NEVADA sues Bush: "What are they trying to hide?"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The state of Nevada on Wednesday sued the Bush administration to compel it to publicize key documents on its plan to build a long-delayed nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert.

Nevada Attorney General George Chanos sued U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and the Energy Department to require them to publicly release a draft application to build an underground waste dump in the Nevada desert about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Energy Department had originally intended to file that application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2004 but the project has been plagued by scientific foul-ups and political stonewalling.

"Defendants have no legal basis for their actions in withholding the right of access to such documents," Chanos wrote in the complaint, filed in a Nevada federal court. "What are they trying to hide?" Chanos said in a statement. "If the repository is safe, you'd think they'd be anxious to prove it."