Energy Dept. says nuke waste transit method leans toward rail

Kirsten Searer

Friday, March 5, 2004 | 12:06 p.m.

The Energy Department will have a better idea of how to ship spent nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in a year or two, an administrator for the department said this morning at a hearing of the House Railroad Subcommittee in Las Vegas.

Energy Department officials said they were focusing on transporting the waste mostly by rail, but are still considering rail and trucking routes.

Gary Lanthrum, director of the national transportation department for the Office for Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in the Energy Department, told congressional members, including Reps. Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Shelly Berkley, D-Nev., that the Energy Department is listening to the concerns expressed by Nevadans as it makes a decision on how to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

On Christmas Eve the department announced that its preferred rail route for a railroad to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain would go through what's known as the Caliente corridor, through central Nevada.

It is especially looking at a rail route through the Caliente corridor. The department announced on Christmas Eve that the Caliente route is its preferred route for rails.

Porter asked Lanthrum why that decision was announced on the holiday, when many congressional members and members of the press were focused on other issues.

Porter called that move and the Energy Department's decision to proceed with planning Yucca Mountain while Nevada is awaiting a decision to a legal challenge to the project an insult to the state.

Lanthrum responded that the department is proceeding with plans for Yucca Mountain because Congress approved the project in 2002.

"We don't believe that moving ahead is thumbing our nose at Nevada," he said.

Berkley asked Lanthrum what the Energy Department is doing to train first responders in case of possible terrorist attack on shipment.

She said she has gotten calls from first responders from all over the country concerned tha they don't know what is going on. She also said that the Eenrgy Department should be more open about how it would mitigate the possibility of terrorist attacks on rails, something Lanthrum said is mostly classified information.

"I think this is something the public needs to know," Berkley said.

The Energy Department is listening to the concerns of Nevadans in determining a transportation route, Lanthrum said.

"Nevadans have expressed a desire that the nuclear waste not go through the Las Vegas Valley and that it go by rail," he said. "We've certainly taking that into consideration as we've developed our plans."

Lanthrum said around the U.S. and in Europe, there is a successful record of shipping spent nuclear fuel and radioactive materials without spills. Since the 1960s the Energy Department and industries have successfully completed about 3,000 spent nuclear fuel shipments over 1.7 million miles without injury, he said. In France and Britain an average of 640 shipments of spent nuclear fuel are transported each year, more than the 175 annual shipments currently contemplated for Yucca Mountain, he said.

Nevada lawmakers hoped the hearing would lay out the state's concerns with the Energy Department's plans to move and store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department would have to perform an environmental impact report and hold public hearings before it could build a railroad.