I’ve made traffic control plans for road construction and depending on the locality police are rarely involved with traffic control. This area clearly looks like the state’s DOT right-of-way, and these might be contractors in which case they are required to submit traffic control plans to the DOT and DOT confirm if it for safety. However, contractors have to actually execute the plans in the field. This could be a case of bad plans or a site supervisor who didn’t check the original traffic control plans matched with what was on the ground.

Yea Yucca mountain is a sad tale. A lack of community engagement and politics ruined what was other wise a geotechnically sound design. Having a national repository for a nation as large as the US might be impractical in retrospect especially involving interstate rail transport. I think local containment of waste is key to reduce shipping costs and trailing the waste through developed areas. That requires planning a nuclear site near a geological repository which might not be part of design plans.

Also that NM repository I haven’t heard of, will be reading more

I endorse nuclear power and am enjoying the second look it is getting now but as a geologist I ask where the nuclear waste will go. No one ever wants to talk about it and there is really easy solution, the deep subsurface (miles below the ground). It’s safe, cheap, and Finland has shown how it’s done.

This is part of a broader issue in preparing our next generations for jobs of the future. To build out this infrastructure you need smart technical people to make it work and ask the tough questions, but I know this administration doesn’t care about that.