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Sammy Hayes could barely hold back tears when she spoke of her late husband, a former employee at Los Alamos National Laboratories. "When you watch somebody you love die, you want to take somebody out and wring their neck because you know in your heart they were exposed to stuff that causes three separate cancers," she said. Hayes appealed to the national Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health on Thursday at the Doubletree Hotel, in regards to her husband's death in 2005 of cancer-related complications. Claimants from Los Alamos National Laboratories appealed for work-related injury compensation from the federal government, seeking reparations after allegedly being exposed to radioactive materials and other hazardous substances.

Opposition mounted this week against a federal court ruling that limits the power of a regional waste compact to restrict radioactive waste going to disposal facilities like the one operated in Tooele County by EnergySolutions Inc. Nothing short of states' rights are at stake in a federal court ruling on the government authority over radioactive waste headed to EnergySolutions Inc.'s Utah disposal site. In filing a friend-of-the-court brief Thursday in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, New Mexico joined a growing line of opponents to a May ruling by U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart. It basically said EnergySolutions no longer has to answer to the Northwest Interstate Compact on low-level radioactive waste. Utah, the Northwest Compact and the Rocky Mountain Compact, which share a low-level waste disposal site in Hanford, Wash., are appealing Stewart's ruling, and they filed papers in the case last week. Six regional compacts, joined by New Mexico and the Council of State Governments, weighed in Thursday. And, with all the papers filed Thursday, eight of the nation's ten congressionally established compacts have weighed in the effort to overturn Stewart's ruling. Compacts represent all but six states. The two remaining compacts, which manage waste within eight states, have through Tuesday to join the fray.

The state of New Mexico has filed a court brief backing a uranium company's request for a federal appeals court review of an April decision. The decision says a proposed uranium mine site in western New Mexico is on American Indian land. The attorney general's office and the governor's chief counsel filed the friend of the court brief Monday before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Uranium Resources on Monday said it plans to ask a US appeals court to reconsider its ruling that a proposed uranium recovery site in northwestern Mexico is on Indian land and subject to permitting requirements under the US Environmental Protection Agency's Safe Drinking Water Act. The Lewisville, Texas-based company said that it plans to file a petition Monday asking for an "en banc" review in which all judges in the appellate court would rehear the case, instead of the three-judge panel that issued the original ruling. The 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals on April 17 said it agreed with EPA's 2007 finding that Section 8 of the property in Churchrock, New Mexico, falls under federal, not state, jurisdiction.

A uranium-mining company has asked a federal appeals court to review an April decision that a proposed uranium mine site in western New Mexico is on Native American land. Durango auto dealer custom residential construction Katie Ogier - The Wells Group Lewisville, Texas-based Uranium Resource Inc. said Monday it asked the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver for an "en banc review" of the decision that sided with the Environmental Protection Agency. Monday was the deadline for making the request. A 2-1 decision made on April 17 by a three-judge panel requires URI subsidiary Hydro Resources Inc. to obtain a groundwater injection permit from the Environmental Protection Agency, which delays the company's plans to mine for uranium near Church Rock. The company already has a state groundwater-injection permit.

NUCLEAR test veterans in Derbyshire fear they could die before getting compensation after a court ruled that the Ministry of Defence could appeal against their claims. At a High Court hearing earlier this month a judge ruled that more than 1,000 servicemen, who blame their ill health on being exposed to radiation during the nuclear tests in the 1950s, could sue the MoD. But now the MoD has been given the right to appeal against that ruling and veterans in the county say they don't think they will be alive to see a pay out.

Friends of the Earth said it filed an appeal May 22 with the South Carolina Supreme Court over state regulators' approvals for two new Westinghouse AP1000s at the Summer reactor site. The group is challenging the legality of the South Carolina Public Service Commission's decision in February to permit South Carolina Electric & Gas to build the two new units and to begin recovering some of the costs from ratepayers during construction. The PSC in March denied FOE's appeal of its decision. In a statement, FOE said the filing is the first legal challenge to South Carolina's Baseload Review Act and a decision made under it. The Baseload Review Act, passed in 2007, provides for early cost recovery for nuclear power plant projects.

One of the tragic legacies of the nuclear age is the open-air testing that occurred in the 1950s with U.S. servicemen as the guinea pigs. Many contracted cancer from their exposure to radiation and have been trying to extract compensation from the federal government ever since. A recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims brings that testing closer to home because the claimant says he worked at Beale Air Force Base in the mid-1950s. But Lyle Larsen wasn't present during the nuclear testing. He claims he received a cancer-causing dose of radiation after the blast. Larsen filed his claim in 1998, alleging he contracted acute myelocytic leukemia - a rare bone marrow cancer - from radiation at the nuclear test site.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver has upheld a 2007 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior decision that Hydro Resources Inc.'s Churchrock Section 8 mine site is located in "Indian Country." HRI challenged the decision last May before the Court of Appeals. The decision means that HRI will have to obtain an underground injection control permit from EPA rather than the New Mexico Environment Department before it can move forward with its plans for in-situ leach uranium mining in Section 8. Navajo Nation Department of Justice, Churchrock Chapter, New Mexico Environmental Law Center, Southwest Research Information Center and Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining all participated in the matter, filing comments on the proposed determination in 2006.

"The La Salle County property tax review board ruled the equalized assessment value for Exelon Nuclear's generating plant south of Seneca is $525 million. J. Bradley Fewell, legal counsel for Exelon Nuclear, issued a written statement Friday saying the assessed value "will increase the station's property taxes to approximately $21 million per year, a 75 percent increase from what the station paid in 2009." "We will evaluate all options available to us, including an appeal to the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board," Fewell said."

"The legal stage is set for Utah's big showdown with EnergySolutions over the company's efforts to dispose of low-level radioactive waste from Italy at its Clive facility in Tooele County. Attorneys from multiple dimensions in the battle are set to argue the case Thursday before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the authority of multistate compacts governing the storage of the material will be picked apart. At issue is the May 2009 ruling by federal Judge Ted Stewart and the state's subsequent appeal that EnergySolutions' facility is not a "regional" disposal facility and thus falls outside the purview of a compact's ability to restrict the type of nonregional waste that is received."

Environmental groups are asking the federal courts to block to plans to build two nuclear reactors at an east Georgia power plant. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said Thursday it is asking a federal judge to review an early-site permit granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow some construction at Georgia Power Co.'s Plant Vogtle facility. The groups hinge a part of the appeal on contentious legislation that passed this year allowing the utility to charge ratepayers ahead of time for the costs of building the two new reactors. The east Georgia project is scheduled to be completed in 2017. It could be the first new nuclear project to break ground in the country in three decades. Georgia Power is a subsidiary of Southern Co.

Environmental groups are asking the federal courts to block to plans to build two nuclear reactors at an east Georgia power plant. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said Thursday it is asking a federal judge to review an early-site permit granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow some construction at Georgia Power Co.'s Plant Vogtle facility. The groups hinge a part of the appeal on contentious legislation that passed this year allowing the utility to charge ratepayers ahead of time for the costs of building the two new reactors. The east Georgia project is scheduled to be completed in 2017. It could be the first new nuclear project to break ground in the country in three decades. Georgia Power is a subsidiary of Southern Co.

"Conservationists are challenging a federal court decision that denied their request to halt uranium mining north of the Grand Canyon. Three conservation groups and two American Indian tribes filed an appeal last week to the June 17 decision. Denison Mines Corp. operates a uranium mine 6 miles north of Grand Canyon National Park on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land. Environmentalists sued the BLM last year, alleging Denison's mine plan and environmental analyses are outdated. They filed for a preliminary injunction earlier this year to stop the mining operation until the lawsuit is heard. "

One of the world's top climate scientists has written a personal new year appeal to Barack and Michelle Obama, warning of the "profound disconnect" between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem. With less than three weeks to go until Obama's inauguration, Professor James Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Professor John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.

An Albuquerque-based environmental group has gone to the state Court of Appeals over a discharge permit for a uranium enrichment plant near Eunice. Citizens Against Radioactive Dumping says it feels like state officials ignored its concerns about the permit. The state Water Quality Commission in April upheld the New Mexico Environment Department's decision in favor of the permit for the Louisiana Energy Services facility.

Opponents of the relicensing of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey have filed an appeal of a ruling that rejected their efforts to have the issue of metal fatigue of the plant's recirculation's nozzles reconsidered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Earlier this year a coalition of groups asked the Atomic Safety Licensing Board to reopen the relicensing record to reanalyze whether five recirculation outlet nozzles on the reactor vessel will sustain too much stress over an additional 20 years. The 38-year-old plant's operating license is due to expire next April.

Bikini Islanders in the Marshall Islands hope their case for additional compensation for damage caused US nuclear weapons tests will yield results. Their quest to be given more money has been revived in a new round of litigation in the US court of appeal, with a ruling expected in the next few months.

As a lawsuit filed by landowners near the former Rocky Flats nuclear manufacturing plant approaches its third decade, the case has finally been cleared to move to the appeals court. U.S. District Court Judge John L. Kane on Tuesday entered a formal judgment awarding a class of landowners near the plant $376.8 million.

An appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling striking down Initiative 297, Washington state's voter-approved measure that would have barred the federal government from shipping waste to the Hanford nuclear site until all existing waste there is cleaned up.

DENVER (AP) - Federal judges in Denver say they're surprised the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued permits to allow a company to leach uranium out of an aquifer that supplies drinking water to thousands of Navajos in New Mexico. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Monday in a case brought by opponents of the mine.