NTI: Global Security Newswire - Monday, April 3, 2006

Yucca Mountain Expected to Open by 2020
The U.S. Energy Department official leading planning for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada expects the facility to open by 2020, the Associated Press reported Saturday (see GSN, March 2).
The department is preparing legislation that would ensure funding and create a permanent site for the repository, said Paul Golan, acting director of the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Office. Golan said the department is open to the idea of interim waste storage at other sites until Yucca Mountain is finished.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said early in March that the bill would be ready within a month, and Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said last week he was prepared to submit his own legislation if one does not arrive soon from the administration.
Golan said he anticipated the Energy Department would submit its license application in 2008, followed a dozen years later by the opening of Yucca to nuclear waste.
The site now is authorized to hold 70,000 metric tons of defense and commercial waste; 55,000 tons are already stored around the nation.
Golan said the department is beginning preparations on a report to Congress on the need for a second nuclear waste repository. He acknowledged, however, that any such proposal was likely to raise controversy.
“You don’t want it in your backyard?” he said.
He added that the Bush administration’s new plan to study reprocessing nuclear waste could delay the need for a second facility.
“If we can actually get a little bit better on closing the fuel cycle here, that’s going to be very important in minimizing the volume of future waste that we’re going to have to deal with,” he said (Erica Werner, Associated Press/Salt Lake Tribune, April 1).