Nevada nuclear dump application filed today

WASHINGTON " Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today he's confident the government's license application to build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada will "stand up to any challenge anywhere."

Bodman spoke at a news conference hours after the Bush administration submitted the formal application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build the underground storage facility at Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada officials, who have fought the waste dump for years, vowed to launch hundreds of specific challenges to the proposed design of the facility, arguing the Energy Department has not proven it will protect public health, safety and the environment from radiation up to a million years.

Responding to the filing, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons reiterated his promise to fight the waste dump which he said "threatens the life and safety of the people of Nevada."

"As long as I am governor, the state will continue to do everything it can to stop Yucca Mountain from becoming reality," he said in a statement. Bodman called the application submission "a big day" for moving the stalled project forward and said he's confident the scientific assessments demonstrate the 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from the country's nuclear power plants can be stored there safely.

"Issues of health safety and security have been paramount during this process. ... (They) are the driving factors in the decisions we have made," said Bodman.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a vocal opponent, said in a statement he and other Nevada lawmakers "will continue working ... to kill the dump" which most Nevada's don't want in their state. In recent years Congress has repeatedly cut Yucca Mountain project funding in part because of Reid's strong opposition.

Edward F. Sproat, manager of the project, confirmed that the department now believes it may be 2020 before the waste site can be opened, assuming the NRC grants a license. And he said even that target may not me met if Congress does not provide a steady money stream.

A truck delivered tens of thousands of pages of documents to the NRC's office in Rockville, Md., earlier in the day. The application itself covers 17 volumes and 8,600 pages and is supported by more than 200 other documents and studies.

But a key document is missing.

The application prepared for the NRC still lacks a final public radiation exposure standard that establishes how protective the facility must be from radiation leakage.

The EPA had issued a standard designed to be protective for 10,000 years.

But a federal court said it was inadequate and that agency must establish a standard shown to be protective for up to 1 million years " the time some of the isotopes in the waste will remain dangerous. The EPA has yet to produce that document.

Bodman said he didn't think that was a problem. The NRC, which has three years to review the application, can accept it later as an amendment but must have it to make its final determination.

The NRC's primary job will be to determine whether the proposed repository's design will protect public health, safety and the environment for up to a million years.

NRC Chairman Dale Klein promised a review "entirely on technical merits" and said the agency "will perform an independent, rigorous and thorough examination to determine whether the repository can safely house the nation's high level waste."

If the application is approved, it will take seven to eight years to build the facility, Sproat said.

President Bush gave the go-ahead for the Yucca Mountain waste repository six years ago.

About $6 billion has been spent in research and engineering at the Nevada site, including construction of a tunnel deep into the volcanic rock where the canisters of used reactor fuel are to be placed. The Energy Department estimates the lifetime cost of the facility will be between $70 billion and $80 billion.

The federal government under a 1982 law is contractually required to accept the spent fuel from commercial power plants and was to have had a central repository available for fuel shipments by 1998, a deadline already a decade overdue.

This year Congress provided $386.5 million for the program, $108 million less than the Bush administration had wanted as it geared up for submitting its application for a construction license. In 2007 the project received $444 million.

Reid and other Nevada officials say the waste ought to stay where it is until the best long-term solution for dealing with it can be determined.