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U.S. Court to Hear Anti-Yucca Mountain Lawsuits
A U.S. federal court is scheduled next month to hear a number of lawsuits filed by opponents of a planned nuclear waste repository set to be built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, USA Today reported today (see GSN, Nov. 17). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has scheduled Jan. 14 to hear nine lawsuits against the Yucca Mountain repository filed by Nevada, Las Vegas and Clark County, Nev. Last year, Nevada fought strenuously in Congress against a resolution approving Yucca Mountain as the site for the planned long-term nuclear waste repository, but the resolution passed. Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn “has said from the get-go he believes the legal arena is where this issue should be decided,” Guinn spokesman Greg Bortolin said. “He believes we’ll get a much fairer shake,” Bortolin said. In its lawsuits, Nevada has contended that the U.S. government violated the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which authorized a waste repository, by abandoning the geologic features of the Yucca Mountain site as the “primary” barrier against contamination, according to USA Today. Instead, U.S. officials are now relying on the waste storage casks and other “engineered” barriers, according to the Nevada suits. By using engineered barriers, the repository could be sited anywhere in the country, said senior Nevada Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams. Without a “rational, objective” geological standard for choosing a site in Nevada, “it’s like taking all the soldiers that are fighting in Iraq just from one state,” she said. The U.S. Energy Department, one of the defendants in the anti-Yucca Mountain lawsuits, has said that the congressional resolution approving Yucca Mountain as the repository site effectively negated much of the basis for the opposition lawsuits, according to USA Today. The resolution waived any failure by the government to observe prior laws, according to government legal briefs. They also charge that the 1982 act and subsequent amendments allow the use of a “total system performance” standard that can give geological features a secondary role. Nevada has also accused the other 49 states of violating the U.S. Constitution by arbitrarily imposing the “universally unwanted burden” of the planned repository, USA Today reported. In response, the Energy Department has said that the Constitution gives the federal government broad power over its own land and that Nevada was given a say in the political process leading to the selection of the Yucca Mountain site. Court rulings on the Nevada lawsuits are expected by the middle of next year, USA Today reported (Martin Kasindorf, USA Today, Dec. 9).
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