After a final brief filed Friday, a federal judge will soon decide whether to dismiss Nevada’s lawsuit seeking to force the Department of Energy to remove half a metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium from the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).
Nevada in August sought permission to modify its 2018 lawsuit in U.S. District Court to now ask that Judge Miranda Du order the plutonium be taken out of the NNSS Device Assembly Building on the grounds that the radioactive fissile material is harming nearby state-owned property.
Nevada filed the lawsuit on Nov. 30, 2018, seeking to prevent shipment of weapon-usable plutonium to the NNSS from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The state and the court were at the time unaware that DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had already shipped the plutonium to Nevada.
In a Friday reply to DOE’s response to the state’s motion for leave to amend its complaint, Nevada again argued it should be allowed to amend its complaint because, in part, the state opposed both transport of the plutonium and its presence within its borders.
“Nevada’s request to remove the plutonium does not contradict its efforts to prevent transportation into the State,” Daniel Nubel, Nevada deputy attorney general, and a group of private attorneys designated by the state as special attorneys general, wrote in Friday’s reply. “Nevada did not move to enjoin ‘transportation’ for transportation’s sake. Nevada sought to prevent the plutonium’s presence at all.”
In early September, DOE argued Du should deny Nevada’s motion for leave to amend its complaint, in part because the state’s insistence that the government now ship the plutonium out of NNSS undermined its previous argument that shipping plutonium within Nevada was unsafe.
Du has not said when she might rule on Nevada’s motion to amend its complaint, though she has not asked for further briefings in the case beyond the reply brief filed Friday.
