The 90-day comment period on a supplemental environmental impact statement, or EIS, to allow more storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is expected to begin today.

The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management announced last week it was analyzing increasing the effects of building a repository built to hold up to 135,000 metric tons of high level nuclear waste, or about double the 70,000 tons authorized by Congress.

Bob Gamble, the Nye County representative at the U.S. Department of Energy in Las Vegas, said it could be spring 2009 before Congress can vote on permitting the additional storage. The additional storage capacity would mean a longer period of time the nuclear waste would be passing through Nye County to the site, Gamble said.

A base inventory of 70,000 metric tons in 2002 also considered additional inventories of nuclear waste. "So the fact that the EIS is looking at the possibility of additional inventory is not new," Gamble said.

The county's point man on nuclear waste, Gamble speculated the additional waste could be stored at another mountain range just west of Yucca Mountain. But he said there are numerous possibilities for expansion.

Cash Jaszczak, with Nevada operations of SRS Technologies, said "there's a lot of different dynamics that go into this ... The repository as envisioned with its legislative limits was going to be filled before it was opened, so to speak."

Projections are 70,000 tons of nuclear waste already stored at the nation's 104 nuclear reactors to fill the repository by 2010. The latest projections are the Yucca Mountain facility may not be open until somewhere between 2017 and 2022.

"Anybody who thinks we're not going to have any changes and adjustments to this process as we move forward has to have no sense of history, because that's exactly what's happened up to this point," Jaszczak said.

Dave Swanson, assistant project administrator of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Office, said the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the director of the Office of Civilian Waste Management, Ward Sproat, to make a recommendation by 2010 on a second nuclear waste repository to be located in the East. Gamble said Sproat is likely to give that recommendation either late this year or early in 2008.

When asked the county's position on the expanded repository proposal, Jaszczak referred to the Nye County Community Protection Plan, which discusses protecting the health and safety of county residents and gainng economic benefits from the project.

The county's analysis would be that 80 percent of the 3,000 workers at Yucca Mountain would live in Nye County, the opposite of the Nevada Test Site whose 80 percent of the workers live in Clark County, Gamble said.

"When the law was passed and Yucca Mountain was selected, Nye County had no say in it. That decision was made by others elsewhere, and the most Nye County can hope for is to make this a success," Jaszczak said.

While Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has pledged the Yucca Mountain repository will never happen, Jaszczak noted the House of Representatives recently voted 350-81 against a motion by U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., to kill funding for the project.

The damages the utility companies are seeking for delays in the project are another factor influencing the DOE right now, Gamble said.

"So between DOE progress toward licensing, what the choices are for the second repository, damages for failure to accept the waste, those are going to get people's attention," Gamble said.

Another factor complicating the situation is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which will present an EIS on recycling nuclear waste. The partnership hasn't made any recommendations or decisions yet, so the DOE can't make any decisions about reprocessing at this point, Gamble said.

Speaking of the proposed reprocessing of nuclear waste, Gamble said that "will give us another supply of fuel for reactors; it would reduce the volume and radiological toxicity of the waste that has to be disposed of at Yucca Mountain."

The Nye County Nuclear Waste Project Office will have representatives at each of the eight public hearings scheduled on the latest EIS, Lacey said.

Mineral County residents will have the first chance to comment, with a public hearing Nov. 13 at the Hawthorne Convention Center.

After meetings in Caliente and Reno, a public hearing is scheduled from 4 to 7 p.m. Nov. 26 at the LongStreet Inn and Casino in Amargosa Valley. The hearings move to the Goldfield School Gymnasium at 4 p.m., Nov. 27. From there the DOE moves to public hearings in Lone Pine, Calif., Nov. 29, the Cashman Center in Las Vegas Dec. 3 and Washington, D.C., Dec. 6.

Jaszczak said the amount of money Nye County receives for oversight of the project is influenced more by the total budget for the Yucca Mountain project than by the size of the facility.

Swanson said judging from the response at the nuclear waste and environmental advisory board booth at the Pahrump Fall Festival last weekend, there may not be much of a local outcry over a larger repository.

"We talked to a lot of people, a whole lot of people stopped by. There was one woman who expressed anxiety about nuclear material, one person out of everybody we talked to over a period of three days and I was absolutely surprised by that," Swanson said.

The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, which is composed of members opposed to Yucca Mountain, will meet at Las Vegas City Hall at 10:30 a.m. today. It will be the first meeting attended by Nye County School Superintendent Rob Roberts, who was appointed to the committee by Gov. Jim Gibbons last summer.

Requests for additional information may be submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, 1551 Hillshire Dr., Las Vegas, Nev. 89134, by calling 1-800-967-3477 or faxing 1-800-967-0739. Written comments may be submitted to the same address and fax, or logging on to www.ocrwm.doe.gov.