Court Agrees With New Mexico, Bars Nuclear Waste Plan
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WASHINGTON — A federal court Tuesday ordered the government to halt its plans to ship nuclear wastes to an underground storage facility near Carlsbad, N.M.
Congress has not authorized the storage of radioactive wastes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, U.S. District Judge John Garret Penn said in ruling in favor of New Mexico, which opposed the project.
The Energy Department wants to ship as many as 8,500 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste from Idaho to the site. The test program was to help officials decide whether to use the location as a permanent disposal site.
Penn wrote, however: “Defendants have presented no convincing evidence that the hazardous waste materials they seek to introduce . . . can be retrieved.”
New Mexico officials argued that the underground salt beds could collapse and make it impossible to remove the radioactive wastes, so the storage site would become permanent by default.
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