Members of the advisory panel for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s digital repository for documents on the license adjudication for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository have until Feb. 13 to submit recommendations on reconstituting the retired system.
That is also the date for panel members to share their thoughts on the NRC staff’s list of options for the future of the Licensing Support Network (LSN).
The NRC shut down the network in 2011 after the Obama administration cut off federal efforts to license and build the Nye County, Nev., facility for permanent underground disposal of spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The system’s nearly 3.7 documents are now housed in the agency’s ADAMS online document system.
But with the Trump administration seeking to revive the Yucca Mountain licensing process (without much luck so far), the NRC is considering how to reconstitute the Licensing Support Network if the agency resumes adjudication of the Department of Energy license application. That would give the various parties authorized to intervene in the review direct access to all existing and future documents filed as the proceeding advances.
In December, the NRC provided the LSN Advisory Review Panel (LSNARP) with a report discussing four options for the LSN: keeping the existing network in ADAMS and sharing additional documents by means such as mail or email; using the searchable ADAMS LSN Library; moving the library to the Cloud; and rebuilding the network.
The LSN Advisory Review Panel features representatives from the NRC staff, DOE, state of Nevada, the Nuclear Energy Institute industry lobbying group, nine counties and one city in Nevada, four Native American organizations, and Inyo County in California.
A meeting of the LSN Advisory Review Panel was scheduled for Jan. 30-31 to discuss the NRC report, but the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute and the vehemently anti-Yucca Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects both requested it be delayed to allow for more time to consider the matter.
The Nuclear Energy Institute is encouraged that the NRC is taking a logical step toward reviving the Licensing Support Network in the event of a resumed adjudication, said Rod McCullum, the organization’s senior director for used fuel and decommissioning.
“The thing that took us all aback is that the we got the options paper on Dec. 21 and were asked to prepare for a meeting on the options by the end of January,” particularly given the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, McCullum said in a telephone interview with RadWaste Monitor. “We do share Nevada’s concern that we have sufficient time to make sure we get this right. This is a very complex proceeding that needs a good information management backbone.”
The LSNARP meeting, set for NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., with some remote participation, last week was pushed back to Feb. 27-28 to give members more time to consider the issue. By Feb. 13, panel members that have ideas with “significantly different technical basis from those discussed in the options paper” should submit information on the option, with schedule and expense details if possible, LSNARP Chairman Andrew Bates wrote in a Jan. 4 letter to McCullum.
“Additionally, by that same date LSNARP members are invited to provide to the LSNARP Chairman, the Acting LSN Administrator, and the other LSNARP members written comments regarding any options set forth in the December 2017 options paper,” Bates wrote. “While LSNARP members will have the opportunity to submit written comments following the meeting, having comments in hand prior to the meeting will enable a more robust and collaborative discussion.”
McCullum said he could not discuss NEI’s position on the NRC options or whether the organization will lobby for other alternatives, as those internal discussions are continuing. The organization will submit its comments by Feb. 13, he said.
Robert Halstead, executive director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, also expressed appreciation for the NRC’s delay of the meeting. The agency’s experts and lawyers met Wednesday and will gather again next week regarding the state’s approach to addressing LSN reconstitution.
It is more important to ensure the revived system functions as needed rather than rushing through the process, according to Halstead. It would not be unreasonable for the parties to spend six months “getting this right,” he said.
“It’s really important to us that the system serve everyone,” Halstead said by telephone. “We have to stick up for ourselves, because nobody else will.”
McCullum noted the significant advances in computer and information management technologies in the years since the Licensing Support Network was shut down.
“Now we have to ask ourselves, how does this Licensing Support Network fit in the modern information technology world?” he said. “There’s two challenges here: One, you have the advance in information technology, and two, NRC was very detailed in how it described the now-outdated system in its rules.”
The NRC is constrained in its current capacity to move forward with licensing, McCullum acknowledged. Since a federal judge in 2013 ordered the regulator to resume the licensing process, the NRC as of November had spent over $12.9 million of the $13.6 million it had on hand from its Nuclear Waste Fund balance on Yucca Mountain-related projects.
The Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal includes $30 million for the NRC to resume the adjudicatory process for the repository. The House has signed off on the funding, while Senate appropriators have provided no money for Yucca Mountain in an energy funding bill still awaiting a floor vote.
Fiscal 2018 began on Oct. 1 of last year, and the federal government has so far remained open via a series of short-term budgets that include no money for the project.
The NRC’s remaining money for Yucca will not be enough for the actual adjudication process, involving lawyers and expert testimony, McCullum said. But, in the interim, he believes the agency is using its money wisely.
“Should there be some compromise on Capitol Hill … if at some point new money should flow in, so we could in earnest restart the Yucca Mountain licensing process, it will be important to have had this discussion on how the information management backbone of the thing is going to work,” he said.
