Increased amounts of nuke waste to travel through state

Thursday, April 5, 2001 | 11:12 a.m.

The amount of low-level nuclear waste shipped to the Nevada Test Site is expected to increase about 60 percent this year, according to the Energy Department.

Shipments of contaminated clothing, laboratory equipment and soil buried at the site, designated a regional repository for cleanup activities at federal facilities nationwide, are expected to increase to 1 million cubic feet from an average of 611,000 annually, DOE environmental management chief Carl Gertz said Wednesday.

Most of the trucks taking the waste to the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, are expected to take rural routes and avoid busy Las Vegas thoroughfares, Gertz told the Citizens Advisory Board for Nevada Test Site Programs, meeting in Las Vegas.

"We believe it's important to keep goodwill in Nevada," Gertz said. "Therefore, we are trying to keep the shipments out of the Spaghetti Bowl."

In the last quarter of 2000, eight low-level waste shipments went through the congested interchange of Interstate 15 and U.S. 95, Gertz said, compared with one so far this year. The DOE cannot order shippers to avoid certain routes, but the agency has persuaded most contractors to avoid the urban area.

Since 1976 more than 11,500 trucks have gone to the Test Site, Gertz said.

Low-level radioactive shipments are expected for up to 25 years, adding another 12 million cubic feet of waste to the 17 million cubic feet already buried in unlined trenches and former nuclear weapons craters.

However, increasing truck traffic on two-lane roads throughout Nevada will add to the wear and tear on those roads, Gertz said. There are no railroad routes to the Test Site.

Residents from Las Vegas and Pahrump said they were concerned about potential ground water contamination from radiation escaping from the site, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island.

The DOE is still trying to come up with a workable method to monitor radioactivity escaping the Test Site through ground water.

To date, three monitoring wells on the site have not indicated any radiation, Gertz said. The DOE has also promised to meet with Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., to answer questions they posed in January, he said.

A DOE presentation on a potential new source of radioactive waste, the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was canceled.