DOE: No plans to ship Ohio waste through LV area

Wednesday, May 5, 1999 | 10:27 a.m.

Shipping companies bidding to transport low-level nuclear waste from Ohio have no intention of taking routes through Henderson or Boulder City, a Department of Energy spokesman said.

Although the DOE has no control over what routes nuclear waste shipments take, the five proposals so far bypass major urban areas in Southern Nevada, including Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City, DOE spokesman Darwin Morgan said Tuesday.

Boulder City and Henderson city councils along with the Clark County Commission have already passed resolutions to keep radioactive waste shipments out of their neighborhoods. But the DOE said shippers never planned to travel on packed urban routes.

"Lake Mead Drive in Henderson was never, never, never, ever an option," said Carl Gertz, acting assistant manager for national security at Nevada's DOE Operations Office.

Besides, the DOE cannot dictate a route for low-level nuclear waste, even after the Fernald Environmental Management Project shipments from Ohio leaked liquid in December 1997, Morgan said.

"A driver can use any route he considers safe," Morgan said. The shippers who are bidding to haul Fernald's radioactive debris will avoid Hoover Dam and the Las Vegas Valley, he said.

The southern route would take the trucks through Kingman, Ariz., south to Needles, Calif., then on U.S. 95 to Searchlight, connecting to Interstate 15 through Nipton, Calif., and then onto State Route 160, Morgan said. From there, the shipments would go to Pahrump and into the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Other proposed routes send truckloads of the low-level radioactive wastes from Caliente in Lincoln County through Warm Springs and Tonopah and then south to the Test Site, or another southern route through Kingman and through California for more than 50 miles to Death Valley Junction and then into the Test Site.

Whatever routes are used, truckers must follow U.S. Department of Transportation regulations and consider public safety, Morgan said.

Clark County fears that allowing low-level nuclear waste shipments near neighborhoods would set a precedent that would be used if a high-level nuclear waste repository opens at Yucca Mountain, said Dennis Bechtel, the county's Nuclear Waste Office director.

Since the DOE has not finished studies at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, no routes for high-level nuclear waste shipments have been chosen by the DOE.