Energy Secretary offers deal to remove plutonium secretly shipped to Nevada

[Borealis]

https://apnews.com/cb7cbb81c8e04bf58a3a8e789e32ba05

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto says Energy Secretary Rick Perry has committed to expediting the removal of weapons-grade plutonium it secretly shipped to a
site in Nevada last year if she agrees to stop blocking appointments to vacant positions in his department.

But it’s not clear how soon that could happen or where the radioactive material that’s currently scheduled to be moved to New Mexico by 2026-2027 would go in the meantime. “We had
talked about a three- to five-year period. But I’m waiting to see what I have in writing,” Cortez Masto, D-Nevada, said.

The state of Nevada has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to order the government to remove the plutonium from a site north of Las Vegas while it considers the
state’s appeal seeking to overturn a ruling by a U.S. judge in Reno refusing to issue a temporary injunction banning the shipment of any more of the material to Nevada.

A federal judge in South Carolina has ordered the Department of Energy to remove a metric ton (2,204 pounds) of plutonium from the Savannah River site in that state by Jan. 1, 2020.
Over the objections of Nevada, the Department of Energy approved a plan last August to ship the material from South Carolina to the Nevada National Security Site north of Las Vegas
for staging before it moves on to another site in the government’s military nuclear complex.

[Solokiller]

Sounds a awful lot like blackmail to me.

[Sableye]

nuclear blackmail...

[Clovis]

I guess it's like a reverse Gabe Newell, except that instead of releasing terrible content with the promise of Half-Life, it's Half-Life being released with the promise of... content.

[ScriptKitt3h]

This all wouldn't be as much of a problem if Congress had gone through and had Yucca Mountain built and completed into full operational status.