Judge Defends Actions in Rockwell License Case - Environment: An administrative judge says he did not exceed his authority when he ordered the company to answer questions about its Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth.

An administrative judge for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Friday that he overstepped his authority in ordering Rockwell International to answer questions about its Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth, including inquiries into past leaks and spills of chemical and radioactive contaminants.

Judge Peter B. Bloch, who is considering Rockwell’s request to renew a special nuclear materials license for Santa Susana, said in a memo to superiors that a presiding officer “is obligated ‘not just to call balls and strikes’ . . . but to raise questions that would help to complete the record so that a fair, informed and efficient decision could be made.”

In an order to Bloch on Oct. 5, the three-judge Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board asked Bloch to explain his conduct. The panel said he appeared “to be engaging in a form of judicial activism . . . unprecedented in NRC licensing proceedings.”

Bloch’s 16-page memo alluded to the mismatch between Rockwell and the three area residents to whom he granted intervenor status, which gives them the right to file formal written testimony in the case. The three--Estelle Lit and Jerome Raskin of Northridge and Jon Scott of Bell Canyon in eastern Ventura County--acknowledged that they brought little technical or legal background to the complicated case.

“All that is necessary is to be present at hearings . . . and to observe the difficulty that the most capable, best informed of the inexperienced intervenors endure,” Bloch said.

“Nuclear energy is a difficult subject. In addition, studying the regulations is also difficult . . . especially for the uninitiated.”

Bloch said that in asking questions, “the presiding officer does not know whether the answers will favor Rockwell or the intervenors” who oppose the license request.

NRC spokesman Greg Cook said the appeals board had not yet responded to Bloch’s memo.

The appeals board questioned three orders Bloch issued to Rockwell seeking information on the need for off-site emergency plans and historical data on pollution incidents. Rockwell submitted a chronology of chemical leaks and spills that mentioned no releases of radioactive material, on grounds that all radioactive releases were “well below . . . allowable limits.”

Bloch then issued a third order asking Rockwell for data on even trivial radioactive spills, prompting the appeals board to question his conduct. Rockwell did not complain about Bloch’s orders, spokesmen for the appeals board and Rockwell said.

Rockwell is requesting a 10-year extension of the NRC license covering Santa Susana’s “hot lab,” where nuclear materials are handled by remote control in heavily shielded rooms.

The hot lab’s major business has been decladding nuclear fuel for the U.S. Department of Energy--work that involves removing plutonium and uranium from spent fuel rods and shipping the radioactive materials to government reservations for use in making atomic weapons and fuel for naval ships.

Rockwell last decladded fuel in 1986 but hopes to win future contracts for the work.

The license expired in June but has been extended pending Bloch’s decision on renewal.