Feds met most requirements for Yucca nuke dump, report finds

The Department of Energy (DOE) has met nearly all of the requirements to build a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, but still doesn’t own the necessary land, regulators said.

The 181-page report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) found that the DOE has complied with its rules for personnel training, records, emergency planning and quality assurance for the the proposed Yucca Mountain waste site.

{mosads}But the facility, meant to permanently store the United States’s spent fuel from nuclear power generation, has to be built on land that the DOE owns or that is otherwise permanently cut off from other uses.

The land is controlled by manifold federal agencies, and Congress has not passed the proper legislation to bring it under the DOE’s control, NRC 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to be under its jurisdiction and control for the [facility], nor have the lands for the [facility] been permanently withdrawn and reserved for DOE’s use,” the report said.

“In addition, 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.”

NRC similar concluded that the DOE did not own the water rights in the are that it had determined were necessary for the facility.

Thursday’s report is one of five that NRC is preparing to determine whether the DOE has fulfilled the sundry legal obligations to build the long-awaited Yucca site.

Yucca is extremely controversial, especially in Nevada, and the Obama administration has tried since 2009 to get out of its obligation to build it.

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a staunch opponent of the project, said the report shows why the project is a bad idea.

“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,” he said in a statement.

“Congress should instead focus on consent-based solutions that don’t shove nuclear waste down a community’s throat over the objections of its people.”