(The Associated Press distributed the following article on September 8.)
LAS VEGAS — State officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Energy Department over its plan to ship radioactive waste across the state to a planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
The case, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, claims the government did not complete required environmental studies before picking a 319-mile rail route dubbed the “Caliente Corridor.”
“The whole point of environmental review is to study the impacts before you make the decision, not after,” Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said.
An Energy Department spokesman did not respond to a call seeking comment.
The same appeals court in Washington, D.C., threw out a 10,000-year Environmental Protection Agency radiation standard for the repository in a ruling last month.
In the new lawsuit, the state claims the Energy Department violated the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law that requires environmental studies before federal projects are finalized.
The department announced in April it planned to build the rail line from Caliente, a small town 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, across the state to the Yucca Mountain repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
There currently is no rail line to the site the Bush administration and Congress picked in 2002 to entomb spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste now stored in 39 states. The Energy Department hopes to open the Yucca repository in 2010.
Project planners held several public meetings earlier this year to determine what to include in a draft environmental study to be completed next year on the Caliente route.
Nevada officials, who are fighting the Yucca project, claim that’s too late. They call the rail line expensive, impractical and unsafe.
Sandoval noted the department asked the Bureau of Land Management to set aside more than 300,000 acres to study, but said it failed to notify land owners along the route.
The state also maintains that developing any railroad line should be overseen by the federal Surface Transportation Board, which oversees rail projects, instead of the Energy Department.
In addition, the lawsuit challenges plans to use nuclear waste containment casks designed for truck transport on rail cars.