Controversy over Nevada's Yucca Mountain project has recently sparked documents from supporters and naysayers of the project, with both sides holding high-ranking positions in the Sagebrush State.
Yucca Mountain is a volcanic structure near the former Nevada Test Site - about 100 miles from Las Vegas - where the nation intended to permanently store its nuclear waste. The facility has been heavily debated since 1994 when the Department of Energy, or DOE, began drilling a 5-mile tunnel through the mountain.
The federal government poured more than $10 billion into the project before funding was cut in 2010 because of a belief that the site was not suitable to house nuclear waste. The decision left several DOE sites holding unwanted waste, including the Savannah River Site.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered the NRC in August 2013 to resume the licensing process using currently available funding appropriated from the Nuclear Waste Fund.
Nevada's U.S. Nuclear Energy Foundation, or USNEF, continues to voice support for the project. The group filed a Freedom of Information Act request earlier this month asking for "any and all emails, meetings, video teleconferences, teleconferences, and letters or other related communications or interactions between the DOE and Defense Threat Reduction Agency over the past 3 years" related to Yucca Mountain or any other underground facility.
Gary Duarte, director of the group, also requested a list of any and all meetings related to Defense Threat Reduction Agency - an agency within the Department of Defense.
"Please provide a complete and comprehensive list of DOE facilities toured or visited by any DTRA employee, contractor or subcontractor and any interactions prior to those tours and any and all records of phone calls and mail prior to or subsequent to those site visits or tours from 1/1/2012 to 2/28/2015," Duarte wrote.
On the heels of the FOIA request, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, led the charge in announcing a bill that would give the state new veto power over storing nuclear waste.
"For decades the federal government wasted billions of dollars attempting to recklessly move America's deadly high-level nuclear waste to a dump at Yucca Mountain, despite the overwhelming objections of Nevadans," Reid said in a statement.
Despite his comments, the USNEF represents a large percentage of Nevada's residents who are in favor of Yucca Mountain for its economic and employment incentives.
In a statement following Reid's bill proposal, Duarte stated that legislators are playing politics rather than looking at the facts.
He wrote, "Nevada and our citizens should seek to understand the science and technology associated with Yucca Mountain and use that understanding as a platform to negotiate for an economic asset for our citizens."
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013.