The Yucca Mountain environmental safety case gained a big win last week when Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff found that the radiological impacts on groundwater surrounding the Nevada site as a result of the proposed repository would be “small.” The staff’s draft analysis for the supplemental environmental impact statement, released last week, for Yucca bolsters the safety case for the shuttered project, which the NRC found to meet most regulatory standards for public health and safety earlier this year in its safety evaluation report. According to the draft EIS, the radiological impacts to groundwater resulted in a “small” category distinction, the lowest impact EIS category, because radiological exposure to the public and environment from the groundwater would result in only a small fraction of the annual background radiation dose. “Based on conservative assumptions about the potential for health effects from exposure to low doses of radiation, the NRC staff expects that the estimated radiation dose would contribute only a negligible increase in the risk of cancer or severe hereditary effects in the potentially exposed population,” the draft EI supplement said. “Impacts to other resources at all of the affected environments beyond the regulatory compliance location from radiological and non-radiological material from the repository would also be SMALL.”
The NRC said in a release it would begin taking public comments on the draft on Aug. 21 upon publication of a notice in the Federal Register. The public will have opportunities to comment at meetings in September at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., as well as in Las Vegas and Nye County, Nev., and via a conference call in early October, the NRC said. Following the public comment period, the staff will make any appropriate revisions to the supplement before issuing a final supplement in early 2016, the NRC said. The NRC took over responsibility for the document after the Department of Energy originally said it would complete the EIS on groundwater issues early last year. DOE later decided against completing the report, choosing to give the NRC all the technical information needed to finish it instead. That, according to DOE, satisfies its legal responsibilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.