AMARGOSA VALLEY -- It's been a little over a year since the U.S. Department of Energy held public hearings on Yucca Mountain, the last time to discuss the Mina train route.

That was a scoping meeting on the draft supplemental environmental impact statement for the repository and the rail route. Now that the EIS has been prepared, the DOE will hold a public hearing on those two draft documents from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday at the LongStreet Inn and Casino in Amagosa Valley.

The DOE expects to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next June on licensing Yucca Mountain for the storage of nuclear waste. That licensing study is expected to take three years.

The first of the current round of public hearings was held Nov. 13 in Hawthorne and drew 18 people, Allen Benson, director of the DOE office of external affairs said. Another 41 people showed up for the hearing in Caliente Nov. 15, and 57 appeared in Reno Nov. 19. Other public hearings are scheduled Nov. 27 at the Goldfield School Gymnasium, Nov. 29 at Statham Hall in Lone Pine, Calif. and Dec. 3 at the Cashman Center in Las Vegas.

The new EIS details the rail route, including extensive detail on the Mina route and states the intention of the U.S. Department of Energy to allow dual use of the train route for use by commercial freight companies, a long-time goal of local officials in Nevada.

The Mina rail route is no longer the preferred alternative.

The draft EIS addresses the possibility of doubling the size of the nuclear waste repository to 130,000 tons, an action that would require an act of Congress, which previously authorized no more than 70,000 tons.

The DOE assumes Yucca Mountain would be ready to start accepting waste in 2017. Shipments would last until 2067.

The nuclear waste produced at 72 commercial and four DOE sites would arrive mostly by rail in a transportation, aging and disposal, or TAD, canister that will be loaded at the nuclear reactors and off-loaded at Yucca Mountain for storage without repackaging.

While the community protection plan prepared by Nye County asks the shipments to be by rail, the EIS forecasts shipping 9,500 casks by rail and 2,700 by truck. The rail casks would require 2,800 train shipments, an average of 17 trains per week.

The Caliente rail route would be 328 to 336 miles long at a cost of $2.2 billionn and would take four to 10 years to construct.

Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office Director Darrell Lacy said the shipments will be closely monitored. He said there won't be a situation such as happened recently in Las Vegas where a chlorine tanker accidentally rolled through the city before local emergency response officials were aware of it.

The DOE requested the withdrawal of 308,600 acres of public land to evaluate the rail line construction. A few different alternatives are being studied on the route through Goldfield historic mining districts, through Bonnie Claire and Oasis Valley. The Caliente corridor would cross 24 to 27 grazing allotments, at a loss of up to 1,083 animal unit months at a cost of $57,000. It would traverse through 32 to 37 un-patented mining claims.

Once at Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste would be placed in drifts 41 miles in length, 1,000 feet below the surface and about 1,000 feet above the water table.

The DOE assumes, based on past workforce patterns, 80 percent of the employees would live in Clark County. However, Nye County nuclear waste project officials point optimistically to the evaluation in the EIS of the potential environmental impacts if a higher percentage of the workforce lived in Nye County.

A summary of the EIS notes, "impacts to employment in Clark and Nye counties from repository-related construction and operations would be small. The number of jobs created directly and indirectly would peak in 2021 in both counties at around 1,300, an 0.09 percent increase above the projected employment baseline for that year."

DOE public affairs officer Gail Fisher said the first hour, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., will be an open house format during which the public can talk to experts, view displays and give their comments one-on-one to DOE court reporters. At 5 p.m. facilitators will announce a public comment period during which people can voice their opinions in front of the audience.

The Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Office will have a display at all eight public hearings, with Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis, consultants Mary Ellen Giampaoli and Cash Jaszczak, the project office director Darrell Lacy and Bob Gamble, Nye County's on-site representative at DOE, on hand.

Nye County issued a statement that direct and indirect impacts can be effectively mitigated. The county believes there is a mutual benefit for the federal and local government to evaluate the project in its policy of constructive engagement with the DOE.