Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
    The Butte County lawsuit also says that the county is aware of spent nuclear fuel from at least two sources that is subject to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act “for which DOE has no other authority to provide federal interim storage capacity” are stored at the site.
     In one example, the lawsuit claimed the DoE transported spent nuclear fuel from Three Mile Island Unit 2 to the Butte County site starting in 1986. The final shipment took place in August of 1990. The DoE originally intended to store the spent nuclear fuel in wet storage pools at Test Area North at the site within Butte County. The pools were designed and constructed in the 1950s to store spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste from the long-shuttered nuclear aircraft engine program. The lawsuit said that the pools were environmental inadequate to provide interim storage.
     The 1995 Settlement Agreement required that the DoE move the spent nuclear fuel in Test Area North to dry storage at another location on the site and move other spent nuclear fuel as well as radioactive waste from wet storage and into dry storage until disposal.
     The other location is called the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center. The DoE started moving the spent nuclear fuel to other locations in 1999 under a twenty-year storage license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The license was supposed to expire in 2019 but it was extended another twenty years without the county being notified.
     The lawsuit said, “Butte County did not receive actual notice from DOE regarding DOE’s submission of an application to renew the license for an additional 20 years. Nor did DOE or NRC conduct any public outreach of any kind or conduct any hearings in Butte County regarding the continued storage.”
      The lawsuit claims that interim storage of waste from Three Mile Island Unit 2 has continued for more than thirty years. This is more than twenty five years longer than the target date set by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act for a permanent geological repository to begin receiving spent nuclear fuel. This would end federal interim storage. Plans to construct a permanent geological repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada were abandoned in 2010. This was largely due to political pressure from Nevada officials.
     The lawsuit says, “DOE has made no progress towards accepting spent nuclear fuel. To the contrary, DOE spent billions of dollars siting and constructing Yucca Mountain and now has essentially abandoned this statutory mandate.”
      In its request for relief, the county wants the court to declare that the DoE’s actions violated and continue to violate 42 U.S.C. § 10156(e) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act by failing to determine social and economic impacts of general interim storage capacity at issue. The lawsuit also wants the federal government barred from sending future shipments of Navy spent nuclear fuel to the desert. It also asks that the government cease further operation of interim storage of the Three Mile Island nuclear waste. The lawsuit demands that the DoE executes a  decommissioning plan for that storage capacity “as soon as practicable but no longer than twenty-four months after approval of the decommissioning plan by NRC and this Court, or until Defendants have demonstrated compliance with 42 U.S.C. § 10156(e).” The county also asked the court to issue other relief as it “may deem just, proper, and equitable.”
     The Butte County lawsuit concludes that “By granting the relief requested by Butte County in this Complaint, Congress will be more likely to take action to break the impasse and authorize a new plan for DoE.”