Welcome to the CSG Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee Update. Below are links and summaries of several important happenings from the last few weeks. Please don't hesitate to contact Lisa (920/458-5910) or Sarah (630/925-1922) with any questions or concerns about any of these issues.

DOE Issues NEPA Documents - Committee Unable to Contain Excitement

Last week, DOE issued two NEPA documents for Yucca Mountain and its transportation system. The titles alone would take up the entire newsletter, so we'll refer to them by their expanded acronyms. The first document, the Draft Repository SEIS, is a supplement to the Yucca Mountain Final EIS that DOE issued in 2002. The second document has two parts: the Draft Nevada Rail Corridor SEIS and the Draft Rail Alignment EIS. Of these two documents, the Draft Repository SEIS addresses national transportation; therefore it is arguably the more important for the Midwestern states. The two rail-related documents focus more on the Nevada-specific impacts of constructing and using a rail line to Yucca Mountain.

Included in the documents is a new set of national transportation maps. DOE used a representative set of rail and highway routes to assess the impact of transportation of spent fuel and high-level waste to the repository. Sarah compared the routes to the routes from the Midwest's Route Identification Project. These comparison maps are available here.

The committee will be reviewing the transportation-related sections of these documents and submitting comments by the January 10 deadline. The Transportation Planning Work Group will do the initial review, with the goal of developing some initial feedback for the entire committee to discuss at the November meeting. The members of the Transportation Planning Work Group are Jane Beetem, Tim Runyon, Jon Schwarz, Thor Strong and Melanie Rasmusson. Lisa and Sarah will work with these committee members to develop an approach to conducting the review. Work Group members will have their first conference call on the documents in the near future.

Click here for the Draft Repository SEIS.

Click here for the Draft Nevada Rail SEIS and the Draft Rail Alignment EIS.

Grill 'Em High

The fall committee meeting is fast approaching and the final agenda is being set. As part of the DOE updates, Alex Thrower will be reporting on OCRWM activities over the past months and planned activities for the near future. This will be the committee's chance to hear and ask questions about the 180(c) Federal Register notice, the National Transportation Plan, the NEPA documents, and the national route selection process, among other topics. In order to make the most of his presentation, Alex has asked us for a list of topics to cover and questions to answer. Please send your ideas for topics and questions to Lisa by next Tuesday. To see an archive of important DOE activities since the last committee meeting, check out the newsletter archive and the committee correspondence archives.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Planning and Training and Emergency Response, Oh My!

Last week, the committee finalized its comments on the 180(c) Federal Register notice. The notice (available here) was issued in July, and the official commenting period for the document closes on October 22nd. The 180(c) Work Group had several conference calls to draft comments on the notice, which the entire committee reviewed. The final comments were sent to DOE on October 9^th and are available here.

DOE has said that after comments are received, they will proceed with a pilot 180(c) program. However, the pilot will not happen until FY09 at the earliest. Lessons learned from the pilot program will assist DOE in revising the 180(c) policy and procedures. The committee will have a chance to comment on the revised policy.

Thanks to everyone for their careful review of the notice and the committee's comments!

Click here to access the official DOE archive of comments received on the notice.

Thanks for reading! Look for the next issue in two weeks!

Sincerely,
Lisa Janairo and Sarah Wochos
Committee Staff