Washington (Platts)--11Aug2010/614 pm EDT/2214 GMT

Two US Nuclear Regulatory Commission members have refused to recuse themselves from participating in any agency decision on the US Department of Energy's repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In separate briefs filed with the commission Wednesday, Commissioners William Magwood and William Ostendorff said there is no basis for their recusal. Parties in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding that want to see the repository project move forward -- Aiken County, South Carolina, the state governments of South Carolina and Washington and White Pine County, Washington -- had sought their and Commissioner George Apostolakis' recusals, claiming the each had prejudged the Yucca Mountain project when they said during their confirmation hearing in February that they would not second-guess DOE's decision to terminate the program. Apostolakis recused himself in July, citing work he had done as a chairman of an independent panel that reviewed the performance assessment of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The commission is considering appeals filed by DOE and the state of Nevada, asking it to overturn a licensing board decision that said DOE does not have the authority to unilaterally withdraw the congressionally mandated repository license application. --Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com Similar stories appear in Nucleonics Week. See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products.aspx?xmlFile=nucleonicsweek.xml