News 12 at 11 o'clock / Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011

AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. -- Billions and billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars have gone into the Yucca Mountain project. An Aiken County lawsuit hopes to make sure they get their money's worth.

Aiken County Administrator Clay Killian isn't giving up on the county's lawsuit to reopen the underground nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

"As long as we have the ability to do it, and we think that case as strong as it is, we'll continue to do that," he told News 12.

Now, joining up with Aiken County on the lawsuit is a county more than 2,000 miles away, among other parties.

The rural Nye County, Nev., has joined the fight. It happens to be where Yucca Mountain is located.

"There's an economic interest obviously involved, there's jobs, there's other spin-off operation that would be there," said Killian of the new petitioner.

However, the gates to Yucca Mountain are now closed in Nye County, and the Department Director of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office (NWRPO) there says the people are hurting.

"Well, apparently, [people of Nye County are] sitting there somewhere around 15 percent unemployment. We expect that if Yucca Mountain moved forward, then it could be a very strong economic driver for our economy," said Department Director Darrell Lacy to News 12 over the phone.

That's not the argument he's going to make in court with Aiken County. The first comes from a 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1983, which was signed into law after passing Congress.

"[It] says that Yucca Mountain is the site to be characterized and for a license to be filed to determine whether it can be done safely," he said.

The license application was filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2008 by the Department of Energy (DOE). It was the NRC's goal to say whether the site was safe or not so construction could continue.

When President Obama took office, the DOE under him moved to pull that license application in order to end Yucca Mountain. The NRC has yet to rule on President Obama's motion to withdraw that license. That's why the Aiken County lawsuit continues.

"The Department of Energy and the NRC were given some very clear directives on what to do. For them to make a unilateral decision that they will do something different without consulting Congress is against the law," said Lacy.

Killian says they're filing what's known as a Writ of Mandamus. That's a legal maneuver that will force the NRC to act.

But, when they do, Lacy says that could be another problem. He says the NRC has become a heavily politicized body when it's supposed to remain independent. The chairman is actually a former staffer for Nevada U.S. Senator Harry Reid. Sen. Reid is one of the biggest opponents of Yucca Mountain.