Judges To Speed Up Navy Appeal Panel Will Hear Waste Shipment Arguments In Mid-September

The Navy has picked up another victory in its campaign to resume dumping highly radioactive waste from its nuclear warships at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed late Tuesday to expedite consideration of the Navy appeal of the federal court ban that has blocked all but 27 waste shipments since June 1993.

The action came only hours after the House Appropriations Committee adopted legislation that would void that federal court ban beginning Oct. 1 over state objections as long as Defense Secretary William Perry certified that good faith negotiations with the state failed to resolve its opposition.

In a three-sentence order, the appellate court agreed to hold formal arguments in the appeal in mid-September in Seattle. Earlier this month, it had refused to expedite the proceedings and had set the arguments for November.

The Navy has asked the court to immediately allow 12 shipments of waste - six from the aircraft carrier Nimitz so it can be refueled and returned to the fleet and six from a cruiser and five submarines that are being taken out of service completely. Adm. Bruce DeMars, head of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, has advised the courts that another 12 shipments connected with the Nimitz refueling and the ship decommissionings must be made this fall to keep those operations on schedule.

The state, however, has challenged the legitimacy of the national security claims, saying the Navy has known since the ban was imposed two years ago about its refueling schedule and should have come up with alternative methods of meeting it just in case the shipment ban to Idaho remained in effect.

The Navy says it could not have done that legally because it was under a court mandate to assess all options for handling its nuclear waste and selecting one as an alternative would have biased the overall assessment.

In May, U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge extended the ban until this fall when he expects to rule on the state’s claim that the federal government improperly reached the conclusion that shipments to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory can resume safely.

But while the expedited appeal of Lodge’s ruling is another boost for the Navy, the schedule set by the court would probably not yield a ruling prior to Oct. 1, when the congressional legislation would take effect.