Yucca shipping information on hold until 2006

Monday, July 28, 2003 | 9:58 a.m.

An Energy Department official said the federal government will not be ready to reveal shipping routes or whether high-level nuclear waste will travel by rail or road until 2006, surprising those attending a Las Vegas meeting Friday.

Jeff Williams, DOE's acting director of transportation, said that a strategic plan on how the Energy Department will organize its spent fuel shipments is due out at the end of September, but the decisions on routes and methods will be delayed.

The National Academies of Sciences established a special panel to study the shipping of thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste nationwide. The 15-member panel met in Las Vegas Thursday and Friday.

The Energy Department is planning to start construction of a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca by 2007 and moving the first spent fuel shipments there in 2010.

"What it means is they are holding 13 counties (in Nevada) hostage," state transportation consultant Robert Halstead said. "I am astounded that they are not ready to make a decision."

Although the nuclear industry and the state lean toward rail shipments, there are no tracks leading to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The DOE has estimated it would cost $1 billion to build a track to a Yucca Mountain repository. The state says it could cost up to $3 billion, Halstead said.

Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located, is already feeling some economic impacts, county natural resources director Les Bradshaw said.

"Our whole future is overshadowed by this nuclear dump project," Bradshaw said, noting that banks have refused a loan to one local dairy because of the proposed nuclear repository. "We are feeling the impacts of stigma."

The counties and the state agree that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that will license a repository, should require the DOE to test transportation containers until they fail.

Remote and urban areas are ill-prepared to handle a radioactive emergency, Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force Executive Director Judy Treichel said.

"The first responders are usually the people in the cars next to what happens and they sure aren't going to be trained," Treichel said.