Nye County officials will recommend in their comments on an environmental impact statement that the U.S. Department of Energy extend a rail route through Pahrump to Jean.

The county also advocated further study of other rail lines.

Nye County consultant Cash Jaszczak told an assemblage of officials from the county, town and school district Monday that funding for the Yucca Mountain rail route won't be authorized until the U.S. Department of Energy has the authority to construct Yucca Mountain.

Darrell Lacy, Nye County Nuclear Waste Project Office director, said the word is there's no funding for the rail route in the 2009 Yucca Mountain budget.

"The rail will not start for some period of time. We think as long as they do not have funding to start construction that all of these other routes should be open for us to discuss, to show the benefits of them," Lacy said.

The county's draft response to the EIS, which will be up for approval at a Jan. 2, 2008, Nye County Commission meeting, states a rail system from Caliente or Mina to Yucca Mountain and continuing on to Jean would optimize national transportation options.

The county's response to the EIS states even if the rail line were only a dead-end line, consultants estimated the economic development value of the Mina corridor would be $401 million, as opposed to only $21 million for the Caliente corridor. The Carlin and Jean routes could also be considered, county officials said.

"The EIS appears to have avoided and continues to avoid consideration of transportation options that are politically difficult," the county's response states.

Dave Swanson, deputy director of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office, said the DOE should dust off a report in 1990 that outlined an alternative Mina route around the Walker River Paiute Reservation. The tribe has decided not to allow the transportation of nuclear waste through the reservation by extending the rail line south from Hawthorne.

Representatives at the Monday meeting also talked about improving road access to Jean, which would also allow access to the proposed Ivanpah Airport, expected to be finished in 2017. A 12-mile, rough dirt road leads from Highway 160 to Sandy Valley, where there is a paved road to Interstate 15 near Jean.

Jaszczak told officials Monday, "All we're doing is challenging the system to see if there's going to be any look see taken in that direction."

The EIS mentions about 10 percent of the nuclear waste casks would be shipped by truck, since some of the shipments would arrive from nuclear reactors not accessible by rail. Lacy said Nye County suggests a Highway 160 bypass around the west end of Pahrump for those heavy trucks, possibly through Stewart and Amargosa valleys.

While a representative from Inyo County, Calif., attending the latest Yucca Mountain EIS hearing in Amargosa Valley was skeptical a rail route would ever be built due to budget considerations, Jaszczak said the transportation aging and disposal (TAD) canisters, are too big for trucks and would require rail. Nuclear waste would be packaged in the TADs at the reactor site and unloaded at Yucca Mountain for disposal without having to be repackaged.

Nye County has been granted cooperating agency status for the actual repository in 2006, much to the county's surprise, said Bob Gamble, Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office DOE on-site representative. The county, however, doesn't have that status for the rail route, since there were already several cooperating agencies and "we did not have a unique position as we do with the repository as the site county."

Swanson said the county has more issues relating to the rail line environmental impact statement than the repository EIS.

Lacy said the DOE doesn't plan to issue a record of decision on the repository, but one will be issued on the rail line, probably when the final EIS is released next June, about the same time the DOE is expected to apply for a license to operate Yucca Mountain.

"Basically what this means is when a record of decision is issued, it gives people an opportunity to sue if they don't like what it says," Lacy said.

Gamble said Nye County persuaded the DOE to consider the socio-economic impacts of having 80 percent of the work force live in Nye County, instead of in Clark County, like the historical precedent set at the Nevada Test Site. The EIS estimates if 80 percent of the work force lives in Nye County, there will be an additional 1,400 to 1,800 county workers at the repository from 2017 to 2035.

Nye County can't require Yucca Mountain workers to live in the county, but Swanson said the county can at least ask DOE not to subsidize workers who commute from Las Vegas.

The county, in its draft comments, states, "Estimates should be made of the additional revenue from and cost for each new resident (direct, indirect, or induced worker for example), living in Nye County as a result of the Yucca Mountain project."

The county cites the cost of constructing future housing developments, public education including a new school in Amargosa Valley, sheriff's and fire protection, health care and infrastructure.

Nye County also attacks the conservative methodology used to calculate the danger of radiation. It states the scenario of an accident or terrorist attack fails to account for the fact workers or residents would be quickly evacuated.

"This gives the naysayers ammunition because they can say, 'Look, DOE, you said in your own publication, you said 28 people are going to die.' That's unacceptable. It's kind of hard to say, 'Well we didn't really mean 28 people were going to die,'" Swanson said.

Lacy said the exposure of 200 millirems per year quoted in the EIS to any individual is half the normal radiation dosage of 400 millirems in Nye County. Most of that would come from radon, which is generated by any mining operation in the state, he said. A normal X-ray gives off 15 millirems.

Nye County wants the DOE to use a baseline of impacts from Yucca Mountain beginning with the days before Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test Site, not from the present. Lacy said 98 percent of the county is under federal management, which blocks access to minerals and water.

The county wasn't consulted on the location of construction camps for the rail line, the water wells or quarries, Swanson said.

"The documents we have now show locations for these. They've already decided preliminarily where they want these facilities located," he said.

A cask maintenance facility and automotive light repair facility is planned. Swanson said Nye County wants the facilities on Crater Flat, which would be an ideal place for an industrial park.

"One of the concerns that we need to address is how are they going to handle the wastewater here, because some of the decontamination activities that will take place here are going to result in radioactive wastewater. We need to be assured that's going to be dealt with properly," Swanson said.

Jaszczak summed up the county's philosophy: "We need to stay engaged, keep reminding our friends in DOE that we are the site county. It is our goal to have the people that work here, live here and have business and industry located here. If we're going to take the insult, we want the benefit."