WASHINGTON -- The Depart-ment of Energy has doubled its estimate of what it would cost to build a railroad across rural Nevada to transfer nuclear waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
The projected price tag of a 319-mile line now stands at $2 billion. A DOE spokesman said the updated estimate also includes construction of rail yards and other maintenance features along the route.
The DOE in a 2002 environmental impact study estimated it could build a 300-mile railroad at a cost of $880 million in 2001 dollars. The figure was greeted with skepticism at the time by repository critics.
Robert Halstead, a Wisconsin-based consultant for the state of Nevada, said the new estimate is probably more realistic, and still may prove to be low for what he said was a challenging route that crosses several mountain ranges and high desert terrain.
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http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Dec-07-Wed-2005/news/4665289.html
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