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December 17, 2003
YUCCA MOUNTAIN UPDATE Air Force fights YMP transports
By STEVE TETREAULT The panel has tentatively scheduled a hearing for the week of Jan. 12, according to Jack Finn, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.; the subcommittee chairman. A witness list still is being formed, Finn said. Among those expected to be invited are officials from Nellis, and the session may be held on base as well. Finn said the panel "will gauge the impact on the proposed (nuclear waste) transportation routes on our military. We want to make sure that no projects will interfere with their mission readiness and support." The hearing likely will expand beyond Nevada to examine how the Yucca Mountain Project might impact military installations in other states along nuclear waste shipping corridors, Finn said. The session would allow Air Force officials to expand on concerns they expressed to members of Congress this fall about the nuclear waste repository being planned 50 miles north of Pahrump. Air Force Secretary James Roche and Gen. John Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said in a September letter that they oppose transportation routes to the repository that would cross the Nellis Air Force Range, the 4,562 square mile swath of central Nevada, including a huge portion of Nye County, where new attack jets and pilots are run through testing. They also expressed concern about possible airspace restrictions near training corridors that could affect testing on the unmanned Predator spy plane and the F-22 Raptor, the latest-generation fighter jet. Finn acknowledged the hearing would present Ensign and other opponents of the Yucca project a new opportunity to poke holes in the program that is unpopular in most of Nevada. "This is another avenue, but the (training) issue itself is very serious to (Ensign)," Finn said. At the urging of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the DOE is continuing to study potential threats to the Yucca repository from aircraft crashes. The issue is among 200 items DOE is trying to address before it files a repository application with the NRC late next year. At a Las Vegas meeting last month, DOE official Paul Harrington said Air Force officials have advised repository planners they anticipate increasing the number of training flights over the Nellis range and in the airspace of the adjacent 1,375-square-mile Nevada Test Site. Yucca Mountain sits along the test site's southwestern edge, 20 miles east of Beatty and an equal distance north of Amargosa Valley. DOE officials said their calculations of aircraft hazards near the repository need to be revised as a result. Critics of the Yucca project contend military operations cannot co-exist with nuclear waste storage. They have drawn parallels between the Nevada repository and the Private Fuel Storage nuclear waste project in Utah that was set back after questions were raised about threats from training flights at nearby Hill Air Force Base. DOE officials said they doubt air traffic will prove an obstacle to the repository project. They say most flight routes skirt the repository's airspace and only a limited number over-fly the surface facility area. |
