Volume 4 of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's report on the 8.600-page Department of Energy application to operate a federal nuclear waste repository in Nevada unveils two fatal flaws for the project that the Barack Obama administration has put on hold, anyway.
The 181-page report comes on the heels of Volume 3, released in October, that said the DOE plans met standards that would allow the waste to remain safe from the environment and from human interference for one million years. However, the follow up report released Thursday says the DOE does not have control of the land and does not have water rights sufficient to operate a repository at Yucca Mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The 230-square-mile site is controlled by various federal agencies and Congress has not acted on a 2007 proposal to turn control of the land over to the DOE. The lethargy among lawmakers is attributed largely to the lack of executive branch support for the project.
“Because DOE has not completed a land withdrawal or other acquisition process, DOE has not demonstrated that such land would be free and clear of significant encumbrances,” the report said.
“Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that DOE neither has acquired lands to be under its jurisdiction and control for the [facility], nor have the lands for the [facility] been permanently withdrawn and reserved for DOE’s use,” the report continued.
Similarly, a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas challenging the state over its refusal to grant the DOE water rights has been put on hold, also due to the lack of political will to see it through, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
“This is just one reason why the Yucca Mountain project will never be built,” said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has been a stanch opponent of the repository.
“The latest study released by the NRC acknowledges one of the major weaknesses of the effort to resurrect Yucca Mountain: the federal government does not have the water it needs nor control of the land necessary to build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada,” said Reid, the outgoing Senate majority leader, in a statement.