Federal Panel Secretly Allows Hot Lab Work : License: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission OKs a Rockwell experiment over the telephone.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission secretly cleared Rockwell International to conduct an experiment that is at the heart of a nuclear relicensing controversy, prompting an administrative law judge to warn Thursday that the license case may become “something of a farce.”

Peter B. Bloch, the judge presiding in the case, said he had just learned that the NRC staff last week quietly amended Rockwell’s existing license so the firm could conduct the nuclear experiment, known by the acronym TRUMP-S, in the hot lab at its Santa Susana Field Laboratory southeast of Simi Valley.

Neither Bloch nor intervenors in the case knew the amendment was in the works, and none of them were asked their views beforehand.

Since Rockwell’s right to do the TRUMP-S work before shutting down the hot lab is the central issue in the license case, the case could become moot unless the NRC action is overturned by Bloch.

The hot lab at Santa Susana is a heavily shielded workshop where highly radioactive materials are handled by remote control. The hot lab’s NRC license expired last June but remained in effect pending a decision on Rockwell’s renewal application.

Originally the company sought a 10-year renewal. But last fall Rockwell said it would settle for a one-year extension until Oct. 30, 1990, enough time to complete the TRUMP-S work involving the use of a small amount of dangerous plutonium.

However, with the license case months from being decided and Rockwell eager to begin TRUMP-S, a question arose as to whether the work could be done under the existing license. Opponents said it couldn’t, because the license said plutonium could be handled only in an operation called “fuel decladding.”

It was revealed Thursday, however, that the NRC staff amended the license March 9 by adding the words “and the TRUMP-S program.” The amendment was worked out over the phone with Rockwell, which did not have to file a written request.

The TRUMP-S experiment is to be conducted under a contract with the Japanese nuclear industry. It involves use of a high-temperature process to remove the most dangerous and long-lived elements from nuclear waste, thereby greatly reducing the volume of waste requiring perpetual isolation. The work would involve several nuclear substances, including 6 grams, or about one-quarter ounce, of plutonium, a potent carcinogen.

Bloch revealed the existence of the amendment at the beginning of a bicoastal telephone conference, in which Bloch, Rockwell and the intervenors were to discuss briefing schedules and other administrative details.

The intervenors, who oppose Rockwell’s license request, were clearly stunned by the disclosure, with one calling it “outrageous,” and Bloch himself told an NRC attorney: “I don’t understand what’s happening here.”

Bloch told the intervenors they could file a brief outlining their objections to the action. “I am anxious to receive such a document,” he said.

Dan Hirsch, president of the anti-nuclear Committee to Bridge the Gap, one of the intervenors, said he would petition the judge in a matter of days to declare the NRC action illegal.

Rockwell officials refused to comment.

During the teleconference, a Rockwell official told Bloch that the TRUMP-S work is expected to start by late April.

Bloch said that, if Rockwell conducts the experiment before a decision on the license renewal, “the hearing then becomes something of a farce. . . . That’s one of the requirements of fairness and expediency under the law, that we decide things before they happen,” Bloch said.

NRC attorney Colleen Woodhead said the amendment was legally correct. She said the NRC could amend an existing license while a relicensing case was in progress.

“It was really a matter of clarifying the existing license,” she said.

The NRC and Rockwell, which has done nuclear work at Santa Susana for 35 years, say the project poses no significant risks to workers or the public. The company is already in the process of decommissioning and decontaminating the hot lab, work it says it will complete after TRUMP-S is finished.