Governor Sandoval's Office reports the State of Nevada has filed a lawsuit challenging a Federal Government plan to ship weapons grade plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).
The lawsuit was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Nevada seeking a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The motion argues the plan for plutonium storage at NNSS violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and associated regulations.
“As I have made clear throughout my tenure as Governor, Nevada will not stand for anything that could potentially harm the health, safety and/or welfare of our citizens,” Governor Brian Sandoval said. “So long as I am Governor of the Silver State, Nevada will fight this issue at every level.”
Nevada claims that DOE failed to prepare a new or supplemental environmental impact statement as required under NEPA that fully evaluates the impacts of shipping and storing one metric ton of plutonium. They say DOE also failed to evaluate the cumulative impacts of additional future plutonium shipments to Nevada. Specifically, they say DOE failed to evaluate alternatives to shopping the plutonium by January 2020, for storage at the Device Assembly Facility. DOE also failed to assure Nevada that plutonium would be removed by a certain date and failed to address concerns that an additional amount of plutonium might be shipped to NNSS.
Moreover the complaint asserts that DOE's Supplement Analysis fails to fully evaluate transportation impacts and risks, particularly with shipping routes in Southern Nevada that have been affected by new developments. They said DOE has not evaluated how the shipments could specifically impact the Las Vegas metropolitan area.
(Governor Sandoval's Office contributed to this report).
