[NukeNet] Nevada loses court battle over nuclear waste

[MJ]

Also check out the following "special report"  mojo
Special Report: The debate over Yucca Mountain
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3072031/

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Nevada loses court battle over nuclear waste

State had objected to plan for using trains to get to Yucca Mountain

AP

Updated: 1:28 p.m. MT Aug 8, 2006

WASHINGTON - Nevada was dealt a blow in its effort to avoid a radioactive
waste dump Tuesday as a federal appeals court turned aside arguments
against transportation plans.

Nevada contended that the Energy Department overstepped its authority and
violated environmental rules in deciding to rely mostly on trains to take
77,000 tons of commercial spent fuel and high-level defense waste from
sites around the country to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

The state also raised a series of technical objections to the department’s
selection of the 319-mile Caliente Corridor — stretching from Caliente
near the Utah border to Yucca — as its preferred route for getting nuclear
waste to the dump once it reaches Nevada.
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“We conclude that some of Nevada’s claims are unripe for review and the
remaining claims are without merit,” said a decision written by Judge
Karen LeCraft Henderson for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“We do no think that the inadequacies to which Nevada points make the
(Final Environmental Impact Statement) inadequate,” the opinion said. “The
DOE’s selection of the Caliente Corridor therefore was not arbitrary or
capricious.”

Joe Egan, an attorney for Nevada, said the state was considering whether
to ask for a rehearing.

“It just looks to us like the court didn’t want another anti-Yucca
decision here. They really went out of their way to pound this decision
into DOE’s favor, in our view,” Egan said.

The same court dealt a setback to Yucca Mountain two years ago by throwing
out the government’s radiation safety standards for the dump. The
Environmental Protection Agency still is rewriting those standards.

The court didn’t address some of Nevada’s underlying arguments, saying the
time was not right for review as aspects of the Energy Department’s
waste-transport plans aren’t final.

Egan also said that some of the ground covered in the lawsuit may be moot
because the Energy Department already has changed some of its plans,
including announcing a new multi-use canister for waste transportation.

The department also is considering reviving a possible alternative to the
Caliente Corridor because the Walker River Paiute Tribe, which has a
reservation in the western part of the state, recently withdrew its
long-held opposition to hosting a rail line for waste.

The challenge to the waste transport plan was just one avenue Nevada is
pursuing against the long-delayed Yucca Mountain project, which is now
scheduled to open in 2017 — 19 years late. The state is ready to challenge
the Environmental Protection Agency’s new radiation standards as soon as
they’re released, and it has sued over Nuclear Regulatory Commission
rule-making on the dump.

Nevada’s congressional delegation, led by Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev., also takes every opportunity to cut funding and create
political hurdles.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.



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"Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with 
innocent blood": Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1948

"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth": Mark Twain

Molly Johnson 
6290 Hawk Ridge Place
San Miguel, CA  93451
Cell: 805 296-0524

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