Reporters’ Notebook

YUCCA MOUNTAIN WORKER JOHN PFABE is about to get laid off, and he knows just who to blame: Sen. Harry Reid.

"He just wants to kill the project even if the science bears it out, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission bears it out and all concerns are addressed and the facility is fine to open. He still doesn't want it," Pfabe said. "If he had been around 100 years ago, I guess we wouldn't have electric light bulbs."

KEITH ROGERS

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER ON TUESDAY:

"Hey, how old do you think Chuck Norris is?"

(For the record, Chuck Norris celebrated his 69th birthday on Tuesday. Or, according to other sources, he turned infinity -- again.)

THE PRICE OF THE PROPOSED NEW LAS VEGAS CITY HALL keeps going up, at least in the public discourse about it.

In a court filing last week, the Culinary union, which is mounting an all-out campaign against the building, pegged it as a "half-billion dollar city hall."

That's a major increase, since the union's spokesmen had been using the phrase "quarter-billion dollar Taj Mahal city hall" so much they had practically trademarked it.

It breaks down like this: The city wants to borrow up to $267 million for the building's construction.

However, when you add up the city's projected payments on that debt through 2039, it comes out to just under $544 million. (Kind of like your mortgage: A $250,000 house loan will cost you as much as $568,000 to pay off over 30 years.)

As for the actual Taj Mahal, well, it reportedly cost 32 million rupees, or about $1 million, to build between 1631 and 1648. If anyone can figure out how much that is in 2009 dollars, let us know.

ALAN CHOATE

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER ABOUT 8:20 P.M. WEDNESDAY:

Person 1: "I'm going to go down to jack in the crack and get me one of those breakfast burritos. They're pretty good."

Person 2: "You can get those right now?"

Person 1: "Yeah, you can get them 24 hours. That's how they roll."

Person 2: "Breakfast burrito it is then."

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER ABOUT 40 MINUTES LATER: "Where's that burrito? You hiding that burrito?"

A MAN WITH SOMETHING STUCK IN HIS ESOPHAGUS was treated recently in the emergency room at Desert Springs Hospital then sent home with a referral for a follow-up visit with a doctor.

There was just one problem: The doctor he was told to go see in two days was Dipak Desai, whose medical license was suspended last year after his endoscopy centers were linked to the transmission of hepatitis C.

A hospital official said the computer error that caused the referral has been fixed.

ANNETTE WELLS