DOE Moving To Pull Yucca License Application—Sources

December 2, 2009, The Energy Daily/BY JEFF BEATTIE

Sources say the Energy Department may move as early as Friday or Monday to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application currently before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a move that would appear to permanently bury the project.

Sources say DOE may submit a “motion to withdraw” the license application and announce the move at about the same time it names a long-awaited blue-ribbon panel to explore alternative plans for managing the nation’s high-level nuclear waste.

By announcing the expert panel in conjunction with withdrawing the Yucca license application, sources speculate, DOE could say it is still meeting its legal obligations to pursue solutions to the nation’s radioactive waste problem even while ending work on Yucca, which has been the planned disposal repository for U.S nuclear waste for more than 20 years.

The Obama administration has said for months that the Yucca Mountain repository is not a safe option for managing U.S. waste and spent fuel, although most observers think the decision fulfills a political promise Obama made to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) when Obama was running for president. Reid has long opposed Yucca, which is located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Yanking the license application would go beyond DOE plans detailed in an agency memo disclosed by The Energy Daily November 9. The memo called for DOE to stop answering NRC’s questions about the license application, effectively leaving it in regulatory limbo.

The rumored plan to pull the Yucca license application could not be confirmed Tuesday. DOE officials did not respond to an email Tuesday seeking comment on the rumor.

Withdrawing the NRC license application would be a significant because it would appear to end any prospect that the project might survive. DOE, under the Bush administration, submitted the massive application in July 2008.

However, yanking the application could provoke critics who might be considering suing DOE over its ending of the Yucca project.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act generally directs DOE to pursue development of Yucca or an alternative, and sources speculate the nuclear industry, or officials from states where waste is stockpiled, may consider suing on those grounds.

DOE may be betting that the blue-ribbon commission could deflect any such legal attacks, sources say, and bolster its argument that it is genuinely seeking an alternative to Yucca.

The Energy Daily reported last week that the administration plans to name former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton (D) and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft as co-chairs of the panel.

In another potential legal headache for DOE, other sources say that if DOE withdraws the Yucca Mountain license application, it will have an increasingly difficult time justifying the continued collection of fees from ratepayers for the so-called Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF).

The NWF is legally intended for use in developing a national spent fuel repository, but lawmakers have routinely used the money for other purposes, to the ire of nuclear utilities and state utility commissioners.

Both groups have increased calls for DOE to halt collection of the fees since the administration announced plans to end the Yucca project earlier this year, arguing it is unjustifiable to continue collecting money for a project that it was ending.