By KEN RITTER - ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the federal Energy Department of withholding documents that state officials say will show the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository can't be built safely.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Reno, is the fourth federal lawsuit the state has pending against the plan to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's radioactive waste in Nevada.

The suit seeks the release of a 2004 draft application prepared by contractors for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to open the repository.

"The federal government is required by law to share its important Yucca information with the host state, and we are entitled to such information under the Freedom of Information Act as well," Nevada Attorney General George Chanos said in a statement. "But DOE has refused to provide Nevada with this most important document."

An Energy Department spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the agency has made public on an Internet network "millions of pages of information" about the Yucca Mountain project, but was under no legal obligation to release its draft license application.

"Once the license application is submitted to the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), it will be made public," spokesman Craig Stevens said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.

"This department and this administration remain committed to the licensing, construction, and operation of Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel," Stevens said. "This lawsuit will not deter us."

The state's three-page complaint lists measures that Chanos said Nevada has taken to secure the draft license application, including requests by Gov. Kenny Guinn to the secretary of energy and to President Bush; subpoenaed demands from Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.; litigation before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing hearing board; a Freedom of Information Act request; and Energy Department administrative appeals.

All those requests were rebuffed, Chanos said.

"What are they trying to hide?" he said. "If the repository is safe, you'd think they'd be anxious to prove it."

Bob Loux, chief of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects and administrator of the state fight against the repository, said the state believes the document will show that the repository cannot meet Environmental Protection Agency radiation safety standards.

The Energy Department had planned to open the repository by 2010. But it missed a self-imposed deadline to apply for a license by the end of 2004, and licensing hearings are expected to take several years.

Last week, the acting director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management that oversees the project said the site should open in the next decade.

The process has been stalled by budget shortages, opposition by Nevada lawmakers including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a controversy over whether scientists falsified quality assurance data and by a court-ordered rewrite of EPA radiation standards.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ordered stricter standards, also heard oral arguments last October and is expected to rule soon on a state claim that the Energy Department overstepped its authority, violated environmental rules and needs to rewrite its plan for shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

Nevada also has asked the court to review Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulings, and another lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas that would deny state groundwater supplies to the arid desert site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

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On the Net:

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2006/mar/22/032210091.html