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US to pay Nevada $65K in settlement over radioactive waste

John Locher/AP

FILE - In this April 9, 2015, file photo, people walk into the south portal of Yucca Mountain during a congressional tour of the proposed radioactive waste dump near Mercury, Nev., 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Nevada is branding federal shipments of weapons-grade plutonium to the state a year ago as a "secret ... smuggling operation," and urging a U.S. District Court judge in Reno to reject a bid to dismiss a lawsuit because the Energy Department has already promised no more material will be brought to the state. A court filing Monday, Dec. 16, 2019, seeks oral arguments in a yearlong legal battle over the state's bid for a court order to remove the highly radioactive material from a vast secure government reservation north of Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

By: SCOTT SONNER Associated Press

Posted at 9:56 AM, Jul 10, 2021

and last updated 2021-07-10 12:56:50-04

RENO (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to pay Nevada $65,000 after the government mislabeled and mischaracterized low-level radioactive waste that was shipped to a disposal site north of Las Vegas for more than five years.

The settlement agreement announced Thursday certifies multiple changes have been made to prevent unapproved waste from being shipped to the Nevada National Security Site.

The Energy Department notified Nevada in July 2019 that 33 packages of unapproved waste were sent to the site between 2013 to 2018 from another department site in Tennessee.

The waste was unrelated to weapons-grade plutonium the Department of Energy secretly trucked to the same site in 2018.

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US to pay Nevada $65K in settlement over radioactive waste

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