MOAB, Utah (AP) - The U.S. Energy Department wants to hear public opinion about the best way to move 16 million tons of uranium tailings.

The agency is deciding whether the tailings should be taken by truck or by train 30 miles to a new repository at Crescent Junction. The remains now sit near the Colorado River outside Moab.

The government will hold a public meeting Thursday in Moab to discuss the 435-acre site at Crescent Junction and what's expected to happen next.

EnergySolutions Inc. has been awarded a $98 million contract for the first phase of the project. If federal officials decide to move the tailings by truck, the company says that work could begin by fall.

If tailings are moved by train, the job would start in spring or summer of 2009.

"There's no consensus on either method," said Wendee Ryan, spokeswoman for S&K Aerospace Inc., hired as a technical adviser to the Energy Department.

A mix of wet and dry tailings will be dumped into a 250-acre hole about 20 to 25 feet deep, a repository designed to last at least 1,000 years.

There will be a tailings pile rising above the hole about 20 feet that will be covered by clay, sand and rock.

After 1,000 years of storage there, very little radium and uranium should be left, project manager Donald Metzler said.

"It's very low-level radioactivity," he said. "So no one needs to be concerned about the radioactivity."

EnergySolutions spokesman John Ward said the job could be done by 2019 or as late as 2028.

"It depends on how many trucks and trains you throw at it," Ward said. "It's how much money do they want to spend, and how fast do they want to move it?"