Friday, Jan. 28, 2005 | 9:58 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Constructing a new rail line in Nevada to haul nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain would be a "pretty easy technical challenge," an Energy Department official said Thursday.
The toughest challenge for department officials who are scrambling to assemble a Yucca waste-transportation plan is securing money from Congress and struggling to meet an ambitious deadline, said Gary Lanthrum, the department's director of the Yucca national transportation office.
In general, the Energy Department is focused on completing a Yucca license application, and transportation issues are not currently "in the driver's seat" in the overall Yucca program, Lanthrum said Thursday. He spoke after a presentation at a nuclear waste issues conference in Washington, where government and nuclear industry officials discussed the massive proposed Yucca waste-shipping campaign.
Lanthrum said his work has been slowed dramatically by budget setbacks. Last year he requested $187 million but got only about $25 million.
Insiders quietly lamented that there is an overwhelming amount of transportation planning to be done before trains and trucks begin hauling waste to the proposed national high-level nuclear waste repository.
This year Lanthrum's office is still working on an environmental impact statement for the Nevada rail route; beginning conceptual design work for rail cars that would haul 120-ton waste containers; and working with states on rail route selection.
Still left on the department's long to-do list for the rail route: aerial and ground surveys, design work, water arrangements, earthwork preparation, structure construction, track laying, signal installations, and tests.
The proposed $1 billion, 319-mile Nevada rail route, which would snake northwest from Caliente and then curve south toward Yucca, is key to the Energy Department's waste-shipping plan. The department aims to use mostly trains, and some trucks, to ship the waste from nuclear plants scattered nationwide to the underground repository roughly 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Nevada officials scoff at the notion that the proposed Nevada rail spur would be easy to construct.
Critics say the department underestimates the difficulty of laying track on the ragged desert landscape, which they say is vulnerable to possible flooding, rockfalls and even earthquakes.
At least 20 bridges over 200 feet would be needed along the route, said Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant for Nevada.
"It's going to be a hellacious task to build that rail route," he said.
The Energy Department also will have to deal with upset residents like rancher Joe Fellini, who has cattle grazing rights on the proposed rail route, and has mulled a lawsuit.
"They're shoving this down Nevada's throat," he said in a phone interview from his home. "It makes me mad as hell."
But government and waste shipping industry officials at the conference said the whole Yucca transportation campaign is "achievable" with enough money.
But even Yucca advocates are skeptical that Yucca could open for waste shipments by 2010, a department goal. That "window" of time is rapidly closing, said David Blee, executive director of the U.S. Transportation Council, a waste shipping industry coalition.
Blee also said that Nevada officials seem to have muted their criticism. The industry has proven that it can and will ship waste safely, Blee said.
"By all accounts the transportation track record has been vindicated," Blee said. "It was the wrong issue for the state of Nevada to use."
It's wishful thinking to suggest the national debate about waste shipping is over, Nevada officials said.
"He's dreaming," Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency director Bob Loux said.
He predicted the public at large would increasingly pay attention -- and object -- to the proposed shipping campaign, which would be unprecedented in size in this country. The Energy Department estimates 3,300 rail shipments over 24 years from 127 sites to Nevada.
"There has been absolutely no loss of appetite by the public in their concern about these things," Loux said.
But another industry official aimed to refute arguments routinely made by Nevada critics.
Robert Quinn, an executive with waste shipper BNFL Fuel Solutions, dismissed critics who say local emergency responders are not trained or equipped to handle a nuclear waste accident. Nuclear materials experts would be called in to handle the situation by the local officials, he said.
Quinn acknowledged that dramatically increasing the number of shipments increases the likelihood of an accident.
"Well, yeah," he said. "It's impossible to say it will absolutely never happen."
But Quinn noted that while there have been U.S. accidents involving waste shipments, there has not been a radioactive leak.
"Once we get to the point where we're shipping (waste) every day, where it's routine, people will come to accept it," Quinn said. "We're not going to change everyone's mind, but if we involve them in the process we give them some ownership."
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