(The Associated Press circulated the following article on November 28.)
LAS VEGAS — The Department of Energy wants access to 208,000 acres of public land for studies of two possible rail routes to the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
DOE officials have filed an application with the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw 139,391 acres of land in a mile-wide corridor running 130 miles from Hawthorne to Goldfield, the so-called Mina route.
It also has asked permission to withdraw an additional 68,646 acres of public land along portions of the Caliente route, BLM spokesman Doran Sanchez said Monday.
The land withdrawals would allow the department to move forward with environmental studies of the rail routes to the proposed nuclear repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The Mina corridor has gained favor among some government officials as possibly a less expensive and less complicated than a $2 billion rail line that would run from Caliente in eastern Nevada.
But critics say the Mina corridor could expose more communities, including downtown Reno, to nuclear waste shipments.
Sanchez said Interior Department officials in Washington were reviewing the DOE application for the two land transactions, which was filed on Oct. 17 and seeks reserved use status of the land until Dec. 27, 2015.
The withdrawals would prevent any new mining claims to be filed, and forbid the government from selling or trading any of the land, Sanchez said. Grazing and other public access would not be restricted, he said.
But one Yucca Mountain critic said the latest application coupled with earlier land withdrawals means DOE is reserving use of more than 500,000 acres of government-managed property in the state for railroad studies.
“You have guys tying up as much as half a million acres of public land in Nevada for them to make their minds up what they want to do,” said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
A public hearing on the application will be held but has not yet been scheduled, Sanchez said.