From MSNBC.com 

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators took a first step Monday toward allowing a radioactive waste dump in Nevada, agreeing to formally review the government's license application for the project.

It will still take the Nuclear Regulatory Commission up to four years to consider the Energy Department's 8,600-page application and decide whether to grant the federal government permission to build the 77,000-ton dump.

Still the NRC's determination that the license application was complete enough to be "docketed" for review was a step forward for the Energy Department, which submitted the application in June after years of delay.

The commissioners' decision came over objections from the state of Nevada, which does not want to host the nation's first nuclear waste dump, to be carved into a volcanic ridge called Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

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