Letter: Cost/benefit analysis on Yucca needed

Friday, Feb. 6, 2004 | 9:34 a.m.

Joseph Strolin's Feb. 4 letter to the Sun contended that the costs of the Yucca Mountain repository outweigh the benefits. It would be useful to all stakeholders in Nevada and in the other states to see a cost/benefit analysis performed by a qualified and neutral party using standard procedures. I am not aware that the Energy Department has done such as study, but I suspect there would be some critics of the repository program who would not agree the department is a sufficiently neutral party.

I wish to quibble with Strolin's reference to the forecast that property values along "likely" transportation routes to the repository could decline between $5.6 and $8.8 billion if some unspecified accident were to occur. We will set aside for later contemplation whether property values in the Las Vegas Valley would ever decline short of a national depression.

I have seen some of the studies done by the Urban Environmental Research consultant for Clark County and I seem to recall there were some debatable assumptions about the risk of accidents and, for that matter, the routes that the theorized waste shipments would take through Clark County. Should not those assumptions be revisited in view of the fact that the Energy Department has chosen preferred rail shipping corridors that circumvent the highly developed portions of Clark County?

Speaking of which, I wonder if the benefits of those preferred corridors outweigh the almost tripled cost of building a shorter rail line through the Las Vegas Valley?

BRIAN O'CONNELL

Editor's note: Brian O'Connell is director of the Nuclear Waste Program Office for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.