RENO — Nevada and South Carolina are jostling for a home-field advantage of sorts in a federal court battle that could result in a metric ton of weapons-grade plutonium being stored 70 miles from Las Vegas.
A U.S. district judge in Reno currently is considering Nevada’s request to block any of the radioactive shipments from a federal facility in South Carolina to Nevada’s nuclear security site.
South Carolina’s lawyers want the case moved to their state where a federal judge issued an order earlier that the plutonium be removed from the Savannah River site by Jan. 1, 2020.
Both sides claim the legal upper hand in new court filings regarding the proper forum to examine the U.S. Department of Energy’s decision last August to truck the plutonium to Nevada without further environmental review.