A senior Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said Wednesday the agency is not ready to take up licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site, but officials have had brief, high-level discussions about the prospect.

Restarting the process would take some time because the agency has lost much of the personnel involved in the previous licensing proceeding, said NRC Spent Fuel Management Division Director Mark Lombard, speaking at the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management’s Spent Fuel Seminar in Washington, D.C. He estimated that five officials remain at NRC who handled Yucca Mountain-related work.

The Obama administration canceled the planned geologic repository in Nevada in 2009, and the Energy Department withdrew its application a year later. In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the department to resume the license review using previously appropriated funds. Since then, the NRC has spent about $12 million of Nuclear Waste Fund money on Yucca licensing activities. The state of Nevada estimates DOE will need $1.7 billion and the NRC $330 million for the licensing process that remains. Sources close to the Trump transition team say the president-elect plans to revive the Yucca Mountain licensing process.

“In reality, based on how we’ve changed our organization, we’re not ready today to stand up Yucca Mountain (proceedings),” Lombard said. “We’ve had some very high-level and very brief discussions of it. … We don’t have folks sitting around waiting to get an application for Yucca Mountain or any other licensing action for that matter.”

Following Lombard’s appearance, a panel of industry experts, all favoring resuming Yucca Mountain licensing, discussed what could unfold in the next few years. Duke Energy nuclear policy chief Steve Nesbit said he anticipated the remaining licensing process would take three years, while Van Ness Feldman law firm partner Michael McBride said five years is more realistic.

McBride noted that Nevada’s anti-Yucca Agency for Nuclear Projects has been gearing up for this battle for years. The state plans to fully adjudicate 218 admitted contentions in opposition to the license application and submit 30 to 50 new contentions, based on new information and the NRC’s environmental impact statement supplement.

“This is going to be a very difficult proceeding, and DOE better be ready because Nevada will be,” McBride said.