New Energy Secretary Rick Perry this week found himself on the pointy end of a lawsuit from the state he once led, which is demanding that the federal government halt all work on consent-based siting of nuclear waste and instead complete licensing of the Yucca Mountain geologic repository.
The lawsuit filed late Tuesday by the Texas Attorney General’s Office in the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals claims the Department of Energy and other agencies are in breach of federal law and prior court decisions demanding advancement of Yucca Mountain.
“Petitioner respectfully requests equitable relief prohibiting DOE from conducting any other consent-based siting activity and ordering Respondents to finish the Yucca licensure proceedings,” the lawsuit states. “Ultimately, if Respondents are unable (or unwilling) to complete their obligations, under the [1982 Nuclear Waste Policy] Act, or fail to approve the license for Yucca Mountain, the Court should exercise its equitable powers to correct the problem and help bring an appropriate end to a growingly unacceptable circumstance.”
Among the long list of defendants in the lawsuit are Perry, Texas governor from 2000 to 2015; Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; and their respective agencies.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act required that the federal government build a permanent repository for the growing amounts of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste around the country. Congress later mandated Yucca Mountain as that site, but the Obama administration in 2010 canceled the program and subsequently established a process under which willing communities would become home to separate storage facilities for defense and commercial waste.
Roughly 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel are now stored on-site at about 100 U.S. nuclear plants. Close to 2,610 metric tons of that is in Texas, the lawsuit says.
The Department of Energy referred questions on the lawsuit to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment. An NRC spokeswoman said the agency also could not comment on pending legislation.
