Nevadans blast nuclear study

State officials who oversee work on Yucca Mountain are fuming over a recent federal report that says transporting high-level nuclear waste through Las Vegas would only slightly raise the risk to residents of radioactive exposure.

Nevada officials fear the NRC will use the traffic study to approve a plan for shipping high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

The study makes no mention of growing traffic problems or the possibility of an accident, state officials point out. It ignores figures released by the Nevada Division of Motor Vehicles and Safety on April 1 showing that fatal accidents jumped 25.7 percent between 1988 and 1997 in Las Vegas while national traffic death rates dropped 11.4 percent.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied as a potential national repository for high-level nuclear waste. If a repository is built, shipment of up to 75,000 tons of radioactive waste could begin in 2010.

The study was part of a proposed rule for renewing nuclear reactors produced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that would license a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain if the site passes scientific muster.

"The NRC appears to be making an end run around the ground rules," Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency on Nuclear Projects, said. State and Clark County officials were not even told the NRC was doing the study even though state and county planning documents were used, he said.

Normally the NRC meets with state officials about risks affecting the state.

The state agency is asking for extra time to react to the findings, Loux said.

"Given the traffic jams and the amount of construction in Southern Nevada, certainly the Las Vegas Valley is experiencing quite a few growing pains that lead to an increased potential for accidents," Loux said.

The NRC report said that natural radiation from cosmic rays, sunlight and the Earth itself could result in 11 deaths from cancers per 300,000 Las Vegas residents. The highly radioactive shipments would add a fraction to that risk, the NRC said.

The NRC study assumed that exposed Las Vegas residents would live within a half-mile of the transportation route, which includes Interstate 15 and U.S. 95. An alternative route using the beltway under construction around the valley was also included.

"While the estimated risks are low, they are higher than usually seen for (spent nuclear fuel) shipments because of the extremely high volume of shipments assumed to pass through Las Vegas for purposes of this analysis," the NRC report concluded.

State officials also discovered in the NRC study -- in a footnote -- that the commission is assuming that Yucca Mountain could contain 126,000 tons of radioactive waste.

Since 1982, Congress has limited Yucca Mountain to accept commercial radioactive reactor waste up to 70,000 tons plus 7,000 tons of Defense Department nuclear waste.

An official with the state agency discovered the NRC study in a federal notice on environmental concerns at existing commercial nuclear-power reactors.

"We stumbled onto it quite by accident," Joe Strolin, director of socioeconomic studies for the state agency, said.

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