The submission of the license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the U.S. Department of Energy for permission to build Yucca Mountain is expected in the next few days, perhaps a major step in the process toward completing the high-level nuclear waste repository.

The Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office is expected to receive the document soon, which will likely total 8,000 pages, said Darrell Lacy, NWRPO director.

"This is the thing that they've been shooting for for years. One of the things about this is now all of a sudden the clock is ticking on a lot of these other issues," Lacey said.

Nye County may issue six to 10 contentions to the NRC on the project, Lacey said, but overall, Nye County's scientific oversight program has concluded the DOE was overly conservative in their assumptions of the amount of radionucleids that would come out of the repository.

"It makes it difficult to file contentions," he said.

The NRC will have 90 to 180 days to review the application to see if it is administratively complete, Lacey said. If it is put on the docket as complete, potential parties like Nye County will have another 30 days to file their contentions.

The NRC has three years to issue the license but can ask for a one-year extension, Lacey said. The nuclear waste oversight funding provided to Nye County -- $2.5 million in the current year -- will disappear two years after the NRC issues the license to construct the repository, he said.

But Lacey said the payment equal to taxes for the land value of Yucca Mountain paid to Nye County, currently $11 million annually, will continue under provisions of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Nye County is expected to submit contentions over technical issues while the state will argue why Yucca Mountain should not be built at all, he said.

"We feel like it'll identify areas we think need additional study, where we think changes can be made to improve it and make it safer for the citizens of Nye County," Lacey said. "In front of the NRC committee you pretty much have to deal with issues that are nuclear-related, safety-type of issues."

The NRC is not interested in socio-economic issues, Lacey said.

Steve Kraft, Nuclear Energy Institute senior director of used fuel management, said last Thursday the license application wouldn't consider items like Nye County's request that Yucca Mountain workers be based in Nye County.

The state is expected to issue 500 to 1,000 contentions against issuing the license, Kraft predicted.

But he said the State of Utah had 1,000 contentions over the NRC licensing a private fuel storage facility in that state, of which the NRC heard 100, and only 10 were really key to the project.

The state is expected to focus on the corrosion of the waste packages and the movement of radiation through the mountain, Kraft said.

There are also expected to be concerns raised by the state about possible volcanic activity and earthquakes.

Scientists last year raised concern over earthquakes, in particular the Bow Ridge Fault, near concrete storage pads where nuclear waste would be cooled before being stored in the mountain.

Lacey said the DOE could place up to 20,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste on concrete pads outside Yucca Mountain.

"If you send spent fuel to Yucca Mountain in a pre-loaded canister, and in that canister the heat load is too high, it needs to be put on a surface pad outside the tunnel to cool for a couple of decades ... then it can go underground," Kraft said. "While it looks like interim storage, it is part and parcel to the repository heat management design.

"Nevada has made no secret it is going to challenge that," he added.

Fortunately, some of the issues have been discussed by groups like the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a blue-ribbon panel of scientists appointed by the president, that will speed up the licensing process, Lacey said.

In particular, Kraft said the NWTRB has dealt with the issue of heat generated in the mountain from the decaying radionucleids over 300,000 years.

Nye County filed a friend- of-the-court brief in support of the DOE's complaint that the state hasn't posted some of their issues electronically in the certification process of the state's licensing support network, Lacey said.

A pre-application presiding officer panel, or PAPO, has also looked at procedural issues, meeting with attorneys to discuss rules and procedures, he said.

"We'll try to pull up the scientific contentions," Lacey said. "Nye County's position is to try to be credible from a scientific perspective.

"One of the reasons why we may not have as many contentions as you may think, we have had ongoing discussions and dialog with DOE over the last 15 years, and a lot of the contentions we had have already been discussed with DOE and addressed as part of their scientific program. That's one advantage of having constructive engagement. As we go along we don't have to go after the fact and make these claims in front of the NRC."

Attorney Jeff Vanniel has been brought aboard to assist Mal Murphy as legal counsel representing Nye County in the license application, Lacey said. He hopes county commissioners will approve hiring a third attorney.

"A lot of our technical experts will be supporting the technical team in this endeavor. It's not a cheap process," Lacey said.

The technical experts expected to participate in the licensing process include hydro-geologist Tom Buqo, who has worked with hydrology issues in Nye County for 12 years; Tom Anderson, a professor of geology at the University of Pittsburgh and expert in structural geology; John Walton, chairman of the science and engineering program at the University of Texas, El Paso, Nye county's on-site representative at DOE, Bob Gamble, and Jamie Walker, who has supervised drilling projects for Nye county since 1998 and has been managing geologist since 2001.

Lacey said Nye County is being portrayed as pro-Yucca Mountain at some functions, like the rally against Yucca Mountain at the Clark County Government Amphitheater in Las Vegas Tuesday. Rally organizers announced they hope to collect thousands of signatures on a petition urging the NRC not to grant the license.

"People in Nevada tend to think everyone is against Yucca Mountain, and that's not the case. There's 39 states that want to send waste here," Lacey said.