucNet that the DOE has 10 days to appeal the ASLB
ruling to the NRC, or the NRC commissioners could decide to review the decision independently
of an appeal. (Only three members currently are sitting on the five-member Commission that
heads the NRC. These three commissioners will be the ones to consider any appeal.
The commissioners will decide whether they want to review the decision and how they want to
do it, said Ms Gagner. They could refuse to consider an appeal (leaving the ASLB decision in
place); they could review the decision based on the material presented to the ASLB, or they
could call for additional information from the DOE, the state of Nevada, or others. If they review
the ASLB decision, the commissioners are not required to decide by a specific time.
The NEI’s director of media relations, Steve Kerekes, told NucNet that the ASLB decision
“should have no adverse effect on the current schedule for submitting a licence application by
the end of the year”. He said the public will still “have at least six months to review all
documents, since the licence application wouldn’t be docketed for at least six months” after
DOE’s LSN submission is certified.
However, Steve Frishman of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects disagreed, saying that the
regulations are clear in stipulating that DOE is required to make its LSN database available “no
later than six months in advance of submitting its licence application”.
The NRC is headed by five commissioners appointed by the US president and confirmed by the
Senate for five-year terms. One of them is designated by the president to be the chairman and
official spokesman of the Commission. Only three commissioners, including the chairman, are
sitting at present.
The ASLB conducts hearings for the Commission and performs other regulatory functions as
authorised by the Commission. ASLB comprises a chief administrative judge (chairman), three
associate chief administrative judges, and a varying number of other administrative law judges
(15 at present) who serve on the three-member ASLB panels to decide licensing and other
issues. The ASLB panel on LSN certification was chaired by associate chief judge Thomas
Moore, and included judges Alex Karlin and Alan Rosenthal.
Sources: U.S. correspondent NucNet Thecla Fabian / ASLB / NRC / AS /
Various Editor: John Shepherd
0 comments:
Post a Comment