NEW ELLENTON — An advisory board voted Tuesday to renew its position paper against the Savannah River Site temporarily storing the nation's spent fuel. But the renewal was first challenged by members who questioned if the paper is even in the board's purview.
Day two of the bimonthly meeting of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board, or CAB, saw 14 members vote in favor of the paper, which states there is no site superior to Yucca Mountain for spent fuel storage and that the Energy Department should revisit Yucca.
In 2002, former President George W. Bush designated Yucca Mountain as the nation's waste repository site. The site is a volcanic structure near the former Nevada Test Site - about 100 miles from Las Vegas - where the nation intended to permanently store its nuclear waste.
The federal government cut funding in 2010 after pouring more than $13 billion into the Yucca Mountain project. Now, the search has begun for interim storage facilities, and the CAB renewed its July 2013 position on the matter.
The 14 votes outnumbered the seven votes against the position paper. But CAB member Gil Allensworth, who cast a nay vote, said he looked back over the position paper Monday night, as well as the CAB's mission and charter, in search of proof that the CAB can technically take a position on the issue.
"I don't see where we, as a Board, have any authority to issue a position paper," Allensworth said.
CAB Chairman Harold Simon explained that the CAB does indeed have the authority to draft and approve a position paper.
"A position statement remains local and on our website," Simon said. "So it's just the CAB's position on this topic and lets the public know where we stand on the issue."
At the same time the position paper was crafted in 2013, a minority report representing those who voted against it was also created. Dawn Gillas, another member who opposed the position paper, said it is equally important for the public to be aware of the minority report, which states that a hard position on interim spent fuel storage is "not a constructive action by the CAB."
"This rejection is done at an early stage of the process and is indifferent to incentives and other conditions that may be offered," the paper states.
On Tuesday, the CAB also voted unanimously in favor of a recommendation for the Energy Department to create a concrete timetable for the reopening of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The pilot plant, or WIPP, routinely accepted shipments of transuranic waste - waste consisting of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris and other items contaminated with plutonium - from SRS and other sites until a radiation exposure incident shut the site down in February 2014.
The CAB and other advisory boards under the larger, Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board are voting on the recommendation.
Other votes Tuesday included approval of a recommendation to the Energy Department to host CAB meetings in various cities other than the Aiken area. The CAB tabled a recommendation for agencies to monitor and report the health and environmental effects of cleanup and related activities performed by SRS and will appear back before the full board in September.
Derrek Asberry is a beat reporter with the Aiken Standard.