Effort to expose nuke waste routes defeated

Benjamin Grove

Friday, June 29, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The House on Thursday shot down an amendment designed to pressure the Department of Energy to finalize transportation routes for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

The measure, introduced by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., failed 102-321. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., voted for the amendment.

The DOE has proposed routes. But it has not finalized exactly which roadways and rails would be used to haul 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from the nation's 103 nuclear reactors to the desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The effort would take several decades.

Berkley tried to attach her amendment to an energy and water projects spending bill.

Her legislation required a $500,000 study of the routes, which could publicly pressure the DOE to finalize them, Berkley said.

Nevada lawmakers oppose the Yucca plan and aim to build opposition in other states by publicizing the routes. They say the potentially dangerous waste shipments, at least 40,000 by some DOE estimates, would haul waste over 43 states within a half mile of 50 million Americans.

Several lawmakers who objected to the bill said there was plenty of time to map out the routes. Yucca hasn't even officially been selected as the nuclear waste repository yet, Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Ala., argued.

Berkley said the routes should be published before Yucca approval, calling Callahan's argument "back-asswards."

"We raised the issue of publicizing transportation routes, and saw the beginnings of an issue that can be a winner for us," she said later in a written statement. "This is a subject that's going to get some traction, and I'm going to keep raising it every chance I get."