Court Sides With Nevada in Nuclear Case

A federal has ruled in favor of Nevada in its opposition to the use of the state’s water in the construction of a planned nuclear waste site.

In his 24-page ruling last week, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt rejected an emergency motion by attorneys for the U.S. Department of Energy that would have allowed the continued use of the state’s water supply at the Yucca Mountain site, the Las Vegas Review-Journal said Wednesday.

DOE workers had been using the state’s water supply in the drilling of boreholes at the mountain until a state engineer ordered the practice to stop.

The fact that DOE officials appeared to be dramatically behind their initial schedule at the Yucca Mountain site was especially troubling to Hunt, the newspaper said.

Either that is so, and this is not site characterization, or it would appear that the DOE misled Congress and the president in its application for approval of the site, Hunt wrote in his decision.