State: Yucca is dying, but don’t stop fighting

By Cy Ryan

Wednesday, April 29, 2009 | 4:09 p.m.

CARSON CITY – State officials leading the fight against Yucca Mountain are optimistic that the proposed nuclear waste repository won’t be built, but cautioned that Nevada shouldn’t let up on its opposition.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams told the Commission on Nuclear Projects Wednesday that she believes Yucca Mountain is “on its way to dying,” but there will be endless appeals of the project.

Former U.S. Sen. Dick Bryan, chairman of the commission, said the state should not rest until a “silver stake is driven through the heart” of the project. “This is not the time to relax,” he cautioned.

Robert Halstead, a consultant for the state Office of Nuclear Projects, said if the license is approved for the repository there would be one or two trucks a week and one or two trains a week transporting nuclear waste through the Las Vegas Valley. The shipments would pass 34 hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip and through the Spaghetti Bowl.

It would result in lower property values and also affect tourism to Southern Nevada, he said. There have already been inquiries about the routes from potential buyers of condominiums in Las Vegas, said Halstead, who has been under contract with the state for 20 years.

“Between the best case and the worst case, there would likely be one-time incidents like gridlock exposures and recurrent events like cumulative, low-level radiation exposures at specific locations, that could cause adverse human health effects that would be difficult or impossible to prove,” he said.

The Department of Energy’s transportation plan for the waste does not talk about the dangers of shipping, the cost and it lacks details, Halstead said. The federal agency says these shipments will go through 44 states, 41 Indian reservations and 950 counties with about 160 million residents.

“In a very severe accident cleanup costs could be $10 billion, and even more in the event of a successful terrorist attack,” he said in his prepared remarks.

In Clark County, about 95,000 people live within one-half mile of the DOE rail route and more than 100,000 live within one-half mile of the DOE truck routes, he said.