Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Waste route stirs debate

Test site material might travel across rural Nevada

Click image for enlargement. Graphic by Mike Johnson.

WASHINGTON -- Federal and state officials are considering a proposal for the Energy Department to transport plutonium-tainted material across rural Nevada starting in 2005 after California opposed the use of one of its roadways.

The medium-level nuclear waste from the Nevada Test Site is destined for burial at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

An 1,800-mile route that includes 405 miles along two-lane highways through Tonopah, Ely and Wendover has emerged in a compromise for disposal of the waste.

Western governors have been seeking a solution since California refused in July to let DOE transport waste-bearing drums 90 miles on California Route 127 through Death Valley and onto interstates that would allow the shipments to avoid Las Vegas. That southern route from the test site to the New Mexico burial site would total about 1,130 miles.

A consultant to rural White Pine County criticized the proposal Monday and said the state was bending to the will of California, where most of the radioactive waste came from in the first place, and to the desires of Clark County leaders who oppose nuclear waste shipments through Southern Nevada.

"This is clout, no question," Mike Baughman said. "We find it absurd that the DOE would consider this."

Nevada has yet to take a position on the alternative route, but one state official said the route might be acceptable with safeguards.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the struggle to find acceptable shipping routes for the waste signals bigger troubles ahead in designing waste shipments to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository, where deadlier nuclear spent fuel would be stored.

"If they're having all this trouble with transportation of low-level waste, what in the world is going to happen to high-level nuclear waste?" Reid said.

Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, said she planned to urge public hearings on whatever routes emerge. Citizen Alert is a Nevada-based citizen watchdog group.

"We need to be informed that these kinds of discussions are going around," Johnson said.

About 1,650 55-gallon drums of waste are stored at Area 5 of the test site, said Angela Colarusso, project manager for the facility's environmental management division. Much of the material originated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside Oakland, Calif., before being sent to the test site in the 1970s and 1980s, she said in a speech last week in Pahrump.

The Western Governors' Association has been seeking compromise that would allow the shipments to take place. The waste includes laboratory clothing, tools, plastics and other solids contaminated with plutonium, neptunium and other radioactive material produced in nuclear weapons research and production.

California, which said that its state Route 127 had limited emergency response and was not designed for heavy trucks, has agreed to allow about half the tainted material to be shipped along the Death Valley route to Baker, association officials said.

From there it would travel on Interstate 15 to Barstow and then Interstate 40 east to New Mexico.

The California shipments would cease on Dec. 31, 2004, after about 55 shipments were made.

Starting in 2005, the remainder, about 55 shipments, would be transported through rural Nevada to Interstate 80, east through Salt Lake City and Utah, through most of Wyoming and then south on Interstate 25 through Colorado including Denver on its way to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.

Much of I-80 and I-25 track the route of nuclear waste that was shipped to New Mexico from the Energy Department's lab in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

"While this may be a longer route, the majority of the route already accepts TRU (transuranic) waste shipments," Western Governors' Association Executive Director James Souby said in an Aug. 12 letter to Energy Department Assistant Secretary Jessie Roberson.

"All participants now believe it is time for the Department of Energy to become involved if negotiations are to be completed and a compromise actually reached," Souby wrote.

William Mackie, program manager for the governors group, said several other routes remain in discussion, but the rural Nevada proposal seems to be emerging as the favorite.

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who had objected to DOE plans to use the California state road, said, "There is no deal yet."

Nevada has been represented in the discussions by an official in its Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Agency Director Bob Loux said Monday the state has yet to take a position on the proposal, but he said it might be acceptable.

"I suspect it would not be objectionable primarily because we're doing low-level (nuclear waste) shipments on those routes generally," Loux said.

Loux said Nevada could require DOE to provide accident preparedness and emergency response training along the in-state route and allow for a state escort to travel with the canister-packed trucks.

White Pine County consultant Baughman called the plan absurd. "This is a very circuitous route."

Baughman said, Nevada customarily steers low-level nuclear waste shipments through rural counties to avoid heavily populated Southern Nevada.

"We find it a bit ironic that our state doesn't want to be dumped on, but when we do a routing decision like this, or encourage routing like this, we are dumping on rural counties in Nevada," he said.