Nuclear wastes being shipped by the Yucca Mountain disposal site in Nevada may travel the last leg of their journey on trucks, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported March 31.

Quoting a Department of Energy analysis, the newspaper said that because the government could not complete a railroad to the site on time, the waste would likely be shipped by rail to the town of Caliente. The name of the town, appropriately, is Spanish for “hot.”

From Caliente, the containers would travel more than 300 miles to the nuclear waste disposal site, the Review Journal said.

Located in Nye County, NV, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the facility at Yucca Mountain is being designed to store and dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, according to documents from the Environmental Protection Agency. If and when it opens – federal documents predict it could happen by 2010 – the site will be the nation’s first geological repository for disposal of high-level radioactive waste.

The site sits near the Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site. The repository itself would be roughly 1,000 feet below the top of the mountain and 1,000 feet above the level of local ground water.

The wastes – mostly from commercial power plants, but with some from the military – are now being stored at sites in 43 states.