Click image for enlargement. Graphic by Mike Johnson.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is preparing to reopen its plans for a rail line to Yucca Mountain, adding a new route to be scrutinized as a possible path to the proposed nuclear waste repository.

The DOE is poised to announce detailed studies of a north-south rail corridor through western Nevada. The alignment was examined in the 1990s but shelved when the Walker River Paiute Indians refused access to their reservation. The tribe reconsidered this year.

The department's intentions are scheduled to be published Friday in the Federal Register, according to DOE officials. State and local leaders and members of Congress were notified on Wednesday.

Also Friday, the department will announce plans to prepare an environmental impact statement of a redesigned industrial complex at the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where nuclear waste would arrive and be managed before being placed underground, officials said.

The published notice about the railroad amounts to the DOE's formal acknowledgment that it is intrigued with what has become known as the Mina route to Yucca Mountain.

"Based on DOE's preliminary analysis, in comparison with other rail corridors, the Mina corridor appears to offer potential advantages to the extent it would cross fewer mountain ranges, utilize existing rail bed and also be a shorter distance," the department said in a draft notice obtained Wednesday.

"These potential advantages would simplify design and construction, and therefore would be less costly to construct," DOE reported in the draft. "The Mina corridor also would appear to have fewer land use conflicts, and would involve less land disturbance."

The department has identified a 319-mile corridor from Caliente across rural Nevada to the repository, a route that carries an estimated $2 billion price tag.

The Mina corridor is 280 miles. DOE officials say new construction would be necessary on 240 to 259 miles because the corridor includes an existing rail line from Wabuska to Hawthorne.

The Energy Department will continue to prepare an environmental impact statement of the Caliente corridor. Draft versions of both studies would be released by the summer, DOE spokesman Allen Benson said.

The public will be invited to comment on both proposals and the new repository surface designs at scoping meetings in Amargosa Valley, Caliente, Goldfield, Hawthorne, Las Vegas and Fallon in November.

Within the Caliente corridor, the DOE plans new analyses of alternative alignments in several areas, including Caliente and Eccles, through Garden Valley, near the Reveille Range, near Goldfield and the ghost town of Bonnie Claire, and in Oasis Valley, according to the draft notice.

While some industry officials have promoted the Mina route, David Blee, a nuclear waste shipping consultant, said the full picture will emerge only after detailed studies.

"The verdict still is very much out on the ultimate decision," said Blee, a spokesman for the U.S. Transport Council. "There are things other than cost that will have to be evaluated," such as the chances of obtaining rights of way through the Walker River Indian Reservation.

Tribal leaders reversed policy and agreed in May to allow the government to map a new rail line through their reservation. The tribal chairwoman said the tribe is reserving a final decision on allowing nuclear waste shipments.

Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant to the state of Nevada, said the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs might also become involved in the matter. That could pose a wild card, he said, because the agency played a role in rejecting a lease for the Private Fuel Storage nuclear site on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah.

While the state continues to oppose the repository, Halstead said, a north-south corridor to Yucca Mountain would be "the least bad way" because it stays within valleys rather than crossing multiple ranges.

"We have told (DOE) from the beginning the Caliente route was probably not feasible and might be too expensive to build," Halstead said.