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US Court Rejects State's Nuclear Waste Cleanup Law

A US appeals court on Wednesday threw out a Washington state law barring the federal government from adding radioactive waste to the Hanford nuclear disposal site until existing contamination is cleaned up. The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal law pre-empts the state from halting waste disposal at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a 586-square-mile (1,520-square-km) site along the Columbia River in south-eastern Washington. It provided plutonium for World War Two atomic bombs and for the US Cold War arsenal.

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