An increased risk of radioactive contamination combined with the flouting of federal environmental laws should have persuaded a federal judge to block the Department of Energy from sending weapon-usable plutonium to Nevada, the Silver State told an appeals court this week.
Nevada wants the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California to overturn U.S. District Judge Miranda Du’s January refusal to grant a preliminary injunction that would block the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from shipping more weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).
The semiautonomous DOE agency sent 500 kilograms of such plutonium to the NNSS some time before November to comply with a 2017 order from a district judge in South Carolina. In that lawsuit, the judge directed the NNSA to remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Jan. 1, 2020.
Nevada said the NNSA intentionally neglected to tell then-Gov. Brain Sandoval (R) or the state’s congressional delegation about the shipment even after Nov. 30, when the state sued to stop it. The state sought a preliminary injunction the same day, which Du denied not because the plutonium had already been shipped to NNSS, but on the legal grounds that the state would not suffer irreparable harm from such a shipment.
Citing NNSA filings in the District Court in South Carolina, Nevada argued in its Monday appeals brief that moving the plutonium to NNSS would expose workers there to “significant,” “unnecessary,” and “needless” radiation.
That evidence, lawyers for Nevada wrote, “on its own supports a finding of irreparable injury.” The state also maintained that the NNSA needed to conduct a new, lengthy environmental review before moving plutonium to Nevada from Savannah River.
The NNSA maintains that its reliance on old environmental reviews, updated by a supplement analysis published around August, was legal, and thorough enough to protect Nevadans from any hazard associated with the material now stored at NNSS’ Device Assembly Facility.
