The state of Nevada on Thursday formally requested that one of the newest members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recuse himself from any decision-making on the license for the planned radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Commissioner David Wright’s participation in the NRC adjudication of the Department of Energy license application would essentially disregard the 43-year-old agency’s “established norms,” the state said in the filing sent to the NRC and other parties to the licensing process.
Attorneys for the state said Nevada has never made such a request of the NRC in eight years as an intervenor opposed to the DOE license request. However, they said the state had been forced into requesting Wright’s recusal by his role as an adviser to another party to the license adjudication, his expressions of support for Yucca Mountain, his criticism of Nevada’s intervention, “and your formation of, and active participation in, at least one organization whose sole focus was the advancement and completion of the Yucca Mountain repository,” according to the filing, a copy of which was obtained Saturday by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
Wright joined the commission on May 30, after being confirmed by the Senate the prior week alongside new Commissioner Annie Caputo and serving Commissioner Jeff Baran. He previously was an energy consultant and at different times led the South Carolina Public Service Commission and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).
Nevada’s 89-page request includes eight documents intended to show that Wright cannot be objective in reviewing the Yucca license application. These include a 2010 petition, which Wright submitted on behalf of NARUC, urging DOE not to withdraw its license application with the NRC. In another statement, Wright announced establishment of the Yucca Mountain Task Force “to accomplish the construction and operation of a safe Federal facility for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.”
