Nevada files another suit against Yucca

Thursday, June 6, 2002 | 9:23 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- As expected, the state of Nevada this week filed another lawsuit against the Department of Energy aimed at derailing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project.

The suit charges that the DOE's environmental impact statement was "tantamount to fraud" in the words of Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, who filed the suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Under the National Environmental Policy Act, environmental impact statements are required for large-scale government and private projects and developments. The Nevada lawsuit alleges that the DOE's impact statement was full of holes, because the DOE has not yet even defined the Yucca project. Because so many details are unknown, the DOE could not compile a complete EIS, the suit says.

Among other assertions, the suit alleges:

-- That the DOE did not consider a number of impacts associated with shipping nuclear waste across the nation from temporary waste sites to Nevada.

-- That the DOE failed to consider the shipping effects on 54 of the 131 sites where waste is now stored.

-- That the DOE's Yucca plan involves establishing an above-ground waste storage area where waste would be kept until it was ready to be taken into underground tunnels -- a kind of interim waste site that Nevada law bans.

"Given the perpetual impact and irreversible nature of DOE's recommendation to move forward with Yucca Mountain, the American people deserve an exemplary environmental review of this project -- better than anything ever before performed," Del Papa said in a written statement. "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 worst EIS of its kind ever produced."

Nevada has filed a number of other lawsuits aimed at killing Yucca Mountain, including suits against the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.