S.C. official to file waste site petition

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina's attorney general said Wednesday that he plans to press federal regulators to stick to plans to open a Nevada repository for thousands of tons of nuclear waste, much of which would come from a former weapons plant near the Georgia line.

Henry McMaster, the state's top lawyer, said he will file a petition this week asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to intervene in a dispute over the Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

For two decades, the site has been targeted to house the nation's high-level nuclear waste, including more than 4,000 metric tons of waste from the federal Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

In December the federal Government Accountability Office said it is cheaper to store nuclear waste in the short term in concrete casks at power plants, but that method would be more costly over time. The report said that approach would cost up to $34 billion during the next 100 years while the Yucca Mountain facility would cost at least $41 billion, noting that costs would rise when that waste has to be repackaged in the next century or a permanent repository is opened.

President Barack Obama, who pledged on the campaign trail to close Yucca Mountain, has announced that his latest budget pulls the plug on the site's funding. And Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said his department will withdraw its license application for Yucca Mountain .

Those actions prompted McMaster to say he would review South Carolina's legal options, to keep his state from becoming the end of the line for the nuclear waste.