NRC ISSUES FINAL YUCCA MOUNTAIN TECHNICAL REPORT,

NEARS CLOSURE OF LICENSING REVIEW

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued the last of three Technical Evaluation 

Reports (TERs) on the Department of Energy’s license application for the Yucca Mountain 

nuclear waste repository, and is nearing the successful completion of its orderly closure of the 

licensing review process.

“Technical Evaluation Report on the Content of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Yucca 

Mountain Repository License Application; Administrative and Programmatic Volume,” contains 

the NRC staff’s assessment of information DOE provided about a dozen administrative and 

programmatic areas relating to repository operations. It does not contain any regulatory 

conclusions about whether DOE’s proposal would have satisfied NRC requirements.

Issuance of this TER follows previous volumes on post-closure safety, issued July 21, 

and pre-closure safety, issued Sept. 1. Together, the three reports represent the staff’s primary 

knowledge management records of its technical review of the DOE license application.

All three TERs are available on the NRC website’s Yucca Mountain page.

In addition to the TERs, the NRC is on schedule to complete the orderly closure of the 

Yucca Mountain Program by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The close-out efforts include:

The NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards (NMSS) and its contractor, 

the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses, have developed 46 reports intended 

to capture important technical and regulatory information, insights, and lessons learned 

from more than 25 years of work during the pre-licensing and licensing phases of the 

Yucca Mountain Program. The reports cover scientific and engineering topics such as 

lava flow cooling processes, corrosion of Alloy 22 and titanium drip shield materials, 

and interactions between magma and waste containers.

The NRC, through the General Services Administration, has terminated its lease for the 

Las Vegas Hearing Facility, effective Sept. 30. The facility was designed to house the 

adjudicatory hearings on the Yucca Mountain application. The hearing room has been 

dismantled, its computer and video equipment are being transferred to other NRC or 

federal government locations or donated to local schools, and the facility will be returned 

to the landlord in a “broom-clean” condition by Sept. 30.

NRC NEWS

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200

Washington, D.C. 20555-0001

E-mail: opa.resource@nrc.gov Site: www.nrc.gov

Blog: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov

No. 11-172 September 13, 2011
The NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board terminated operation of the Licensing 

Support Network, an online database of documents related to the Yucca Mountain 

hearing, on Aug. 5. As of that date, each of the parties to the hearing are responsible for 

maintaining their own documents, and they were directed to submit their LSN document 

collections to the NRC Office of the Secretary on approved optical storage media. The 

LSN, including a contract with AT&T, will be fully decommissioned by Sept. 30.

On Sept. 9, the Commission declared itself evenly divided on whether to take the 

affirmative action of overturning or upholding the ASLB’s June 2010 ruling on DOE’s 

motion to withdraw its application, and directed the ASLB to “complete all necessary 

and appropriate case management activities, including disposal of all matters currently 

pending before it and comprehensively documenting the full history of the adjudicatory 

proceeding,” by Sept. 30.

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