DOE Seeks More Land to Examine

Nov 30 - Las Vegas Review - Journal

The Department of Energy is seeking to broaden its access to public land in rural Nevada for studies of nuclear waste railroad corridors to Yucca Mountain, asking permission to reserve use of another 208,000 acres along possible shipping routes.

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, a BLM spokesman confirmed Monday.

The land withdrawal would enable the department to move forward with environmental studies of the so-called Mina route to the Yucca site, which is 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Mina corridor has gained favor among some government officials as possibly a less expensive and less complicated route to the proposed nuclear waste repository 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. Rail cars carrying shielded canisters of spent nuclear fuel would travel across Northern Nevada along the Interstate 80 corridor and then south through the Walker River Indian Reservation and through old mining districts in the western part of the state.

The Walker River Paiute tribe has consented to allow DOE to study the route through its reservation but is reserving judgment on whether to allow the segment to be developed.

As it continues to study the Caliente corridor, DOE also has asked permission to withdraw an additional 68,646 acres of public land along portions of that route, BLM spokesman Doran Sanchez said.

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. A public hearing on the application will be held but has not yet been scheduled, Sanchez said.

Specific information on what areas along the Caliente corridor would be affected by the new land withdrawal was not available Monday.

DOE officials previously have said they were seeking new analyses of alignments in several areas, including Caliente and Eccles, through Garden Valley, near the Reveille Range, near Goldfield and the ghost town of Bonnie Claire, and in Oasis Valley.

Generally 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.

Richard Bryant, chairman of the Mineral County Commission, said county leaders were unaware of the pending land withdrawal.

"DOE really hasn't sat down and talked with us as a board," Bryant said.

Bryant said Mineral County residents have "mixed feelings" about the possibility of Yucca Mountain rail - they like the potential economic boost of a rail line but don't like that it would be carrying radioactive spent fuel.

"If DOE wants to spend their money on a rail corridor, I would welcome that but I would still fight to keep nuclear waste out," he said.

The Energy Department was holding a public meeting in Reno on Monday night to discuss the Mina railroad corridor. Officials were not available to discuss the land withdrawal application.

Peggy Maze Johnson, director of the Citizen Alert nuclear watchdog group, said she was "disappointed but not surprised" the public had not been informed of DOE's land withdrawal application.

"I am sure that people here today making comments would have appreciated the opportunity to know what you had up your sleeve," Johnson said in written comments submitted to DOE at the meeting.