DOE Attorneys Keep Yucca Mountain Licensing Process on Track

Despite the Obama administration’s position that Yucca Mountain is not a viable repository for nuclear waste, lawyers for the Department of Energy met a December filing deadline with their responses to questions Nevada’s attorneys raised with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

In November an internal DOE memo had surfaced indicating that license defense activities would end in December. Some hoped the DOE’s lawyers would fail to meet the deadline to file briefs, thereby defaulting in the case.

But Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allan Benson said that the funds appropriated by Congress this year would be used “to support the licensing process.”

A legal consultant for Nevada told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that lawyers for the state had argued that the installation of titanium “drip shields,” designed to prevent corrosion and damage, could not be postponed for 100 years.

Additionally, the DOE did not evaluate the possible increase of radioactive releases in the case the shields were absent, as it was directed to do. Nor did the DOE submit a detailed final design for the repository.

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