By SHANNON DININNY
The Associated Press
SEATTLE — Washington state and South Carolina filed another lawsuit Friday to compel the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume its consideration of a nuclear waste dump in Nevada, Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna announced in Seattle.
The announcement came hours after a presidential commission urged federal officials to generate local support for alternative sites to the contentious Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada and suggested building regional storage sites to warehouse spent nuclear fuel in the meantime.
It’s not the first time Washington state and South Carolina have sued.
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., threw out a lawsuit from the two states, finding that it was not an appropriate time to intervene because the NRC hadn’t yet made a final decision on the status of Yucca Mountain.
The Obama administration canceled a contentious plan to bury waste at the repository 100 miles outside of Las Vegas and sought to withdraw its license application before the agency. The commission has yet to rule.
The latest lawsuit asks the court to determine that the NRC has unreasonably delayed consideration of the license application, to compel the agency to immediately resume consideration and provide a timeline for a decision.
Washington and South Carolina are home to millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste left from nuclear weapons production — waste that has long been intended for a deep geologic repository for permanent storage underground.
“We filed today’s action because the current situation is unacceptable,” McKenna said.
“There’s always a risk that, in the future, in searching for a solution, that it would be just fine to leave large amounts of waste at Hanford,” he said. “That would be
incredibly unfair, considering this state has carried a disproportionate share of the burden.”
Several other entities, including Nye County, Nev., where Yucca Mountain is located, also are parties to the lawsuit, McKenna said.
The lawsuit also seeks attorneys’ fees and other costs.
