(The following article by Zamna Avila was posted on the Reno Gazette-Journal website on November 27.)
RENO, Nevada — Nuclear waste on its way to Yucca Mountain could pass through Northern Nevada under a proposed railroad shipping route being studied by the Department of Energy that is the topic of a public meeting today in Reno.
The DOE last month said it planned detailed studies of a north-south route in addition to a previously identified east-west rail route through Caliente along the Utah border.
The north-south route, dubbed the Mina Corridor, might be cheaper and faster than the Caliente Corridor because it would use existing rail lines from Winnemucca to Hawthorne, require fewer miles of new track than Caliente and cross fewer mountain ranges in making its way to Yucca Mountain.
Local residents can meet with project officials at Lawlor Events Center to discuss concerns about the proposed Mina Rail Corridor, a train route that would run along U.S. 95 toward Yucca Mountain about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
About 77,000 tons of nuclear waste materials would be hauled on trains from 89 nuclear reactor sites in more than 40 states if the route is selected. DOE officials said shipments could begin in 2017.
“If this route were selected, it would channel all of the nation’s nuclear waste through the Interstate 80 corridor and would impact more Nevada cities and towns than any other,” said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
The meeting will include experts available to answer questions about environmental impacts and transportation plans. People also will have the opportunity to voice their opinions in front of a DOE officer and a court reporter, who will record the comments.
“You can tailor the conversation to what you want to know and to what your level of knowledge is,” said spokesman Jason Bohne of Bechtel SAIC Co., a contractor for the DOE. “That’s the beauty of this format. With the variety of experts there, we can take you to the right person.”
Similar meetings were conducted in Hawthorne, Fallon, Las Vegas, Amargosa Valley, Goldfield and Caliente.
Community college professor Michon Makedon, who attended a recent meeting in Fallon, said the set-up doesn’t relay clear details to the average person and doesn’t foster follow-up discussions.
“The format … did not lead to an honest and critical approach to the subject that was being discussed,” Makedon said. “The environment was not conducive to inquiry and response.”
But Allen Benson, DOE director of external affairs for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said the format is the choice of most who attend.
“People said they’ve preferred it because they are intimidated by microphones or an audience,” Benson said. “People come in and sit in with a DOE officer, if somebody else wants to listen to the comments they are welcome to do so.”
Sparks Mayor Geno Martini sent a letter requesting a meeting in his city in late October, but DOE representatives said the distance between Sparks and Reno is relatively close and they would not extend their deadlines.
“I am disappointed that they are discounting Sparks like that,” Martini said. “We’ve got a lot people in our community that will be affected by this, and we deserve to have a special meeting with Sparks residents.”
Benson said interest in the Mina Corridor was renewed after DOE received a letter in May from the Walker River Paiute Tribe agreeing to a study of the route.
The route was previously considered about 15 years ago in the department’s environmental studies for the Yucca Mountain repository but was eliminated because the tribe informed DOE in 1991 that it would not allow nuclear waste to be transported across its reservation.
Tribal chairwoman Genia Williams said in a news release that safety was a motivating factor to agree to the study.
“Let me make it clear that we have not said yes to the route through our reservation until we fully evaluate studies on a new rail route that would be constructed miles away from our main population center,” Williams stated. “We have no control over the highway traffic through our reservation and believe DOE will bring high level nuclear waste through our tribal community even if we protest.”
Jon Summers, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the nuclear waste routes being studied and the repository in Yucca Mountain will never become reality, especially because Reid is the incoming majority leader. “Yucca Mountain is a dying beast, and everything that we are seeing are last-ditch efforts to breath life into it,” Summers said. “The reality of it is that the dump at Yucca Mountain will never be built and Nevada will not become the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.”