Nuclear cargos still use local streets

Monday, July 10, 2000 | 11:08 a.m.

Despite angry protests from Southern Nevada officials a month ago, low-level nuclear waste shippers continued to send their cargos for burial at the Nevada Test Site along busy city routes, according to a report released today.

A quarterly report from the Department of Energy tracking shipments from Jan. 1 through March 31 showed truckloads of waste from across the country crossing Hoover Dam, traveling through Henderson on Lake Mead Drive, over Craig Road and Cheyenne Avenue in North Las Vegas and through Las Vegas along the Interstate 15/U.S. 95 interchange.

The Clark County Nuclear Waste Division released a map and the quarterly report to local governments today. Division Director Dennis Bechtel said the county will supply the information to local governments on a quarterly basis.

In June North Las Vegas and state officials objected to waste shipments on Craig Road and Cheyenne Avenue traveling to the Test Site from January through March 31.

The North Las Vegas City Council passed a resolution on June 7 asking the DOE to exclude the highway routes through the city and the Las Vegas Valley. Another seven shipments traveled the same routes through June 30, the second-quarter report said.

According to the latest report, another 39 shipments traveled down Lake Mead Drive, 15 of them after crossing Hoover Dam.

The DOE has agreed for more than a year to work with those who generate nuclear waste in other states to encourage their shippers to avoid surface streets through North Las Vegas and Henderson.

In a letter dated June 16 and obtained by the Sun, the DOE's Rocky Flats office in Colorado warned its contractor to "avoid shipping low-level waste over Hoover Dam and through the Las Vegas Valley."

The latest report showed that eight shipments traveled over Hoover Dam and through the Las Vegas Valley from the Colorado site. Seven of those shipments traveled through North Las Vegas.

While the DOE urges waste generators to encourage their shipping companies to avoid urban areas, it is ultimately the shippers who decide where the trucks go, department spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said. Interstates are approved by federal regulators for low-level nuclear waste shipments.

Gasoline and hazardous chemicals, considered far more dangerous than low-level radioactive wastes, travel in tanker trucks along the same routes.

The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, receives roughly 600,000 cubic feet each year of low-level radioactive wastes such as contaminated laboratory equipment and clothing packed into 55-gallon drums for burial. The Rocky Flats cargo and shipments from a Fernald, Ohio, uranium processing plant are mostly dirt.

Shipping was halted from Ohio in 1997 after several trucks leaked contaminated fluid.

The second-quarter total was 176,560 cubic feet of low-level nuclear wastes from across the country. The bulk of the wastes -- 99,044 cubic feet -- came from Rocky Flats, where plutonium was processed for nuclear warheads during the Cold War.

The cities of Las Vegas and Henderson in the past year have objected to all shipments along city streets. In February Las Vegas adopted an ordinance banning shipment of high-level nuclear waste -- which has not been shipped. The legality of the measure is in question.

The Henderson City Council also adopted a similar resolution last year, spokeswoman Vicki Taylor said, prohibiting nuclear shipments along Lake Mead Drive.

The DOE is not required under federal transportation laws to tell local governments about which routes the drivers will use or what time the shipments will arrive. The waste generators do inform the state of Nevada, Harkess said.

The DOE has targeted Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation's dump for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste. If the site passes scientific muster, spent fuel rods and weapons material could start rolling through Southern Nevada along with the low-level wastes as soon as 2010.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has said he will personally arrest the driver of the first shipment of high-level nuclear waste coming through the city.