NRC SAYS RESTARTING YUCCA REVIEW WOULD ACCOMPLISH LITTLE

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has filed another legal brief in a petition to force the agency to restart its review of the Yucca Mountain license application, this time agreeing with a recent Justice Department filing. Oral arguments were held in April by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a mandamus petition to restart the NRC’s licensing proceedings after the were halted in October 2010. Judges deciding the case requested a filing from DOJ, which was submitted last week and backed the NRC’s arguments, which center on a lack of funding for the review. NRC this week agreed with the assessment. “In sum, an order directing NRC to restart the proceeding would accomplish little more than requiring the agency to expend the bulk of its remaining carryover funds from the Nuclear Waste Fund, with a corresponding expenditure by DOE. That action would not achieve any significant progress toward resolving the ultimate question: i.e., whether NRC should approve the DOE application to construct the Yucca Mountain repository,” the filing states.