Vol. 4, No. 6
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January 15, 2007
Nevada's Online State News Journal
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Yucca Dollars On The Line
As Nevada's Reps Plan Fight
DOE Asks For And Gets Land
Set Aside For Rail Line
All three Nevada members of the House of Representatives and our two U.S. Senators gathered for a strategic planning session recently to work to halt the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in southern Nevada. Senator Harry Reid, now also the majority leader of the senate said there has been a dramatic shift in congress and he wants to take advantage of that as far as Yucca Mountain is concerned.
The Department of Energy (DOE) asked the Bureau of Land Management to set aside land for a rail corridor to be built from Mina south to Yucca Mountain. Reid thinks that with planned rail transport of nuclear waste through every community in northern Nevada, that there is considerably more interest in the north to stopping the Yucca project. For the last 20 years, most in northern Nevada have looked on the Yucca repository as a southern Nevada problem. The rail transport plan has opened many eyes in the north. Reid believes this will make his job easier in congress.
Looking back over the last 20 years it is obvious that DOE simply planned on rail transport all along. There is no major highway system leading into Yucca Mountain. All roads to the area are secondary at best. There is also no rail lines leading to the proposed repository. However, DOE has two rail projects that they have proffered and no highway projects. One rail plan begins in southern Nevada at the Utah border and skirts around the Nevada test site for 319 miles. That line would cost hundreds of millions of dollars adding to the alleged price tag of $100 billion for the Yucca Mountain facility.
The other line connects with main lines in northern Nevada and the portion that needs to be built begins in Mina and goes south. Cost figures on that line are less than the southern route but would ensure that high level nuclear waste would travel through every community along the Interstate 80 corridor in northern Nevada.
Nevada's congressional delegation is planning on communicating with every new law maker that has come to Washington to make them aware of Nevada's position on Yucca Mountain. Representative Jon Porter says he plans to write personal letters to every new member of congress. There are more than 70,000 tons of waste currently being held at nuclear power plants and weapons storage facilities around the country. At the rate the waste is building, Yucca Mountain is already obsolete. It was not designed to hold what is available at this time and many believe either a second storage facility must be built, or more realistically, nuclear power facilities should store their own waste on site.
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