Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Ensign cancels Senate hearing on Yucca route

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has shelved plans for a Senate hearing in Las Vegas that was to explore what impact a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain might have on Nellis Air Force Base training, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Ensign decided to cancel the hearing after Department of Energy officials announced the they preferred corridors to ship nuclear waste to the repository that largely skirt the 4,562-square-mile Nellis Air Force Range.

"Since they went ahead and proposed the route, that made the field hearing kind of moot," Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said. He said Ensign will continue to monitor the issue through his chairmanship of the Senate's military readiness subcommittee.

The Energy Department on Dec. 23 proposed a 319-mile railroad line from Caliente through rural Nevada to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northeast of Las Vegas where DOE plans to build a complex to store 77,000 tons of radioactive spent fuel and government nuclear waste.

A 323-mile line that would run south from near Carlin was identified as the DOE's second choice.

The department has filed an application with the Bureau of Land Management to reserve use of a mile-wide corridor along the Caliente route for further study.

Ensign began planning a Senate hearing after Air Force officials this fall repeated to Congress that they would oppose routing nuclear waste on the sprawling range, which is utilized to train pilots and test new weapons. They also questioned the repository's impact on flight corridors.

Robert Halstead, a Nevada-hired transportation consultant, said he has examined DOE's maps and both the proposed Caliente and Carlin rail corridors appear to cross into Air Force property for 14.3 miles near Goldfield and another 16 miles farther south near Stonewall Flat on their way to Yucca Mountain.

"Maybe some deal has been made with the Air Force but I have to tell you in the past the Air Force has been very concerned about intrusion," Halstead said.

But DOE spokesman Allen Benson said the study corridor is wider than the route alignment that ultimately will be picked. He said the department has no plans to run trains on the military training range.

The planned Yucca route "is outside the Nellis range," Benson said.