[NYTr] Bush Regime Hauled to Court over New Mexico Uranium Enrichment Plant

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[... but we're all supposed to be totally freaked by Iran's nuclear
research program.]


Public Citizen - Sep 7, 2007
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2507

Public Interest Groups Appear in Federal Appeals Court to 
Challenge License for Proposed New Mexico Uranium Enrichment Plant

Louisiana Energy Services’ Project Would 
Violate Law and NRC Safety Regulations

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)
and Public Citizen today appeared before the United States Court of
Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to challenge the legality of the license
for Louisiana Energy Services’ (LES) proposed uranium enrichment plant
near Eunice, N.M. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted the
license in June 2006, despite not having decided on the classification
of the depleted uranium waste the facility will create.

“The license violates NRC’s regulations because it would allow the huge
quantities of hazardous radioactive waste the plant would produce to be
disposed of by shallow-land burial, even though the agency’s own
regulations do not allow it and radiation doses to the public would far
exceed regulatory limits,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of
NIRS. “The NRC ultimately may decide that the waste is not suitable for
near-surface disposal, which will cost billions of dollars, and LES
hasn’t ensured that funding.”

NIRS and Public Citizen also contend that the license is illegal
because the NRC issued an environmental impact statement, then decided
it was incomplete and had to supplement it after the public hearing.
But under federal law, the public must have the complete and final
environmental impact statement for consideration at the time of the
hearing.

“LES and the NRC are on shaky legal ground here,” said Michele Boyd,
legislative director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “We’ve gone to
the federal courts because the NRC has refused to meaningfully address
the hazards this project poses to the people of New Mexico and nearby
west Texas.” 

LES is a consortium of European and U.S. energy companies dominated by
Urenco, a group of British, Dutch and German government and corporate
entities, including industry giants such as Exelon Corp., Entergy
Corp., Duke Energy and Westinghouse Electric Co. Each of these
companies has an interest in greater ownership of the nuclear fuel
chain and formed LES to develop a new uranium enrichment facility.

LES’s license, approved on June 23, 2006, was the first issued by the
NRC for a full-scale uranium enrichment plant. NIRS and Public Citizen
sued the NRC challenging the license in August 2006, after nearly three
years of hearings on the project before an NRC administrative law
panel. Attorney Lindsay Lovejoy of New Mexico is representing the two
groups.