By Jessica Faris
November 12, 2007

The Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works held a hearing October 31 regarding the controversial Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada. The Department of Energy (DOE) is nearing its June, 2008 deadline to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build the repository. The committee oversees both the NRC and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which sets the radiation and safety standards used to evaluate the application.

The Yucca Mountain site occupies 230 square miles of federal land in southern Nevada and is intended to act as a long-term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from business and military sources. Currently this waste is being stored at 126 facilities throughout the country which are not intended for long-term storage.

Senators Jim DeMint (SC), John Ensign (NV) and Harry Reid (NV) testified before the committee. Ensign and Reid were critical of the proposal. Reid said that the health of his constituents was a risk and that the site provided a terrorist threat while Ensign claimed that the site was not large enough to hold all nuclear waste.

Representatives of the DOE, NRC and EPA all testified. Many Senators were concerned that the EPA has not finalized all standards by which the NRC will evaluate the application.

Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) questioned Robert Meyers, the Principle Deputy from the EPA Office of Air and Radiation on when the standards will be set. His answer was “soon.” Michael Webber, NRC Director in the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, said that the NRC can begin reviewing the application at any time though all standards must be set before the application review is finished.

Clinton and Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA) opposed the Yucca Mountain site because of potential public health problems, such as contaminated drinking water. Senator James Inhofe (OK) asked why the DOE should abandon the Yucca Mountain site before the application is considered after spending 25 years and 6 billion dollars during its own evaluation process. However, the toughest question, according to Inhofe, is “if not Yucca Mountain, then where are we going to build a repository?”

The liveliest discussion of the hearing came during Boxer’s questioning of Edward Sporat, the DOE Director in charge of the license application. Boxer wanted to know how the DOE could put forth an “incomplete” application with only approximately one-third of the facility design finished. Sporat said that that nuclear facilities did not need to be 100 percent designed in the application process and that the application would be complete, meeting all of the NRC’s requirements.