20 States Sue U.S. to Force Disposal of Nuclear Waste
California and 19 other states sued the federal government Monday to force it to begin disposing of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants by 1998.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., demands that the federal government live up to obligations under a 1982 law requiring that it safely dispose of nuclear waste.
The 20 states all get a portion of their electricity from nuclear plants. Since 1982, people using electricity from those plants have paid a fee to cover the cost of building a federal nuclear waste dump, although one isn’t expected before 2010. The Energy Department says it might have a dump operating then at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
The states contend that the federal government has an obligation to provide a temporary storage dump until a permanent one opens.
More than 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored at 111 power plants. More than a dozen utilities that have nuclear power plants filed a lawsuit similar to the states’ suit, said a spokesman for state Atty. Gen. Frank Kelley in Michigan, one of the states that sued.
The other states filing the suit were Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin.
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