For your information and the action of your home organizations.

            Jane

            Las Vegas

Sign-on letter to stop abuse of Yucca Mountain licensing process

November 3, 2008

Dear Friends,

Below is a letter we intend to send in mid-November to the NRC Commissioners and relevant members of Congress. It describes some of the many problems associated with the Department of Energy’s application to the NRC for licensing of the proposed Yucca Mountain , Nevada , radioactive waste dump, and particularly the difficulties this process has placed on potential intervenors and everyone interested in this issue.

The license application itself is massive, and incomplete. New information submitted by the DOE since their initial application already has changed that application. Yet the NRC is plowing along with the process, and sticking with its deadlines, as if it weren’t already a complete mockery of public participation and fairness. We hope you’ll sign onto this letter by November 15, 2008.

To sign on your organization, send your name, organization name, city and state to nirsnet@nirs.org. Individual sign-ons are also welcome to the same address.

Thanks for all you do!

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Chairman Dale E. Klein

Commissioner Gregory B. Jaczko

Commissioner Peter B. Lyons

Commissioner Kristine L. Svinicki

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, DC   20555-0001

Dear Commissioners:

For more than a decade DOE has been conducting studies and preparing to seek a license to construct a repository at Yucca Mountain .  During the time of Site Characterization technical exchanges were held between NRC and DOE to determine the most important questions to be addressed and answered regarding the suitability and safety of a proposed repository.  All of this was being done, we were told, in order to make a sound suitability determination and to insure that an eventual license application would be thorough and complete.

During the last several years the DOE has been postponing or abdicating their responsibility to uphold agreements made with the NRC and others regarding providing information and technical or scientific study results.  As dates were moved ahead for deadlines to make information available, NRC and the public were finally assured that everything would be provided at the time of License Application (LA) and that the application itself would be of high quality and complete.

Knowing that various studies had not been finished at the time that the application was submitted in June 2008, many of us raised complaints about the completeness of the application and about DOE’s certification of its document collection posted on the Licensing Support Network (LSN).  We were told by NRC officials both before and after receipt of the application that they would carefully review it and it would not be accepted or docketed if it was incomplete.  NRC held a public meeting in Nevada to go through and explain their process in making these decisions and to tell us about timelines that would begin if the LA was docketed. 

After offering comment explaining our belief that DOE was not submitting a complete or high quality License Application, we could only wait for NRC to do its initial review and make its own decision.  That decision was made and the LA was accepted, docketed and a Federal Register notice was posted in October 2008 beginning the clock for parties to participate in the licensing process by submitting contentions before a December 2008 deadline.

Since submission of the LA, a series of new reports have come from DOE and also supplementation of their LSN collection.  Most recently a revision of the repository design basis was released which will cause changes or supplements to the LA that was submitted in June and declared “complete.”

Any party who intends to participate in licensing is now in the position of having to reassess contentions that have been written by carefully reading this large document and attempting to compare it to the more than 8,000 page LA to see what changed and how significant it is. 

All other parties involved in or concerned about Yucca Mountain are at a serious disadvantage to the agencies of the federal government, most especially the non- governmental public interest organizations.  With very limited budgets and less capable computer equipment, we are trying to represent our members and the general public by participating in this project that will affect people throughout the country.  The NRC licensing process financially excludes many groups and the DOE is difficult for even the most experienced people to deal with.  We are attempting to stay up to date and on schedule to provide comment for several documents that are now out for public review and at the same time examining how, if at all possible, we can participate in upcoming Yucca Mountain licensing hearings.  Trying to do all that, as DOE continually adds to or changes information to make up for omissions in its incomplete LA, is more than we should be expected to do.

The NRC’s mission is to insure public safety and to regulate licensees, one of whom would be the DOE if a Yucca Mountain license is granted.  In the current process, the NRC is far more accommodating to the DOE than it is to the public.  If the DOE is allowed to toss in new information and updated documentation at will throughout the process, other parties and the public are put at an even more severe disadvantage.  The actions of the DOE also place a heavier burden on the NRC but, as the regulator, it can make demands on the applicant regarding schedules and performance.  If NRC condones these actions by this applicant, it appears to all of us that the process is unfair and has the appearance and the actual effect of intentionally putting the public at an overwhelming disadvantage. 

We ask that you take immediate steps to require the DOE to finalize all documents, designs, and issues that must be included in a complete and high quality LA.  All matters that may be the subject of contentions must be available in final form so that the other parties have adequate time and a reasonable opportunity to examine the final application and supporting documents and write contentions within the allowed time.  Sixty days are allowed for the submission of contentions after a Notice of Hearing is published.  We ask that you reset that clock now, based on DOE’s practice of updating supporting LA documents, and at any future time that DOE significantly changes, updates, or supplements the LA.  Telling us that we can play along by writing late contentions as we are able to learn more is not acceptable.  Filing late contentions makes us players in a piecemeal process and increases our disadvantage.  We ask that NRC put a stop to the DOE’s abuse of the process and instill public fairness for the benefit of all.

Sincerely,

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Takoma Park, MD