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Yucca Mountain: Blueprint for Failure 225 record of decision designating rail as the preferred option. Among the options for transport of waste to Yucca evaluated in the FEIS were transport mostly by truck and transport mostly by rail.417 DOE’s record of decision endorsed a scenario relying primarily on rail transportation along the Caliente Corridor but acknowledged that, if the repository became operational before the rail line was built, trucking would be used while the rail line was being constructed.418 Nevada challenged the interim trucking scenario as a substantial change from the plan originally proposed and thus requiring a supplemental EIS. In Nevada v. DOE, the D.C. Circuit dismissed all Nevada’s claims.419 In March 2005, Nevada petitioned NRC to revise its 1990 Waste Confidence Rule, which had been based on the assumption that a repository to receive SNF would open by 2025.420 Nevada argued that if Yucca Mountain were not licensed, the rule would have to be revised because it would not be possible to develop another repository and open it by 2025, and that the commission’s interest in avoiding a revision of the Waste Confidence Rule would accordingly bias it in favor of licensing Yucca. It asked the commission to revise the rule to provide that “there is reasonable assurance all licensed reactor spent fuel will be removed from storage sites to some acceptable disposal site well before storage causes any significant safety or environmental impacts.”421 After NRC denied Nevada’s petition for rulemaking in August 2005,422 the state challenged the denial in the D.C. Circuit.423 In Nevada v. NRC, the D.C. Circuit Court dismissed Nevada’s challenges for lack of standing, finding that Nevada had suffered no actual injury as a consequence of the Waste Confidence Rule.424 Further, since the licensing proceeding had not yet begun, the prediction of bias was “neither actual nor imminent.”425 Nevada also initiated an unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act challenge in 2007 seeking the release of draft Yucca license application documents that DOE had sent to NRC.426 The documents were never made public. Nevada also resorted to other tactics to obstruct or delay DOE’s efforts to characterize the repository site. In 2007, the state sought, for example, a court injunction blocking DOE from using state water to drill boreholes at the Yucca Mountain site.427 Also in 2007, Nevada claimed that a law firm retained by DOE had a disqualifying conflict of interest because the firm had previously lobbied for the Nuclear Energy Institute and represented nuclear utilities against DOE.428 The DOE inspector general eventually found that DOE did not properly document the law firm selection process, but he did not void the contract to prevent the firm from representing DOE in the NRC licensing proceedings, as Nevada had requested.429 DOE’s Yucca License Application to NRC DOE filed its construction license application for Yucca with NRC on June 3, 2008.430 On September 8, NRC docketed the application for decision.431 In October 2008, following a new rulemaking, EPA issued a revised version of the Yucca radiation standards that had been remanded to it by the D.C. Circuit in Nuclear Energy Institute.432 In its August 2005 notice of proposed rulemaking,433 EPA had proposed a revised standard, which Robert Meyers, a senior EPA official, summarized: The proposed rule would limit radiation doses from Yucca Mountain for up to one million years after it closes. No other health and safety rule in the U.S. has ever attempted ...

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