(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Ken Ritter on August 29.)
LAS VEGAS — The Energy Department took another step Monday toward building a rail line across Nevada to ship nuclear waste to a national repository at Yucca Mountain.
The department announced it wants to remove a mile-wide, 319-mile long right of way from public use for 10 years and asked for public comment on the plan. Previously DOE had planned to exclude the mostly federal Bureau of Land Management swath known as the Caliente Corridor for 20 years.
The Energy Department announced last month that it intends to use trains for some 3,500 shipments of the nation’s most radioactive waste from around the nation to the planned repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Officials with the federal agency and the state’s Nuclear Projects Office characterized the release of the project’s draft environmental assessment as routine, but state officials called the rail proposal dangerously flawed.
“We think the selection was illegal and violated a number of federal statutes,” said Bob Loux, chief of the state Nuclear Projects Office and Gov. Kenny Guinn’s top anti-dump administrator.
Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said notice published Monday in the Federal Register is a step toward protecting 308,600 acres in the corridor from encroachment and surface mining claims. The register notice referred to precluding new mining claims for 20 years on five rail alternatives, but the more detailed environmental document cut that to 10 years.
“We’re not sure we need the full 20 years,” Benson said of the Caliente route – the only one under study. “All we’re getting out of it is the right of way to be able to build the rail line.”
The document, part of an application to the BLM and federal Interior Department, refers to 915 existing mining claims and leases along the route, and four natural gas leases nearby.
It also cites the proximity of habitat for the threatened Mojave Desert tortoise and the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, and notes that a pair of yellow-billed cuckoos has been seen nesting near the route. The bird is a candidate for a federal endangered species designation.
The department said grazing, public access and other current uses of the land would not be affected.
The Energy Department plans to take public comments through Sept. 27, including at meetings Sept. 12 in Amargosa Valley, Sept. 13 in Goldfield and Sept. 15 in Caliente.
The Energy Department also said it was preparing an environmental study about the possible effects of construction, operation and maintenance of alternate rail alignments.
In addition to the train shipments, the Energy Department plans about 1,100 truck shipments to the repository.
The agency estimates it will cost $880 million to establish a rail head on the Union Pacific line at Caliente, a small town 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, and build the rail line to the Yucca Mountain site.
Arguments are scheduled Oct. 18 in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on a state request to halt planning for the rail line until more studies are done.
Yucca Mountain is planned as a national repository for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from sites in 39 states. Funding shortages and other problems – including a controversy over possible paperwork fraud on the project – have delayed the opening date, now estimated for 2012 or later.