§10132 Recommendation of Candidate Sites for Site Characterization

Summary

The Secretary must, not later than 180 days after January 7, 1983, create general guidelines for picking sites to study for a waste repository. The Secretary must work with the Council on Environmental Quality, the EPA Administrator, the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, interested Governors, and must have the Commission’s agreement. The guidelines must list the main geologic rules to use and the factors that disqualify a site, such as valuable natural resources, water supplies and users, hydrology, geophysics, seismic activity, nearby defense activities, closeness to people, and closeness to National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, National Wilderness Preservation System, or National Forest Lands. The guidelines must consider where high-level radioactive waste or spent fuel is made or stored, transportation and safety, costs and impacts of moving waste, and the benefits of regional distribution. The guidelines must disqualify any site if a surface facility would be in a highly populated area or next to a 1 mile by 1 mile area with at least 1,000 people. The Secretary should look at different types of geology and, when possible, recommend sites in different geologic media. The Secretary may update the guidelines later. After the guidelines are issued and after consulting affected Governors, the Secretary must nominate at least 5 sites for study and must recommend 3 of those to the President not later than January 1, 1985. Each nomination must include an environmental assessment that explains why the site was chosen, whether it meets the guidelines, the likely health and environmental effects of study work, comparisons with other sites, the decision process used, and local and regional impacts. The assessment must be made public and is a final agency action that courts may review only for the items listed above. Before nominating, the Secretary must notify the State Governor and legislature or the tribal governing body and hold public hearings near the site to get residents’ comments. The Secretary must use available geologic and water information and may not do preliminary borings or excavations unless they were already happening on January 7, 1983, or the Secretary certifies the information is insufficient; any such borings may not be more than 6 inches in diameter. The President has 60 days after a recommendation to approve or disapprove a candidate site and must notify the Secretary and the State or tribal officials. The President may delay a decision for up to 6 months by notifying Congress within the 60-day period; if the President still does not decide by the end of that delay, the site is considered approved. Actions under this process are preliminary decisionmaking and do not require an environmental impact statement under the cited provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act.