Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/9/2014
The latest round of House Republican outrage concerning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s handling of the Yucca Mountain licensing review occurred this week during a House Energy and Power Subcommittee hearing as lawmakers chastised the Commission for failing to request funds to complete the review as well as failing to provide information on the estimated cost of completion. Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), both adamant supporters of Yucca Mountain, were the most vocal Republicans on the perceived failure to follow the law, as shown by NRC’s budget decision. “Once more I ask the Commission to provide the Committee with a cost estimate of resources necessary to fulfill their mandate and issue a decision,” Shimkus said. “The Commission failed to provide Congress with this information. Not surprising. The Commission has refused to share its estimate as to what those needs are so Congress will know how much to appropriate. Apparently, the Commission does not feel compelled to fulfill its mandate, only to spend down to zero,” he said. Johnson added, “So you failed to request funding for a statutory mandate to review the Yucca Mountain license application and to provide Congress with a cost estimate, instead you are requesting funds to support strategies that has not been authorized and is based on assumptions directly contrary to the law.”
NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane has repeatedly said that her understanding of the court’s decision compelling the restart of the licensing review is that the Commission must expend the funds already appropriated. It does not require the NRC to request additional funding, a point she reiterated during the hearing. “We received an order from the court, requiring us to continue the licensing process with current funds,” Macfarlane said. “We did that. We are following the law.” The other commissioners, though, have begun to support seeking additional funding. When pressed by Shimkus, both Commissioners Kristine Svinicki and William Ostendorff said they would support a supplemental budget request for additional Yucca funds, and Commissioner William Magwood said he would consider the proposal if a NRC Staff analysis said it was a good idea, ultimately leaving Macfarlane as the lone opponent. In regards to the estimate requested by the committee, Macfarlane indicated that that estimate was underway. “We are in progress of developing that,” Macfarlane said. “We are working very hard on that.”
SERs Should Be Priority
Shimkus, meanwhile, made an attempt to ensure that the Commission would commit to finishing the Yucca Safety Evaluation Reports. The Commission has been working on the reports and has said they would be available by January 2015, but a change of heart from the Department of Energy concerning the completion of a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement has Republicans worried the NRC is trying to expend all the Yucca funds before any SERs can be published. “In February, DOE notified the NRC that it would not prepare the Yucca Mountain supplemental EIS regarding groundwater issues even after sharing with this Committee that it would,” Shimkus said. “This appears to be an attempt to undermine the completion of the SERs by driving NRC’s spread, scant resources even thinner. I urge the Commission not to take the bait. The Commission is right to focus on the completion of the SERs as an important and achievable milestone. The NRC should not proceed to do DOE’s work for them until having issued the Safety Evaluation Report,” he said. Shimkus also received the assurance from each commissioner that the money would be there to complete the SERs. “We have appropriate internal controls in place to make sure the money is there to complete the SERs,” Ostendorff said.
It remains unclear whether the NRC will be able to complete the supplemental EIS in DOE’s stead. The NRC issued an order in November setting forth a pathway to re-start the Yucca Mountain licensing review, including the request for a supplemental EIS from DOE on groundwater issues to satisfy requirements set forth in the National Environmental Policy Act. DOE had initially planned to move forward with the NRC’s request for the study, but in February, DOE argued that since it submitted a groundwater EIS in 2008, it did not have to update the EIS to fulfill its Nuclear Waste Policy Act legal obligations. The Commission is still evaluating whether it will complete the EIS.
Alternative Approach?
Johnson continued his criticism of NRC by pointing to language within its Fiscal Year 2015 budget request that would sponsor modeling of future alternate strategies for disposal of spent nuclear fuel. He criticized the Commission for failing to seek money for Yucca and instead asking for funds to look at other strategies not backed by the Nuclear waste Policy Act. “So you failed to request funding for a statutory mandate to review the Yucca Mountain license application and to provide Congress with a cost estimate, instead you are requesting funds to support strategies that has not been authorized and is based on assumptions directly contrary to the law,” Johnson said. Svinicki defended the language, saying that she “supports [NRC] maintaining cognizance of the qualitative elements” of different strategies. The current strategy of the Department of Energy is to build a pilot interim storage facility by 2022 and a final repository by 2048.
Not every Republican congressman was as ‘Yucca-or-bust’ as Shimkus and Johnson. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) prefaced his comments by saying he would like to see Yucca Mountain happen, but he is not as adamant as others on it being the only possible location. “I have a little different view that Chairman Shimkus on Yucca Mountain,” Barton said. “I do want Yucca if it is found to be safe. I want it to be a final repository, and I want the NRC to expedite the review and complete it. I hope the review is positive and says it’s safe for our high-level waste. I am pro-Yucca Mountain, but I am not Yucca Mountain or nothing. The state of Texas is moving along at the legislative level and the local level to come up and support an interim storage facility if and when the NRC decides to do it that way.”
Barton asked Macfarlane what the NRC thought about the debate over Yucca Mountain versus other locations. Macfarlane responded by reminding the congressman, “We at the NRC don’t set policy for the nation on its plan for nuclear waste disposal. Personally, as a former Blue Ribbon Commission member, we endorsed following a parallel track.”
