LAS VEGAS - Nevada state officials say a federal appeals-court hearing this week on a collection of lawsuits will give the state a chance to block the government's plans to entomb nuclear-reactor waste under a mountain 90 miles outside Las Vegas.
Part of our strategy has always been the court
said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leader of the state's fight against the Yucca Mountain project.
Reid said he hopes the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will kill it change direction or slow it down.
For 25 years, the state has lacked the political clout to stop the Yucca Mountain project, failing in Congress and with the White House.
The public debate will culminate in oral arguments before the appellate panel Wednesday on a case involving six state lawsuits against the federal government. A ruling is likely this summer.
This is the state's best chance said Bob Loux, Gov. Kenny Guinn's top anti-Yucca aide. There's still the licensing arena if we fail
but the playing field is certainly more level in the legal arena than in the political arena.
Nevada is challenging Environmental Protection Agency radiation limits for areas around the site, Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing rules, Energy Department environmental standards for studying and recommending the site, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recommendation and President Bush's approval.
The nuclear energy industry also is suing the government, saying it missed a 1998 deadline for finding a place to store the spent fuel accumulating at 103 commercial reactors and various industrial and military sites around the country.
The Energy Department would spend 25 years filling tunnels inside the mountain with metal casks containing 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel. The site then would be sealed. Scientists expect it would remain radioactive for at least 10,000 years.
Opponents say the Yucca Mountain area is prone to earthquakes and that even in the desert, enough water would seep through the mountain to corrode the metal containers and let deadly radioactive material escape.
Nevada officials argue that one state should not have to bear the burden of being the nation's nuclear waste dump.
The analogy we draw is that it's as if the president decided to wage war in Iraq and only send people from Nevada to do the fighting
said Martin Malsch, a McLean, Va., lawyer representing Nevada.
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