WASHINGTON — The resurrection of a controversial plan to store nuclear waste under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain could also mean a revival for a proposed rail line to the remote site. In late March, the Trump Administration announced it would…
After checking a map, truly a railroad to nowhere.
All that money to get there. No apparent reason to build beyond and make another connection with the existing rail network.
You ought to try working out there[+o(]…spent a year in Caliente, NV one week.
(Pioche Branch, where it leaves the UP Transcon at Caliente ended in 1984 and had to be all kinds of no fun and misery… There were a bunch of short lived narrow gauge operations up there as well)
Rebuild the Las Vegas and Tonopah!
(Closest thing formerly there…)
MC, Been there, overnight. Took my lady (wife) and went home to Prescott, AZ
Shoulda gone back the 90 miles to Vegas. When it rains around there, Uncle Pete gets hammered in the canyons. Access roads vanish and the hi-rail is the only way in or out. Imagine that there were no tears shed when Caliente ceased being a division and crew change point.
IIRC, that line was taken out of consideration because of all the problems building and operating thru a population center.
I need to build a model of one of these. I can put it between my “gadget” and TMI cars:
Seriously though, it looks like it won’t be long before new reactors being developed will be able to use a lot of this stored waste for power generation and places like this won’t be so necessary anymore.
Obviously, you did not have any 'puter access in “your off-hours”[:(!]
Googling “Yucca Mt./storage facility” brought up several sites. Digging into the following site and its links will make your head[yeah] explode, or drive one to drink. [D][D][D] See link @http://www.yuccamountain.org/
The following gives one an inkling of what can lay ahead on this site. [:-^]
“…There are ten (10) designated Affected Units of Local Governments (AULG’s) in relative proximity to Yucca Mountain. These AULG’s have been granted authority to provide information and public involvement opportunities regarding federal decisions about Yucca Mountain. Accordingly, Eureka County, Nevada [a designated AULG] is the host of YuccaMountain.org. On this website you will find current news clippings, documents, photos, maps, and much more on the history and key issues surrounding the proposed and controversial Yucca Mountain repository project…”
You gotta know when you click on one of the ‘pdf’ icons in the site, that will bring you a corn
Once this facility is open every town along the way will demand to know when a nuke train passes thru their town. The NRC and railroads will resist, but somehow this will become law. Then the protesters will stand on the track and stop the train. Then the government will step in and keep the train movements quiet. Then the protesters will claim the government is uncaring. The circle of life continues.
Have you looked at the route map? What towns, what people? Thats why they choose Nevada in the first place.
When I read your comment, I had a vision of the train arriving in the protest area in the afternoon of a July day. These days most protests are only active when the cameras are rolling anyway, but in this particular case it is safe to assume that the protest would be very brief before the protesters retreated to air conditioned vehicles.
Daytime is for track work. Nightime is for railroading.
Building the new rail line makes a little more sense then wall and a few billion cheaper. Lol
Something similar happened in the late 1960’s when the U.S. Army moved chemical munitions to/ from the U.S. Anniston (Alabama) Army Depot (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniston_Chemical_Activity), by rail on the then-Southern Rwy. as I recall. There were photos of some of those moves in Trains at the time, showing armed soldiers on the cars and saying that there were more in the in the accompanying rider coaches to prevent disruption, sabotage, attack, etc. - I believe none of those ever occurred.
See also (re: Public Law 91-121 &etc.):
Or they (protesters) can get stupid like what happened at Port Chicago, CA.
A Syracuse news site just recently discovered what some number of us have known for a while - there’s spent nuke material running down I-81 on a regular basis.
Ignorance is bliss.
Of course, we’re not very far from the former Seneca Army Depot, which was never officially acknowledged to be storing nuke weapons…
All those white deer are pretty cool…
There’ve been several threads about this over the years. Here are just 2:
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/p/220776/2440072.aspx#2440072 from 2013
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/p/52147/659258.aspx#659258 from 2005
Others can be found by using the “Search the Community” feature over on the right side of these pages - just enter “Yucca”, then click on the magnifying glass, and wait a few seconds.
- PDN.
The railroad and the mountain repository is the right idea and everyone with a sense of reason knows it. The so-called groundwater, cracks, and earthquake problems are strawman arguments.
President Carter banned reprocessing of nuclear power plant waste, and because of that odd policy we’re stuck with it forever. Thankfully, though, most spent fuel is put in “dry cask” storage which is merely a concrete and steel shell filled with an inert gas so the rods can be retrieved. When they arrive at Yucca they’re supposed to be embedded in glass or ceramic and, while not impossible to reprocess, it’s a lot more difficult at that stage.
Obama stopped the project as a horse trade for Nevada political support and for no other reason.
It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to nuclear power due to strawman arguments. Fearing nuclear power, the residents of Long Island, NY, still pay a 3% surcharge started in 1989 to pay for their fully commissioned but never commercially operated nuclear plant. It was fully decomissioned in 1994 and only the switchear remains. The surcharge continues until 2019. Activist groups got the then-new governor to force state officials to reject any evacuation plan, a strawman if there ever was one. I used to live in the area so I know.
On the contrary, a railroad is the best way of moving the ~100 ton casks holding the spent fuel assemblies. The money to pay for the railroad has been accumulating in a trust fund for several decades now and the fact that the waste repository has yet to be opened puts the US government in danger of a breach of contract lawsuit.