Regardless of which Nevada rail route is chosen to haul nuclear waste to the planned Yucca Mountain repository, the effect nationally will be small, a federal transportation planner this week told a panel overseeing the disposal project.

"It really doesn't make much difference nationally on the number of shipments a state will see," Gary Lanthrum, director of the project's Office of Logistics Management, told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board at its meeting Wednesday in Las Vegas.

He was referring to the options for building a rail line to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Among the top candidates are a north-south route through the rural community of Mina and a corridor that runs generally west to the mountain from Caliente.

Bob Halstead, transportation consultant for Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, reacted to Lanthrum's comment by saying Thursday, "That's totally absurd."

Lanthrum "has no basis saying that because he hasn't modeled that," said Halstead, in a telephone interview from Wisconsin. "Supposedly we'll see some analysis when they come out with the draft (environmental impact statement) later."

Halstead said the "absolute minimum impact" of the Mina route would double the rail shipments of deadly, metal-encased spent nuclear fuel assemblies that would go through California.

Double means 10 percent of the nation's overall nuclear waste shipments.

As many as half of the rail shipments planned for delivery nationwide to Yucca Mountain could pass through California under a maximum-impact scenario, Halstead said.

In his presentation to the board Wednesday, Lanthrum showed a schedule that calls for a final Nevada rail design in 2008 with construction on the selected rail line to start in 2009.

The route would become operational in 2014, about three years before the Department of Energy expects to open the Yucca Mountain repository where 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel and defense waste would be entombed in a maze of tunnels.

Halstead said such a schedule is "really optimistic."

"I don't think any sports books in the state would be interested in any bets there. It's very unlikely," he said.