SC Attorney General Henry McMaster

McMaster says that by the end of February, he will have begun legal action to make sure a Nevada repository stays open to receive thousands of tons of nuclear waste. A large part of that waste is slated to come from the Savannah River Site, a former weapons plant in Aiken County.

McMaster says he is trying two legal avenues: First, asking to intervene in proceedings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

That is, to get into the process where the Department of Energy has now been instructed by the Administration, the Obama Administration, to withdraw their petition to crank up the Yucca Mountain facility. So we want to oppose that, and in order to do that we need to be a party to the proceedings.”

The other thing that we are doing is that we are going to seek a temporary restraining order, or an injunction, or something that they call a mandamus that is in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is not the usual starting place for action in federal court, but under the nuclear power rules, that’s where you start.

Congressman Jim Cyburn says that the President has left the Nevada repository out of the budget and it may yet be funded. McMaster says the president’s stopping the licensing process is more bothersome to him.

“Congress can still put it in the budget, but even so, the President has directed the Department of Energy, which is a cabinet agency which he directs, to tell them to stand down and withdraw their application from the nuclear regulator commission. That’s got nothing to do with the budget,” McMaster counters. [Read more...]