Nuke waste transport report due this week transport

Benjamin Grove

Sunday, Feb. 5, 2006 | 12:34 p.m.

WASHINGTON - A long-anticipated report on nuclear waste transportation will be released Thursday. (OK, maybe not breathlessly awaited, but a few media and Nevada officials have been looking forward to it.) A panel affiliated with the National Academies of Science has been studying the issue since May 2003.

The report will play into the battle between Nevada officials who argue that shipping the waste to Yucca Mountain is dangerous and nuclear industry advocates who say the transportation will be safe. In light of the government's plan to open the national waste repository at Yucca as early as 2012, the 16-member committee has studied the risks associated with the enormous number of waste shipments that would cross the country by truck and rail.

The report is expected to shed new light on those risks and how they can be addressed. The panel also studied options for shipping routes, procedures for handling the material, and methods of communicating the risks to the public.

The Energy Department has not disclosed the exact routes, although the most likely ones are well known. The department has a preference for sending the material mostly by rail, although trucks also would be used.

Yucca critics have said the panel may have conflicts of interest because the $850,000 study was paid for partly by the Energy Department and the Electric Power Research Institute, a research arm of the utility industry, which includes the pro-Yucca nuclear power industry.

President Bush will send his 2007 budget plan to Congress on Monday. It's expected to include about the same amount for Yucca Mountain operations as Congress approved for 2006 -- $450 million. Bush's proposal also is expected to include a request to take Yucca Mountain spending "off-budget," a maneuver the White House advocates to prevent Congress from curtailing work at Yucca by restricting the funding.

Democratic Reps. Shelley Berkley of Nevada and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas will host a forum this week on the killing and persecution in the Darfur region of Sudan. Lee has traveled to the Darfur. The forum is free and will be held at 7p.m. Thursday in room 109 of the Flora Dungan Humanities Building at UNLV.

Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@lasvegassun.com.