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The attorneys general of New York, Connecticut and Vermont sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, challenging a new commission policy stating that nuclear waste can be safely stored at a nuclear power plant for 60 years after a reactor goes out of service....   >>>

The attorneys general of New York, Connecticut and Vermont sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, challenging a new commission policy stating that nuclear waste can be safely stored at a nuclear power plant for 60 years after a reactor goes out of service.



The three states argued that the policy, adopted in December, violated two federal laws requiring that a full environmental review be carried out at each nuclear site before permission for long-term storage could be granted.



“Our communities deserve a thorough review of the environmental, public health and safety risks such a move would present,” New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said in a statement.



In a phone interview, Attorney General William H. Sorrell of Vermont said “a prudent federal response to the problem of spent fuel storage might be different from one site to the next — that’s what this is about.”



The attorneys general noted that storage of nuclear waste remained a nagging issue for the federal government. After years of work by the Energy Department to prepare Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a permanent repository for nuclear waste, the Obama administration in 2009 ruled out using that site. (State utility regulators have challenged that decision in a lawsuit.)



**The excerpt above is taken from the NYT article, "3 States Challenge Federal Policy on Storing Nuclear Waste," written by Matthew L. Wald which is linked below. Do click through to read more about this issue.**