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Court rules that NRC must review Yucca nuclear waste plan

Court Keeps Yucca Mountain in Play http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323446404579011122577985720.html  WSJ, TENNILLE TRACY  and  KEITH JOHNSON, 13 Aug 13 WASHINGTON—A federal court on Tuesday directed the Obama administration to revive consideration of the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste project in Nevada, breathing new life into a long-running controversy over a final resting place for the country’s roughly 70,000 metric tons of spent commercial nuclear fuel.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was “simply flouting the law” by refusing to take up a Yucca Mountain license application roughly five years after it was submitted by the Bush administration.

The Obama administration has attempted to abandon the project, in part because it wants local support for any nuclear-waste repository and Yucca Mountain faces opposition in Nevada.

The appeals court, citing a 1982 law directing the NRC to complete reviews within three years of an application, said “the president and federal agencies may not ignore statutory mandates or prohibitions merely because of policy disagreements.”

The ruling doesn’t guarantee that Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will move forward. Rather, it applies pressure on Congress to finally decide the project’s fate since it controls its funding. “The narrative had been, Yucca Mountain is dead. And the court said, no, Yucca is not dead,” said Jack Spencer, a nuclear-energy expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Yucca Mountain is a divisive topic on Capitol Hill. House Republicans support its construction, in part because billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to study it. But powerful members in the Senate, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, have vowed to block any effort to push the project forward. Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the national site of the nuclear-waste repository in 1987.

“Instead of continuing to try to force Yucca Mountain on the people of Nevada, my colleagues should focus on moving forward towards a new process that will allow for consent-based siting,” Sen. Dean Heller (R., Nev.) said.

Waste generated by nuclear power plants and construction of nuclear weapons sits at more than 70 sites around the country. A panel convened by the Obama administration said in 2012 the government had an “ethical obligation” to deal with the waste, suggesting the U.S. build temporary storage facilities until a permanent solution is found.

The issue at the center of Tuesday’s ruling dates to 2010, when the Energy Department under President Barack Obama attempted to withdraw the Bush-era application, saying the storage facility was “not a workable option.”

August 15, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, USA, wastes