By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON —The state of Nevada filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the U.S. Energy Department, challenging the department’s final environmental impact statement (EIS) on the proposed long-term nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain (see GSN, June 6).

“The Department of Energy has utterly failed to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act — the nation’s most fundamental environmental law, and one whose requirements must be met,” said Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa in a press release.  “By rushing the EIS out the door ... DOE has made a mockery of NEPA and must be challenged.”

The Yucca Mountain EIS, completed in February, violates NEPA and related provisions in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act — the legislation that regulates the Yucca Mountain project — in a number of ways, Del Papa said.  The EIS failed to account for the environmental effects and terrorism risks of thousands of nuclear waste shipments traveling throughout the country, and through major urban areas, en route to Yucca Mountain, the lawsuit claims (see GSN, May 22). The EIS also did not consider the environmental impacts of 54 of the sites that would ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, according to the lawsuit (see GSN, April 26).

The Nevada lawsuit claims that Energy’s decision to use man-made waste containers as part of the repository, instead of relying solely on geologic features, is prohibited by law and therefore the EIS evaluates a prohibited plan (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2001).  The department also included design options for the construction of an aboveground storage facility at the Yucca Mountain site, which is prohibited, and did not consider other nuclear waste storage options that did not require the use of Yucca Mountain, according to the lawsuit.

The EIS also lacks sufficient detail to allow the public to fully evaluate the Yucca Mountain project, the lawsuit says. Even though the EIS was completed a month before Energy recommended the Yucca Mountain site, it was not provided to Nevada and the public for comment, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also claims Energy did not provide a mandatory 30-day circulation period before it issued the EIS and did not issue a mandatory Record of Decision.

“The American people deserve an exemplary environmental review of this project — better than anything ever before performed,” Del Papa said.  “Instead, we have a document that is tantamount to fraud and that has been described to me by highly experienced environmental lawyers as perhaps the worse EIS of its kind ever produced.”

Guinn Looking Forward to Energy’s Day in Court

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn said he is looking forward to seeing Energy and the nuclear power industry in court (see GSN, April 12).

“For the first time in this process, DOE won’t be able to hide behind its political allies in Congress when the courts begin their review of DOE’s record on this project,” he said in a press release.  “We have developed some real momentum going into the home stretch, and we’ve made progress that people thought was impossible.”

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