A federal court dismissed motions for an injunction and a writ of mandamus that would force Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane to recuse herself from all decisions dealing with Yucca Mountain earlier this week. The group that filed the motions, consisting of Nye County, Nev., the state of South Carolina, and Aiken County, S.C, is appealing Macfarlane’s decision not to recuse herself, and they feared that she would use the time while the court decided on the appeal to set a strategy for the NRC on Yucca Mountain matters, especially the review of the Department of Energy’s license for the repository. The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision cited that the petitioners “have not shown a "clear and indisputable right to mandamus relief” and “have not satisfied the stringent requirements for injunctive relief" to grant the motions.
The petitioners’ appeal centers on what they deemed were violations of NRC laws regarding recusal standards and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Macfarlane has faced calls for her recusal from Yucca Mountain issues due to her previous academic work on the project, which Yucca supporters have argued demonstrates her bias against the proposed nuclear waste repository. In her decision to deny the recusal request, Macfarlane said her academic background on the subject could help in her decisions, rather than impede them with bias.
