State loses another skirmish in fight against Yucca dump

Friday, Dec. 28, 2001 | 10:03 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The state has suffered a second setback this month in its legal fight to stop the designation of Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level nuclear waste repository.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said Thursday the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., refused on Dec. 19 to grant a motion to put off the radiation guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Energy for the proposed site.

Del Papa called the ruling by the appeals court a "minor and temporary setback."

The attorney general's office filed suit in the appeals court saying the radiation standards for Yucca Mountain, set by the Energy Department, failed to protect public health and safety, particularly the underground water resources.

The suit asked for a stay before the rules went into effect. But the court rejected the petition, saying the state should have first asked the Environmental Protection Agency to delay implementation of the rules.

"The strategic decision was made to seek the stay directly from the court as we believed that to seek an administrative remedy from the EPA would be futile," Del Papa said.

The state now will ask the EPA to postpone implementation of the regulation. If that fails, Del Papa said the state will return to the circuit court of appeals for an emergency stay of the rules.

The suit says the federal law that called for the burial of the nuclear waste envisioned that the rock formations would prevent any leakage of radiation.

Under the present scenario, the Energy Department plans to bury the waste in metal containers. The state contends that water seeping down into the burial chambers would hit containers, which would then corrode, releasing radioactivity into the water that flows off the site.

Those new standards by the Energy Department "change the criteria for evaluating the suitability of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain," Del Papa said.

Earlier this week the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to reconsider its decision on granting permanent water rights to the Energy Department for Yucca Mountain.

A panel hearing the case, in a 2-1 decision, initially ruled that the case should return to the federal court in Las Vegas to determine if the federal law supersedes the state law that prohibits a nuclear dump in Nevada.

The state Engineer's Office had denied the federal agency permanent water rights. The Energy Department filed suit but lost a decision before U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas. The DOE then appealed to the 9th Circuit and got Hunt's decision reversed. The appeals court sent the case back to Hunt.

The state Attorney General's Office said it will probably appeal that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Gov. Kenny Guinn announced that the city of Fallon has donated $7,500 and Douglas County has contributed $1,000 to the fund to fight against Yucca Mountain.

That money will be added to the $4 million the Legislature set aside for legal and other costs in the battle against the Energy Department. Clark County has contributed $1 million and donations have been received from Mesquite, Wells, Lovelock, Mineral County and Sparks.