Jun 26 - Las Vegas Review - Journal

The Energy Department is updating 20-year-old data on railroad alignments in western Nevada and should decide by the end of the summer whether it wants to further explore an alternative route to ship nuclear waste by rail through the state to Yucca Mountain, a DOE manager said Thursday.

DOE officials are reviewing changes in land ownership and the status of mining claims in the region, said Gary Lanthrum, transportation director for the Yucca Mountain program.

They have inspected possible paths through the Walker River Paiute Indian reservation and have examined topography at other points, he said.

The department is working with the tribe and others to look at "some of the aspects of alignments along the route to see if they are feasible," Lanthrum said at a nuclear waste transportation conference.

"Once a determination is made, we will figure out how to go forward." Lanthrum said. DOE would consider moving forward with formal action and environmental studies "if there is a feasible route that looks like it might be a reasonable alternative."

The manager's remarks to a meeting of the U.S. Transport Council, a group of nuclear waste shipping interests, expanded on previous DOE statements about the so-called Mina route to the proposed nuclear waste repository site.

The Energy Department already is conducting an official environmental impact study of a proposed rail corridor across rural Nevada from Caliente to Yucca Mountain.

But its interest in a possible Mina alternative was piqued when the Walker River Paiute tribal leaders said they might consider allowing railroad shipments of nuclear waste through their reservation north of Walker Lake.

The tribe's position appears to have revived a DOE rail option that was studied in the 1980s. It involves nuclear waste traveling on existing rail along a corridor to Hawthorne, with DOE improving old mining rail beds and building new rail through Mineral and Esmerelda counties, and into Nye County where Yucca Mountain is located.

Some transportation experts say the alignment would be shorter, at 209 miles, and easier and less expensive to build than a railroad from Caliente. DOE's cost estimate of a 319-mile Caliente rail line was increased last year to$2 billion.

Lanthrum said it is too soon to tell.

"It is shorter, but we don't know if it would be less expensive," Lanthrum said. "We have no information that is less than 20 years old."

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