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June 15, 2005
Yucca officials meet in Pahrump for railroad talk
By PHILLIP GOMEZ
The workshop at the Community College of Southern Nevada was to share information about the practical implications of building the Yucca Mountain Repository, scheduled for opening around 2010 if approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In its first face-to-face meeting, the group addressed business opportunities connected with the prospective shipments of radioactive waste in high volumes over 40 years from 80 sites in 39 states. At the center of the discussion was the National Transportation Project through the Caliente corridor - otherwise known as the Caliente Railroad through Lincoln, Nye and Esmeralda counties. Follow-up meetings, beginning next month, will take place over the course of the next five to seven years as government and industry work together laying the infrastructure for the Yucca rail line, a nuclear cask transportation tracking ("nerve") center, receiving facilities and a cask-storage and transportation fleet management facility. There is even talk of a manufacturing plant being constructed in central Nevada to build the large storage concrete and stainless steel casks to transport the nuclear waste. Mention was also made of a Nevada corporation with experience in rail transport possibly coming forward to manage and operate the Caliente Railroad. The 320-mile railroad, if authorized for construction, would be the first rail line of its size to be built in the nation in 70 years. Even if the railroad is not constructed as the Energy Department's dedicated means of transporting spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, expansive facilities for receiving, tracking and storing trucked-in nuclear waste casks would still have to be constructed. Nye County Commission Chairwoman Candice Trummell, who also moderated the meeting's agenda, called the daylong meeting to order at 8 a.m.. Among those speaking was John Arthur, the Energy Department's chief project manager for Yucca Mountain. Arthur provided an update on the project. Other speakers at the workshop discussed technical issues related to surface receiving facilities for the nuclear waste, cask storage technology and maintenance, and rail and truck transport operations. The meeting was sponsored by the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group in cooperation with the U.S. Transportation Council, the lead government agency responsible for informing the public on nuclear material transportation issues, policy and business issues, safety, emergency planning and security. If the government decides to proceed with Yucca Mountain, 3,000 metric tons of radioactive materials would be transported to the Nevada Test Site each year. Getting congressional funding for the railroad, following that for construction of the nuclear repository itself, might prove difficult, conference participants allowed. The earliest that construction of the rail line and receiving facilities would begin is tough to predict, but could start before the repository in order to supply the construction materials by rail, officials said. Building the rail line would take about four years and 1,000 workers, according to Energy Department officials at the conference. Numerous subcontracting jobs for surveyors, bridge builders and other professions and trades are anticipated for section-line work that officials say would occur simultaneously along the corridor route. The longest discussions centered on the Energy Department's willingness to go after skilled local subcontractors in filling the myriad of jobs necessary to the project's completion - not only for the railroad, but for ongoing operations of the receiving facilities, inter-modal trucking operations and for maintenance of the waste storage casks. Affected county leaders wanted government officials to make a firm commitment for "set-asides" for small businesses within the central Nevada region, giving preferential treatment to tradesmen in the three counties along the rail line corridor. In the Energy Department's Requests for Qualifications, the means by which the big contractors bid on aspects of design and construction, county leaders wanted the department to target those stakeholders. But the officials, while sympathetic to the idea, remained noncommittal, saying it was too early to make any promises without more firm data at hand. "There's not an agenda to shut out the (local) community," said Karen Leigh Kimball, vice president of Parsons Corp., an engineering firm that wants to design and build the government's facilities in conjunction with Kiewit Federal Group Inc., also represented at the workshop by its vice president. "In fact," said Kimball, "it's the other way around. At this point in time, however, there's just not enough information about the schedule and funding profile to make commitments to the (local) community." Surface facilities receiving truck and train transports of nuclear casks would be constructed outside the main Yucca Mountain Repository with its miles of underground storage tunnels. The surface compound on the Nevada Test Site would have a perimeter fence topped with barbed wire. As the concrete pads holding the casks containing low-level radioactive waste are filled up, new pads would be established and the fence-line expanded to include them. The compound upon full build-out would include transfer facilities, warehouses, waste storage pads, canister and waste-package handling facilities, heavy equipment and light vehicle maintenance facilities, motor pool area, rail car switchyards and truck staging areas, security stations, fire-rescue and medical facilities, administration buildings, fuel depots, craft shops and equipment storage facilities, generator facilities, septic tank and leach fields, a utility facility, cooling tower and evaporation ponds and a visitor center. |
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