Anti-nuke groups suing to halt construction of a crucial defense uranium facility in Tennessee told a federal judge their lawsuit against the Department of Energy should be heard in Washington, D.C., and not in Tennessee, as the agency wishes.
In a court filing last week, the plaintiffs said they opposed the DOE motion to move the lawsuit over the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Three environmental groups and several Tennessee residents sued DOE in July, claiming the agency violated U.S. law by changing the design for UPF to include three small buildings instead of one large building, but then failing to produce a supplemental environmental impact statement or site-wide environmental impact statement on the updated design.
In their latest filing, the plaintiffs said the alleged decisions on whether to conduct further environmental reviews were made in Washington, D.C., making that the proper venue for the case. DOE said in September the case should be heard in UPF’s home state of Tennessee.
Plaintiffs in the suit are: the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance; Nuclear Watch New Mexico; the Natural Resources Defense Council; and four people who live near Y-12. Defendants are Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Frank Klotz, administrator of DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Uranium Processing Facility will house will house enriched uranium processing operations. Its design is expected to be 90 percent complete this fall, after which construction can begin. The NNSA has pledged to complete the plant by 2025 at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion.
