Maintain pressure to kill Yucca, ex-Senator says

Former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan told the Commission on Nuclear Projects on Wednesday that even though President Barack Obama has indicated the Yucca Mountain project is history, now is not the time for Nevada to back off.

"I, like a lot of people, believe the project is dead," Bryan said. "But we do not want a Lazarus-like resurrection. We will not be able to rest easy until we drive a silver stake through its heart."

His comments came as Bob Halstead, longtime transportation consultant to Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, told the commission that federal transportation plans would ship thousands of tons of radioactive waste through the Las Vegas urban area.

He said the nuclear waste transportation plan, at just 28 pages long, is deliberately inadequate. It doesn't even mention the cost " $20 billion.

"The plan does not mention that (Department of Energy) proposes 2,800 to 7,000 cross-country train shipments with three to five casks per train and 2,600 to 5,000 cross country truck shipments over 50 years," he said.

He said the plan would funnel up to 80 percent of the rail shipments through the Las Vegas Valley. Each one of the casks, Halstead said, will contain up to 100 times the amount of radioactive material released by the Hiroshima bomb.

He presented maps showing that some 95,000 people live within the half-mile "region of influence" of the rail line and another 100,000 highway commuters will be within that distance.

Also within that zone, he said, are 49,000 hotel rooms in 39 of the Strip's biggest resorts and, at any given time, some 40,000 tourists.

The half-mile distance, he said, is the Department of Energy's own zone, the space within which, experts say, there could be some limited exposure to radiation even as the waste casks pass safely by.

In case of an accident or terrorist attack, that zone would expand to 50 miles and expose about 1.9 million people.

He said the plan was issued even though Nevada has been telling DOE for two decades that shipping the high-level waste through the Las Vegas Valley is unacceptable.

Halstead said Nevada isn't the only state that should be upset by the plan. He said the proposed routes for shipping waste around the nation would affect 44 states, 341 Indian tribes and 950 counties with 160 million residents.

"It's a totally inadequate transportation plan," he said, adding that he believes energy department officials made a conscious choice not to put details into the plan.

"If they had revealed details, it would have caused enormous controversy," he said.