(The Associated Press circulated the following article on April 5.)
LAS VEGAS — Radioactive waste bound for a planned national nuclear dump in Nevada would be transported by trains on a 319-mile rail line to be built across the state, the federal government announced Monday.
The department has not said what routes it intends to use to transport the waste from 127 sites across the nation to a planned rail head near Caliente, 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah line.
Nevada officials and anti-dump activists have derided the Caliente-to-Yucca Mountain route — which loops around the vast Nevada Test Site and Nellis Air Force Base bombing range — as expensive and dangerous.
Bob Loux, state nuclear projects chief, predicted Monday that despite the announcement, the Energy Department eventually will decide to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain almost exclusively by truck.
Nevada consultants say it would take nearly 10 years to acquire necessary land and build the rail line, at a cost of more than $2 billion.
Allen Benson, spokesman for the federal project, said the Energy Department believes the rail line will cost $880 million and take four years to build.
Loux said state officials will challenge the rail plan. Nevada has accused the federal government of neglecting to inform ranchers, miners and rural residents about its plan.
Making rail the preferred method for shipping nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, with the Caliente corridor as the preferred route, becomes official when the decision is published in the Federal Register, Benson said.
The Caliente-to-Yucca route was one of five originally considered. One of the rejected routes skirted Las Vegas and its 1.6 million residents.
In July 2002, the Bush administration and Congress approved Yucca Mountain as the site to store 77,000 tons of radioactive waste now held in 39 states.