State to announce new Yucca offensive

Cy Ryan and Mary Manning

Wednesday, July 24, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa today was expected to announce a renewed legal offensive against a proposed nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas

Del Papa said her office and private attorneys hired by the state are weighing additional lawsuits to block the U.S. Energy Department from going forward with the dump.

"We're looking at a big constitutional challenge," said Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams, who is coordinating the state's legal challenges against Yucca Mountain. "What form that takes is still being debated."

She refused to provide more details, though she said all of the environmental challenges have been made in existing lawsuits.

The state already has seven legal challenges to the proposed repository: five focusing in environmental issues in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., one involving water rights in the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, and another on water in state District Court in Tonopah.

President Bush on Tuesday signed congressional action that designates Yucca Mountain as the site to permanently dump 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial reactors and defense uses.

The Energy Department is now preparing a licensing request for the repository, which will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The license application is expected to be filed by the end of 2004, and if all goes according to the Energy Department's plan, Yucca Mountain could accept waste as soon as 2010.

Despite Nevada's recent political loss in Congress, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa says it is not time to roll over and bargain for benefits with the federal government over Yucca Mountain.

"It is untimely and unbecoming to suggest that Nevadans knuckle under and then negotiate from a position of weakness, as has been suggested by the shortsighted," she said in remarks prepared for a press conference today.

She said that those who want to bargain with the federal government for benefits "would scarcely hesitate to hand Nevada's children a promissory note in the form of a lethal container farm on a seismic ridge."

"We remain convinced that the fight is winnable," she said. "It is far too soon for the public to be discouraged." Any one of the lawsuits could halt the project, she said.

Adams said she expects the current lawsuits to move through the courts faster now that Congress has acted.

Del Papa was to be accompanied this morning by Washington attorney Joe Egan, whose firm has been hired for $2.5 million for three years.

Egan, also a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained nuclear engineer, said Tuesday the state has a 70 percent chance of stopping the repository.

There are three ways to stop the dump, Egan said: in court, at the licensing hearing before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or with a budget-busting price tag.

"There's a 70 percent (chance) to kill Yucca Mountain," attorney Joe Egan said today.

One of the first steps state officials plan to do is analyze the cost of the project.

"If Yucca Mountain is really a $300 billion project, instead of a $50 billion one, then elected officials will look at alternatives," Egan said.