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November 4, 2005
Who really owns Yucca Mountain?TRIBE SAYS IT OWNS REPOSITORY LAND; WANTS TO BE RECOGNIZED
By ROBIN FLINCHUM
The Commission's team of representatives nearly outnumbered the citizens on hand, but Janet Phelan Kotra, senior project manager for the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, said she was gratified by the turnout nonetheless. For Kotra and her team, meeting with an anxious and sometimes angry public can be a perilous process, "but part of our job is to make visible what we do," Kotra said. So the small cadre of scientists, lawyers, and one charismatic meeting facilitator named Chip Cameron, journeyed out of Washington and into the quiet desert where the Amargosa River flows practically under their feet, carrying with it water from Yucca Mountain. It wasn't the first time they visited the area, and the team members greeted local residents at the door with information packets and friendly, if perhaps guarded smiles. Kotra's team has weathered plenty of unpleasantness in its effort to bridge the gap between the affected public and the federal government when it comes to the issue of nuclear waste. But in the end, as team members pointed out repeatedly, the Commission's only job is to regulate what the Department of Energy does. They did not create the need for the repository, nor do they have the power to eradicate it. "We are an independent oversight agency," Kotra said. In other words, they don't name the game or even the players; they are simply the referees. The Commission had little news to impart to residents, with still no firm idea as to when the Department of Energy might submit a licensing application to begin the process of constructing the repository at Yucca Mountain. But Kotra did speculate that it could happen as early as January of 2007, after which the Commission would have three to four years to evaluate the application and decide whether to license the facility. Although law limits the timeframe for the evaluation, Kotra said, "We will take as long as it takes to do the job right." For those on hand who expressed the belief that the Yucca Mountain Repository was unofficially a "done deal," Bill Reamer, director of the Division of High-Level Waste Repository Safety said, "There is no secret decision-making happening. This is an independent agency. I have to be concerned with that because we can not do the job if we can not do it independently." The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is governed by a board of five presidential appointees, but Reamer declared that this did not affect is ability to function independent of partisan interests. Reamer outlined the license application and evaluation process in a slide presentation and Bill Ruland, deputy director of the Spent Fuel Project Office, discussed methods of transportation and the construction of casks designed to transport nuclear waste. The information was similar to that presented during the Commission's last visit two and a half years ago, but the primary purpose of the meeting, said Kotra, "is to make people aware of the process and how to contact us." The other reason, she said, was to collect public comment. Community meetings are recorded and transcribed, Kotra said, so that all public comment could be added into the official record and taken into account in the decision-making process. Comments included concerns expressed by Western Shoshone elder Corbin Harney, who has campaigned against the Yucca Mountain repository and the production of nuclear waste for years. To date, a dispute over the ownership of the land on which Yucca Mountain is situated has not yet been resolved, since the Western Shoshone have alleged the federal government does not have a proper claim. Kotra said this is one of many issues that will have to be cleared up before a license could be granted. "Everyone of us knows that radiation is killing us," Harney said. "We know that and we see it. What you're bringing today, it sounds good on a piece of paper. But you're getting paid to say these things and when you get paid, you cannot go against it." Barbara Durham of the Timbisha Shoshone in Death Valley and Bishop expressed frustration that the tribe's attempt to gain status as a unit of affected government in relation to the proposed repository had been met with little or no response from the Department of Interior. "The federal government needs to respect our tribal government more," she said, "and deal with us government to government." Durham said the Timbisha needed to achieve affected unit of government status in order to apply for funding to train first responders and, more immediately, "to hire people to represent us who talk your language." As in most issues of major concern to local residents, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's team has no authority in matters such as granting status to local governments. However, Kotra said she had helped the Timbisha investigate what was happening to their application in the past and could possibly do so again. "We as a federal agency had an interest in seeing (the Department of the Interior) answer their request." Transportation was also an issue of concern, though both Bill Reamer and Bill Ruland stated that California Highway 127 was presently not on the list of proposed designated transportation routes, and that some 90 percent of shipments would be made by rail. However, said Reamer, the final decision about transportation would not be made unless the repository was successful in its license application so it would be at least five years before Inyo County officials would have a clear answer to that question. In fact, the Commission's team offered no clear answers at last week's meeting, but rather their best efforts to inform and be informed about the future decision-making process within the narrow limits of their job descriptions. Public participation is crucial, Kotra said, and has affected decisions made by the Commission in the past. For instance, the final licensing application will undergo a formal hearing process before a decision could be made. At one point the commission considered doing away with that formal process, Kotra said, "but the people affected wanted to retain that process and it was retained." Public comment was an "overwhelming factor" in that decision, Kotra said. Kotra added that while the Southeast Inyo area was sparsely populated and the amount of public comment was numerically small, she very much appreciates comment by residents like Jennifer Viereck of Healing Ourselves and Mother Earth, a non-governmental organization dedicated to dealing with nuclear waste issues. Viereck asked detailed questions about the science of some studies submitted by the Department of Energy at the public meeting. "Jennifer is a very unusual person, very thoughtful and I have a high regard for her comments," Kotra said. Soliciting public comment is an ongoing process, Kotra said, and she urged residents of affected communities anywhere in the region of Yucca Mountain to read the public documents available on the Commission's Web site at: www.nrc.gov/waste/hlw-disposal.html, or to go to the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site at: www.epa.gov/radiation/yucca/index.html. Many of these documents are still open for public comment, Kotra said. "The strength of our ultimate decisions will be better, the more we interact with a variety of views," she said. |
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