331 Congressional Districts Could Be Affected By Yucca Transportation

Over 331 congressional districts across 45 states could be potentially affected by transportation routes of commercial spent nuclear fuel should the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada go forward, according to a report commissioned by the Nevada Office of Nuclear Projects, released last week. California leads the way with 32 potential districts affected, followed by Texas at 29 districts, Florida at 22 districts, Illinois at 18 districts, and Pennsylvania at 17 districts. Nevada has argued that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) obligations extend further than just the actual Yucca Mountain site and into the states that would be affected by transportation routes.

 

According to the report, “In admitting the transportation contentions submitted by the States of California and Nevada, and other parties, the NRC administrative law judges wrote: “Transportation of nuclear waste is a foreseeable consequence of constructing a nuclear waste repository. … there can be no serious dispute that the NRC’s NEPA responsibilities do not end at the boundaries of the proposed repository, but rather extend to the transportation of nuclear waste to the repository.”” The report based the affected districts by converting the representative routes issued by the Department of Energy in its Final Supplemental EIS in 2008 into a format used by the Maptitude Geographic Information System software developed by Caliper Corporation to craft the anticipated transportation routes.