New York Times:

WASHINGTON — In a setback for the Obama administration, a panel of judges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled on Tuesday that the Energy Department could not withdraw its application to open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Making good on a campaign pledge by President Obama, the Energy Department had formally sought to drop its plan for Yucca Mountain, a volcanic structure about 100 miles from Las Vegas. But states with major accumulations of waste from nuclear weapons production had petitioned to prevent the department from doing so.
In a 47-page decision, the three-member panel of administrative judges said the Energy Department lacked the authority to drop the petition because it would flout a law passed by Congress.
In the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, Congress directed the Energy Department to file the application and the commission to consider it and “issue a final, merits-based decision approving or disapproving the construction,” the judges said. “Unless Congress directs otherwise, D.O.E. may not single-handedly derail the legislated decision-making process.”
The effect of the decision is unclear for now. Congress would have to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the Energy Department to pursue the application. But the president’s budget for next year proposes no money at all; and while some members of the House are eager to appropriate funds, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, is adamantly opposed to the project.
Yet the decision could keep the application alive long enough for the politics to change.

The rest here.