The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has formally restarted work on its safety evaluation report for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
In August, a federal appeals court ruled that the agency had effectively ignored federal law by suspending licensing work on the project, which had been shelved by the Department of Energy under the Obama administration. The NRC had argued it had the authority to suspend the work because only $11 million of $99 million needed to complete the licensing process was available, and the agency did not foresee further congressional funding.
In a release Monday, the NRC said it directed staff to load documents from the Licensing Support Network into the non-public version of the ADAMS database, although it will not reconstitute the LSN – a Web-based system maintaining millions of pages of DOE documents that must be made public for the licensing process to proceed. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board's adjudication of 319 contentions related to the license will remain on hold. While the LSN documents are public records, the NRC said publishing them will be dependent on funding to do so. The agency also requested a supplemental environmental impact statement from DOE.