WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is planning about $100 million in repairs, new buildings and roads, a fire station, and other improvements at the site of the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a department official said Wednesday.

The planned upgrades -- to facilities used by the 225 full-time employees who work at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- are needed to repair equipment and buildings that have fallen into disrepair or were never completed because of budget shortages, said Scott Wade, director of the department's office of repository development in Las Vegas.

As the opening date of the project has been delayed, structures intended to be temporary have remained in use longer than planned, he said.

"We lack some of the basic emergency response capabilities, fire and such," Wade told a meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's advisory committee on nuclear waste.

"Decisions were made not to complete some of the original design for those on-site structures," Wade said. "It was probably poor decisions that were made."

A fire in February burned down a trailer at the site entrance -- one of about 120 temporary structures in place, Wade told committee members. The fire, caused by a heating system malfunction, occurred on a weekend and had burned out by the time workers found it, but it underscored the need for better emergency response.

The closest fire engine is in Mercury, 45 minutes away.