WASHINGTON -- An attorney for Nevada on Tuesday set out to persuade a panel of federal judges that the Department of Energy cut corners in its initial planning to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

In the state's latest bid to stop the proposed waste repository, attorney Joseph Egan argued DOE violated environmental law by neglecting to perform adequate studies of how it would move radioactive spent fuel through Nevada if it could not build a railroad to the site in time.

Egan, the state's chief nuclear waste lawyer, also said DOE exceeded its authority by selecting a 318-mile rail corridor from Caliente to the site in April 2004 without involving the Surface Transportation Board. The board is a federal agency with specific responsibility and expertise on railroads.

"It's like somebody trying to site an airport without the FAA," Egan said in remarks before three judges sitting at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Justice Department attorney John Bryson defended the Energy Department, saying it followed "fully established procedures" when it set out to devise a Yucca Mountain transportation strategy.

Bryson said the state's objections were not sufficient to merit tossing out DOE's work to date for shipping 77,000 tons of spent power plant fuel and government nuclear waste to the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The attorneys appeared before U.S. Circuit Judges Harry T. Edwards, Karen LeCraft Henderson and A. Raymond Randolph, who posed few questions during a 30-minute hearing.

Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval accompanied Egan, in what might have been his final court appearance as the state's chief law officer and legal representative. The U.S. Senate was expected to complete Sandoval's confirmation to U.S. district judge in the coming days.

"I didn't hear any questions that were critical of Nevada's position," Sandoval said after the hearing. "We always had been waiting for Yucca Mountain to get into a legal position, where we have had victories that have exposed the government's inability to follow the law."

The state has filed nine lawsuits involving Yucca Mountain since the repository plan began forming its current shape in 2001. The government has prevailed on some consequential issues, while the state won a July 2004 ruling involving radiation safety standards that have caused delays in the program.

Facing a variety of legal and technical challenges, the Energy Department has abandoned 1998 and 2010 planned repository openings. While a ruling against the government in the latest case might not kill the Yucca project, Nevada officials maintain it could cause DOE to reconsider ambitious construction of a Nevada railroad and lead to even further delays.

During his presentation, Egan said DOE performed merely a "back of the envelope" assessment of a plan to load nuclear waste into truck casks at power plants, then ship them on trains to Nevada, where they would be transferred onto tractor-trailers for a final travel leg to Yucca Mountain.

The department said it may employ that method for the first half-dozen years of repository operations if a railroad cannot be built on time.

Egan said the plan raises a host of safety issues "unconsidered by DOE."

Bryson said DOE studied the plan previously and was not required to perform an extensive new review given the relatively short period the truck-rail strategy might be employed.

"DOE's evaluation of impacts were reviewed under the rule of reason," he said. "They did not present a greatly different environmental landscape."

Egan also accused DOE of acting coy about its intentions for a Nevada rail line so as not to trigger early involvement by the Surface Transportation Board. The board would gain jurisdiction if the Yucca Mountain railroad were declared a "common carrier" that would be utilized by Nevada shippers.