Latest Nye County, Nevada Stories

By Brad Mitzelfelt The push to balance today's economic progress with preserving our natural resources and our desert way of life has lurched forward dramatically, if not very gracefully, this year. We are seeing several regionally significant enterprises looking to establish a local presence in our area. While this is promising from the standpoint of inviting jobs, it is also daunting from the standpoint of minimizing negative impacts on our communities. There are many developments borne...

By Christopher Lawrence At this point, Nye County really should just ban recording equipment altogether. It's hard for me to think about Pahrump without recalling some of the horrifying moments from "Pleasure for Sale," February's overly grim Sundance Channel documentary series set at the Chicken Ranch. Now comes "Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal" (9 p.m. today, HBO), which when it isn't busy trashing the county's most notorious resident, doesn't do Pahrump or nearby Crystal any...

By Deseret News editorial The only thing rising faster than gas prices these days is the cost of hollowing out Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a storage site for spent nuclear fuel rods. Seven years ago the estimated price was $58 billion. Last year it was announced as $77 billion. This week, the Bush administration put it at $90 billion. Enough, already. The $9 billion actually spent on the project to date is too much. Yucca Mountain is a non-starter. Congress needs to scuttle the idea...

By Steve Tetreault By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - The projected costs to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, ship used radioactive fuel to Nevada from around the country and operate the site for 100 years have grown to more than $90 billion, an energy department official said Tuesday. Ward Sproat, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Management, said the department will detail its new cost estimate in a report to...

WASHINGTON -- Turns out, it's going to cost taxpayers $32 billion more than first thought to open and operate the nation's first nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. And Utah and Nevada members of Congress are using that news to try to kill that project and replace it with storing waste in dry casks at nuclear power plants that produce it. The Bush administration's latest calculation -- made public Tuesday -- is that the Yucca Mountain facility will cost more than $90 billion. It's...

To the editor: As directed by the Congress of the United States in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the U.S. Department of Energy has submitted an application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build a deep-underground repository on federal land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The application documents more than 20 years of scientific analyses and engineering, and demonstrates that the nation's inventory of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste can be disposed...

By Steve Tetreault By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - A Senate panel on Tuesday chopped more than 20 percent from the Department of Energy's 2009 budget for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The energy and water subcommittee's action signals months of uncertainty ahead as to whether DOE will have enough money to manage its newly submitted license application for the Nevada site if Congress carries out the cut. The Senate subcommittee approved a $386.4...

By Margo Bartlett Pesek A dethroned Central Nevada mining queen, Tonopah preserves her past and regains prestige as a prime location for stargazing. Often considered just a fuel or snack stop along U.S. 95 between Las Vegas and Reno, the old town deserves a closer look. Located 200 miles from Las Vegas at the junction of U.S. 95 and U.S. 6, Tonopah offers overnighters a variety of motels and restaurants. Visitors during the day spend hours walking or cruising the historical downtown to spot...

By Steve Tetreault By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - The federal railroad board has said it will consider the Department of Energy's bid to build a nuclear waste rail line to Yucca Mountain, setting aside a Nevada protest that the application was incomplete. The Surface Transportation Board denied Nevada's demand that it turn away DOE's application to build and operate a 300-mile railroad from Caliente across rural Nevada to the repository site. The board ruled on...

By Molly Ball By MOLLY BALL REVIEW-JOURNAL Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday that Republican presidential candidate John McCain is saying the same things about Yucca Mountain that President Bush once did, and Nevadans should not be fooled. "That's what George Bush said, remember, and he'd been president for a couple of weeks when he decided science wasn't so important and jammed it down our throat," the Senate majority leader said in an interview. "John McCain has voted with the...