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Nuclear Waste: Nevada Files Lawsuit to Block Yucca Mountain Plan Nevada yesterday filed a lawsuit to block federal plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a site 90 miles north of Las Vegas, according to the New York Times (see GSN, Dec. 3). The suit claims that when deciding to store waste at Yucca Mountain, the U.S. Energy Department disregarded the site’s geology, considering only the metal containers that would hold the waste, the Times reported. The department has found that water moved faster through the site than previously thought. Although water can spread radioactive wastes, the department said that it had confidence that the planned storage containers could protect the water. Nevada’s suit claims federal law requires the department to make its choice for a waste storage site based on the site’s geology. A change in policy to base the decision on the merits of manufactured storage containers could allow the Energy Department to approve permanent waste storage “at virtually any physical site in the United States,” the suit said. “Congress wanted the assurance of geologic isolation for the simple reason that we’re fallible as human beings,” said Joseph Egan, one of the lawyers for the state. “We can’t have any assurance that what we design is going to be perfect.” Tests carried out by Nevada on the alloy that would be used in the canisters showed that certain combinations of heat and water caused corrosion in less than a year, Egan said. Nevada also has a lawsuit pending over a rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that requires a repository site to be capable of retaining nuclear waste for 10,000 years before a license can be issued. The Energy Department has estimated that peak releases would come after this time. Nevada wants the period extended to 100,000 years or longer, according to the Times. The Energy Department was scheduled to begin accepting waste from 125 U.S. nuclear facilities in January 1998. The Yucca Mountain site, however, will not be ready for at least a decade, the Times reported (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Dec. 18).
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