The state of Texas on Monday objected to Nevada’s attempt to intervene in the lawsuit demanding that the federal government move ahead with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
“Texas’s Petition seeks equitable remedies for decades of federal inaction on growing, above-ground stockpiles of nuclear waste. By contrast, Nevada’s intervention seeks to reinvigorate a policy debate on whether Yucca Mountain should be the nation’s sole nuclear repository. In sports vernacular, Texas is playing football; but Nevada wants to play baseball,” the Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a filing in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Texas AG in March sued the Energy and Treasury departments and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, along with the head of each agency and the members of the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. The Lone Star State had many demands, primarily that the federal government halt consent-based siting for nuclear waste storage and resume NRC licensing for the Yucca site in Nevada.
Failure to do so violates the demand of 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act that DOE build a permanent home for U.S. defense and commercial waste; and the act’s 1987 amendment that designated Yucca Mountain as that location, according to Texas.
The state and federal governments are in mediation over the lawsuit; but that has not stopped Nevada, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and a number of utilities from requesting to intervene in the case, which would allow them to file legal briefs on behalf of the U.S. government. Nevada said its residents would be harmed if Texas’ lawsuit succeeds.
In a filing last week, Texas also said the Nuclear Energy Institute’s request to intervene was premature and should be frozen or dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled at a later date.
