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The
NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board plays a very important part in
the agency’s consideration of requests for licenses to build and operate
new facilities. The Board’s administrative law judges conduct
independent hearings to consider arguments over whether the applications
and the NRC’s reviews meet regulatory standards and comply with laws
such as the Atomic Energy Act and National Environmental Policy Act. The
judges then issue legally binding decisions on these matters.
Three
Board judges held an evidentiary hearing last week to consider
arguments by three citizens groups regarding a facility now under
construction at South Carolina’s Savannah River Site. The NRC issued the
U.S. Dept of Energy a permit, through the department’s Shaw Areva MOX
Services contractor, to build
the facility in
order to convert plutonium from former nuclear warheads into mixed
plutonium and uranium fuel for civilian nuclear reactors. The facility
is being built as part of a US-Russian treaty to reduce the number of
nuclear weapons in each country.
The
citizen groups argue the facility cannot comply with NRC regulations to
control and account for nuclear material. They say that the facility
cannot track the plutonium going into the fuel accurately enough to
properly account for it, and, therefore, some plutonium could be subject
to diversion.
These
arguments touch on very important requirements, but at the same time
the arguments involve documents and live testimony on very sensitive
information. Federal law and regulations require the Board and all the
participants in the hearing to protect that information, so the Board
held this hearing behind closed doors.
One
of the citizens groups, Nuclear Watch South, was present at the hearing
and all the groups participated fully through their lawyer and their
expert witness. The three-judge panel expects to issue its decision in
this case by the end of June.
Scott Burnell
Public Affairs Officer
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