Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, September 12, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
September 12, 2005
Letter: What to expect if nuke dump leaks
In consideration of the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, what help can Nevada residents expect from Washington if Yucca Mountain happens -- and springs a leak?
Phyllis Rosenberg
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KRNV
September 12, 2005
Environmental group joins fight against Yucca Mountain
The Citizen Alert environmental group is taking to the road to help drum up opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project in southern Nevada.
The group's "Back to Our Routes" town hall meetings will be held in 25 Nevada communities through October 22nd.
Group representatives will provide citizens with materials and teach them how to fight the dump.
Citizen Alert leaders note the Department of Energy still lacks a license to transport and store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. They say they think the license will never be granted if Nevadans stay united in opposition to the dump.
Among others, meetings are scheduled for October fifth in Carson City, October sixth in Fallon, October ninth in Ely, October eleventh in Elko, October 13th in Winnemucca, October 15th in Reno and October 22nd in Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas SUN
September 12, 2005
Nuclear transport to Utah may face problems
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Moving nuclear waste to the planned interim storage site in Utah will face the same challenges as moving waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
The arguments over the transportation of high-level nuclear waste follow a well-laid path.
Critics will point to potential terrorist strikes and accidents while the industry will point to a relatively clean record of moving used fuel from one place to another.
The transportation planning process, a private venture for Utah and public one for Nevada, share similar characteristics. Each need a large land withdrawal from the Bureau of Land Management to begin construction, detailed planning and cooperation from states waste shipments would cross and eventual public acceptance.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Private Fuel Storage's license on Friday. The consortium of nuclear utilities investing in the project will now begin to look for companies interested in storing their waste there -- until the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas opens.
Private Fuel spokeswoman Sue Martin said some planning on moving the waste from nuclear power plants has been done, including designing and building a prototype rail cask that would move the waste. But until Private Fuel knows exactly where it will be taking waste from and moving it to Utah, specific details like routes and transportation methods are still unknown.
Several utilities are the initial investors in Private Fuel, but they will give the opportunity to utility storing nuclear to put waste in Utah.
Yucca Mountain, if approved, would bring waste from almost every state east of the Mississippi River. The Energy Department aims to build a new rail line from Caliente on the Union Pacific lines to move waste to the mountain.
Similar to transportation plans that would bring waste to Yucca, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will have to approve any container Private Fuel would use to move the waste and it would need to be moved under Transportation Department rules for radioactive material.
Transportation planning was not part of the eight-year application process and Utah was not allowed to bring it up during proceedings.
Utah Assistant Attorney General Jim Soper said the commission said transportation was not within the scope of whether the site should get a license.
Soper wonders how many utilities will actually use Private Fuel Storage.
"It is not an attractive alternative for all utilities," he said, because it may cost more and utilities would still be liable for waste as it moved to the state. For Yucca, once the department takes title to the waste at the utility when it begins preparing it for shipment, it is the Energy Department's responsibility, he said.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the NRC's decision to license Private Fuel is "irresponsible beyond human comprehension."
"If this stuff is so safe to store above ground, it is safe to leave it on site," Berkley said. "There is no reason to be moving this stuff. We've been against shipping waste for years and they are still going forward with this."
Similar to the Energy Department, Berkley said Private Fuel is vague about routes.
"Once the American public gets wind of the fact nuclear waste will be driven through their neighborhoods, they will protest," she said.
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Deseret News
September 12, 2005
LDS Church opposes N-site
By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News
Utahns opposed to the siting of a high-level nuclear waste repository in Tooele County have gained a powerful ally, The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Over the weekend, the church made available this response to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's recent ruling that the Private Fuel Storage repository could be built in Skull Valley:
"We regret the decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to authorize the issuance of a license that would allow storage of radioactive waste in Skull Valley. Storage of nuclear waste in Utah is a matter of significant public interest that requires thorough scrutiny."
The statement was attributed to Dale Bills, spokesman for the church. No further elaboration about the matter was immediately available.
The repository, proposed for Goshute tribal land, would house 40,000 tons of highly-radioactive spent nuclear power plant fuel rods. The material would be in "temporary" storage for up to 40 years.
The latest action triggered comparisons with a previous debate related to nuclear issues in which the church played a role.
On May 5,1981, the First Presidency issued a statement opposing the deployment of the MX Missile system, under consideration for the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada. The Air Force project had been envisioned as a gigantic set of tracks and shelters, with missiles shuttled from place to place in a vast stretch of the state's western desert.
The 1981 statement deplored the nuclear arms race and expressed grave concern over the MX system's many missiles and nuclear warheads. "Such concentration, we are informed, may even invite attack under a first-strike strategy on the part of an aggressor," the statement said.
The construction project would have adverse impacts on sociological, ecological and water resource factors, added the statement, signed by the three members of the First Presidency.
As Cold War confrontations faded, the push for the MX system dissolved. But church opposition also has been credited as an important factor in the project's abandonment.
The latest statement bolsters the arguments of those fighting against the high-level nuclear repository.
Although the facility was approved last week by the NRC, it continues to face tremendous political opposition.
A 2002 Deseret News poll by Dan Jones & Associates found 79 percent of Utahns were opposed to the PFS project. Shipping of nuclear waste on railroad routes through the state was among the biggest concerns, but lately fears of a terrorist attack also have been in the forefront. Private Fuel Storage has said the facility would be a temporary one. But the government's planned permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., has bogged down in political fights and debate concerning the validity of scientific studies, leading to increased concerns about the temporary nature of the Utah facility.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com
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Deseret News
September 12, 2005
N-waste ball in Utah's court
Deseret Morning News editorial
The next step is up to Utahns now that the nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized a license for Private Fuel Storage to build an above-ground nuclear waste storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation.
On Friday, the NRC rejected Utah officials' arguments that the risk of a jet fighter from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage casks was too great and that the facility would be too close to a major population center. Then it voted, 3-1, to authorize the NRC staff to issue a license to PFS, a consortium of utilities, to construct and operate the storage site.
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., has vowed to fight the licensing decision in court. Members of Utah's congressional delegation say there are many administrative, legislative and legal options to exploit in order to prevent Utah's West Desert from becoming the nation's disposal site for spent nuclear fuel rods, which is waste from electrical power production. Unquestionably, the fight has reached a new level of urgency.
The one consolation — and something both sides agree upon — is that spent nuclear rods will not be coming to Utah tomorrow, although PFS officials say the waste could come as soon as 2008.
The most logical solution would be to recycle and store spent nuclear fuel rods where they are produced, which would be sound alternatives to both PFS's proposed site in Utah and the proposed permanent federal repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Reacting to the NRC decision, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, on Friday reiterated his support of this concept.
"Transporting high-level radioactive waste to Utah is as dangerous as it would be transporting it to Nevada," Reid said in a statement. "Thousands of tons of deadly nuclear material will pass homes, schools, businesses and churches in communities all across the country, and there is simply no way to safely do this."
Reprocessing spent fuel rods on site would relieve the risks of transporting these dangerous materials and minimize the risks of these materials falling into the wrong hands.
Another solid option is to pass legislation sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, which would designate nearby Bureau of Land Management lands as wilderness. This would block the construction of a rail line to the PFS site. The legislation, which is part of the Defense Reauthorization Act, is now in the Senate. Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett need to carefully consider Bishop's proposal and do all they can to support it.
The NRC licensing decision was, undoubtedly, a considerable setback for Utah. But key elected officials say many avenues of redress remain. Utah must exploit each and every one of them.
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Provo Daily Herald
September 12, 2005
LDS Church leaders join opposition to storage site
The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is adding it's voice to the cacophony of objections to a decision to allow a radioactive waste storage facility to be built in Utah's west desert.
In a statement issued late Friday, church leaders said:
"We regret (the) decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to authorize the issuance of a license
that would allow storage of radioactive waste in Skull Valley. Storage of nuclear waste in Utah is a matter of significant public interest that requires thorough scrutiny."
Hours earlier, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it had rejected claims that the proposed storage site was too dangerous and had authorized a license for the facility.
Private Fuels Storage will contract with the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians to build the facility on their reservation about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
The facility will have the capacity to hold 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods.
It is the first license to be granted for a high-level waste facility in more than 30 years.
Politicians and community environmental groups have fought the plan for eight years. But Mormon church leaders had not previously voiced an opinion, and some the statement released Friday is a significant.
"The church is the only political entity in the state powerful enough to defend us," said Maryann Webster, a church member who has long petitioned leaders to help fight the proposal. "I hope they will speak more strongly and work to prevent it."
Waste opponents will continue to block the commission's decision -- something about 87 percent of Utahns oppose, according to polling in 2002.
State leaders say only Private Fuels Storage and Goshute tribal members, most of whom live below the poverty level, are the only beneficiaries of the commission's decision.
Michael S. Lee, chief counsel for Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr., says Utah will take a three-pronged approach to fighting the facility, taking their objections to the federal court, to Congress and to federal agencies.
Former Rep. Jim Hansen still sees the U.S. Capitol as Utah's best hope, but says his bill to block the waste site's rail route with wilderness would have succeeded a few years ago if an environmentalist had not stymied the move.
The bill is being carried this year by Hansen's successor, Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop. It has passed in the House but stalled once again in the Senate.
"I don't know that it can be done, but we are going to keep trying," said U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, also a Republican.
But some wonder if the Utah congressional delegation's support of the Yucca Mountain project has doomed the state's chances of getting any help from others in Congress, particularly U.S. Senate Minority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat and a Mormon.
Jason Groenewold, director of the Health Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL), notes that a deep rift divides Utah leaders from Reid.
"It may be time to change strategies," said Groenewold. "And we hope that Senators Bennett and Hatch will work with our allies in the West rather than alienating them."
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The NewStandard
September 12, 2005
Feds, Firms Move Forward with Utah Nuke Storage Plan
by Brendan Coyne
In a maneuver designed to circumvent a public deliberation process that has already spurred vocal opposition, the US Department of Energy announced Friday that it has awarded a $3.1 billion contract to a consortium of eight nuclear power plant operators to build a waste storage facility at a disputed Utah site on Native American land.
The announcement spurred a new round of complaints and plans for lawsuits from state officials and Native American, religious and environmental groups.
Plans to store the spent nuclear fuel in Utah have been in the works for eight years, but they picked up pace in 2002 after President Bush and Congress approved the plan to allow a consortium of nuclear companies to use land offered by a faction of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, the Indian nation that owns rights to the proposed waste storage site, as a temporary storage facility for radioactive waste presumably headed toward a proposed constructed permanent facility in Nevada.
The consortium, Private Fuel Storage (PFS), will be permitted to store upwards of 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley site, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday. The site is to be used as a temporary repository for waste slated to be stored at a site on Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Nevada site is also heavily contested and has run into technical and legal problems.
"Our decision today concludes this protracted adjudication, which has generated more than 40 published Board decisions and more than 30 published Commission decisions," the Commission said in issuing the order. "The adjudicatory effort, plus our staff´s separate safety and environmental reviews, gives us reasonable assurance that PFS´s proposed [storage facility] can be constructed and operated safely."
Opponents of the effort say the waste represents environmental and health threats in the event of an accident or deliberate attack.
The groups warn that the Utah location will become a de facto permanent storage facility, due both to the growing, somewhat successful opposition to the Yucca Mountain site, and because the transportation and transfer of spent fuel is so dangerous. Last year, a federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to redraft the Yucca Mountain storage facility plans because the proposal "unabashedly" rejected scientific views on the issue.
Public Citizen termed the latest NRC decision "irresponsible and misguided," and cautioned that people and officials need to see through the "nuclear industry´s need for a publicly presentable waste solution that it can use in its push for a ‘nuclear renaissance.´"
Private Fuel Storage will take about 20 years to transport all the planned waste to Skull Valley, but the license does not require the consortium to develop removal plans for fifteen years, the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL Utah) noted. The group also warns that clean-up responsibility remains an up-in-the-air issue, as does the length of storage.
In addition to sparking opposition efforts by the state of Utah and environmental groups, the Skull Valley deal created a tribal rift that has yet to heal. Previously, The NewStandard reported on an ongoing battle between the tribe´s federally-recognized leader, Leon Bear, and tribal members who dispute his status and his decision to allow the storage of nuclear waste on Goshute land.
Utah politicians threatened to take action to halt the PFS plans, and environmental groups are considering filing a court challenge to the NRC decision, the Washington Post reported this weekend.
In a statement, PFS said the facility will not be operational before 2008. "We are pleased that the Commissioners have made a final decision on these issues and authorized a license," said PFS Chairman and CEO John Parkyn. "We can now move forward to meet the needs of the commercial nuclear industry and help protect the electricity supply in our nation."
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Las Vegas SUN
September 09, 2005
Editorial: There he goes again ...
Las Vegas Sun
Weekend Edition
Sept, 10-11, 2005
The fiasco that arose from Michael Brown's appointment was not a learning experience for President Bush. On Thursday he nominated a person to lead the Yucca Mountain project who candidly admits he knows next to nothing about the permanent storage of nuclear waste.
Edward F. Sproat III is Bush's pick to head the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. This is the office that oversees the department's plan to open Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation's permanent burial site for high-level nuclear waste from power plants.
Yucca Mountain is a disaster waiting to happen. For starters, it is located in an earthquake zone. Many scientists say the department's plan to encase the waste in metal casks to compensate for the mountain's porous geology is flawed. And transportation of the waste across the country for decades also poses grave national-security risks.
Sproat admitted to the Sun that he is "John Q. Public" when it comes to knowledge about Yucca Mountain. As a consultant to the nuclear-power industry, and as a former executive at nuclear power-plants, his expertise lies in producing the waste. Even if he were an expert in waste disposal, why is he being recommended at all when the nuclear power industry is pushing hard to open Yucca Mountain? The job requires a neutral scientist, one not driven by a pro-Yucca agenda.
Like Brown, Sproat believes that all he needs is on-the-job training. "I am hoping at some point I will get a briefing book to be better prepared for the (Yucca Mountain) details," he said. This is ridiculous. But we suppose it would be just as ridiculous to expect Bush to recommend an open-minded person with knowledge of all aspects of nuclear waste storage, including its dangers.
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Las Vegas SUN
September 09, 2005
Letter: Bush's foes have been unfairly critical
Las Vegas Sun
Weekend Edition
Sept. 10-11, 2005
The liberals and their cohorts seek to blame President Bush for rising gasoline prices, Iraq and now Hurricane Katrina. In their misguided logic, they refuse to recall the many obstacles they have thrown up against the quest for more sources of oil.
Although there is oil, and a lot of it, in Alaska as well as locations off of our shores, they refused to entertain drilling and production from these sources. No matter where oil was to be found in or around the U.S., every effort was exerted to deny exploration and procurement of this oil.
Iraq was initially thought to be a source of weapons of mass destruction. Most senators, as well as European nations, believed that to be the case. Not one level-headed person or nation had a doubt of Saddam's intent to support terrorist networks, including al-Qaida. Are we right in our war in Iraq? You bet we are!
Look at the vote on the Kyoto Accord. Look at the intended harm it would have done to the U.S. Look at China and other countries that have no laws restricting the gas pollution as the result of burning fossil fuels. Look at President Bush's attempts to protect our forests from further destruction by forest fires! Every positive move he has made has been met with obstruction by our friends on the left.
Look at the mother of a fallen soldier, Cindy Sheehan, as she voices the dishonest words of the liberals among us. Sure, she may deserve our sympathy. But by her actions, she has really earned our pity. Shame on her.
Our president may not be perfect, but who is? He is doing a marvelous job and deserves our accolades.
Lee S. Gliddon Jr.
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Provo Daily Herald
September 11, 2005
In Our View: Hoping for a nuclear miracle
The Daily Herald
Friday was the day many Utahns hoped would never come.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 3-1 to allow Private Fuel Storage to receive a license for a 4,000-cask nuclear waste storage facility on the Goshute reservation in Skull Valley. In a two-minute discussion, commissioners determined that an F-16 from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the casks would not release dangerous amounts of radiation.
Utah is now in the same position as BYU's football team during the 1980 Holiday Bowl just before Jim McMahon threw the "miracle pass."
Gov. Huntsman has vowed to fight the NRC's decision in court. Unless it's being heard in a different venue, the court appeal is likely to go the same way Utah's previous attempts to stop it in court have gone -- nowhere.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, says he will "pull out all the stops" to shoot down PFS's plan. The congressional delegation is planning to get Interior Secretary Gale Norton to scuttle PFS, either by denying it permission to build a rail spur through federal land, or by directing the Bureau of Indian Affairs to veto the lease between PFS and the Goshutes.
There are two legislative measures that have some potential for saving Utah:
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, inserted language into the National Defense Authorization Act to create a wilderness area around Cedar Mountain in Tooele County. This effectively stops PFS from building a rail line to the site, killing the plan.
The language survived in the House and is now before the Senate. Hopefully Hatch and Sen. Bob Bennett can use their influence to keep the language intact.
The other measure comes from our neighbor in Nevada, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The Nevada Democrat has sponsored legislation that would require nuclear waste to be stored at reactor sites that created it, under federal control.
While Reid wrote the bill with the intention of killing plans to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, Nev., he said that it shouldn't go to Utah either. This is quite magnanimous of him, since every member of our congressional delegation except Rep. Jim Matheson voted to send waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
If Hatch can join forces with Reid, the two of them could influence enough senators to get the measure through in spite of nuclear industry lobbying.
But for any of these things to work, Utah needs to show the nation that this isn't a private squabble between the state and a company that wants to profit from nuclear waste. This is an issue that affects the entire nation.
While Utah can rightfully argue that it shouldn't have to help clean up after an industry that doesn't provide any direct benefits to the state, it's an argument that's easy to dismiss by Easterners who view the West as nothing but a vast wasteland with plenty of room for their nuclear poisons.
But if Utah officials can impress upon people in other states, including the Midwest, that shipping nuclear waste to Skull Valley, or even Yucca Mountain, poses a threat to them, we may find new allies.
If Skull Valley opens up, the amount of nuclear waste in transit is going to increase significantly. While energy officials and industry representatives note that there hasn't been an accident in which dangerous amounts of radiation has been released, it's only a matter of time. Dramatically increasing the amount of waste being shipped overland makes an accident a eventual certainty.
Nuclear waste would be shipped through cities and towns, creating risks for people all along the route between PFS's member reactors and Skull Valley. Shipping also gives terrorists a tempting target. Why bother trying to build a nuclear weapon when you can turn a waste shipment into a crude dirty bomb?
If Utah can pitch that case to the American people, to the courts and to members of Congress, we may yet have a chance to kill this ill-advised plan once and for all.
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Salt Lake Tribune
September 11, 2005
Utah nuclear waste site's road to approval
The utility consortium Private Fuel Storage signs a lease Dec. 27, 1996, with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs gives tentative approval about six months later.
Tooele County signs a contract May 23, 2000, with Private Fuel Storage, based on assurances that the nuclear storage site would bring in between $90 million and $300 million in economic benefits.
PFS and tribal leaders sue the state in federal court Dec. 12, 2001, over passage of five laws intended to block the project. The state lost and has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
New leadership emerges out of an August 2001 tribal election, but the election's authenticity is disputed.
Rep. Jim Hansen pushes a bill through the House of Representatives in 2002 aimed at creating a wilderness area around the Skull Valley reservation, blocking shipments to the facility. The bill fails in the Senate. Similar proposals have met the same fate. A new version is pending.
It is revealed in 2002 that a former Idaho congressman and Utah Republican Party chairman quietly explored "Plan B," an alternative to store nuclear waste on Utah school trust lands. It is dropped.
Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett in July 2002 cut a deal with the White House to vote in favor of storing high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., arguing that storing it there makes it less likely it will have to be stored in Utah.
FBI agents in April 2003 raid the Salt Lake City business offices of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, confiscating computers and financial records as part of an ongoing corruption scandal.
Tribal Chairman Leon Bear is indicted Dec. 18, 2003, by a federal grand jury on suspicion of embezzling money from the band and for reporting to the IRS that he is unemployed while accepting $192,316 in payments from the tribe. He later pleads guilty to the tax charges and is sentenced to fines and probation.
Energy Department transportation official Gary Lanthrum in October 2004 says the agency won't accept for shipment to Yucca Mountain any welded-shut waste containers from PFS.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Feb. 24, 2005, rules against the last of Utah's 125 objections to the PFS plan - the state's contention that the possibility of an F-16 crash poses too great a risk.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday approves a license for PFS on a 3-1 vote.
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Salt Lake Tribune
September 11, 2005
Church opposes nuclear dump
LDS leaders 'regret decision' by federal regulators on Skull Valley facility
By Judy Fahys and Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
Utah's political bigwigs have for eight years fought a plan to bring high-level nuclear waste to the desert just beyond the heart of the state's population centers.
But missing from the chorus has been one voice of authority: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Until now.
Church leaders spoke up after federal regulators Friday signed off on the waste plan. For an institution that has remained staunchly, if enigmatically, silent on the issue for so long, the words were strong:
"We regret [the] decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to authorize the issuance of a license that would allow storage of radioactive waste in Skull Valley. Storage of nuclear waste in Utah is a matter of significant public interest that requires thorough scrutiny."
Maryann Webster, a member of Utah's dominant church, has petitioned leaders for years. She knew their influence helped keep the MX missile out of Utah. She hoped they would agree it would be a shame to welcome most of the nation's used reactor rods just an hour's drive from the church's world headquarters.
"The church is the only political entity in the state powerful enough to defend us," she said. "I hope they will speak more strongly and work to prevent it."
In the wake of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision Friday to license the nuclear storage, waste opponents hope their new apparent ally will change the conversation from that of who is to blame for a strategy that has failed so far, to that of how they get on a winning course.
The aim is to defeat a plan by a group of utilities, Private Fuel Storage LLC, to lease land on a tribal reservation about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City for storing up to 44,000 tons of used reactor fuel. By teaming up with the Skull Valley Goshutes, the company has co-opted the neighbors and their government.
Utahns hate the idea. In a 2002 poll, 87 percent said they opposed the NRC license.
The opposition is not surprising. Utah has no nuclear plants. Utahns already live with military installations handling chemical and biological arms. Many have lost a family member to illness caused by uranium mining or simply living downwind of atomic weapons tests.
And now, with the license granted Friday, Skull Valley is the first U.S. license to be granted for a high-level facility in more than three decades.
Some blame greed.
PFS has promised the Skull Valley Band's 121 members - whose incomes are below poverty level - hundreds of millions of dollars to take part in the multibillion-dollar waste project. In return, it enjoys protection under the band's sovereign status, immune to Utah's complaints and free to collect rent from other companies for its storage pads.
"Who but the companies and the band benefits?" complained Michael S. Lee, chief counsel for Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. and leader of the state government's opposition to the site.
The NRC made its decision after eight years of reviewing the state's objections, more than 50 of them. Some were simply thrown out on procedural grounds. Others, like the potential impact of earthquakes and a jet-fighter crash, became fodder for years of in-depth debate.
Lee and other state leaders have said that, while disappointed with the NRC's decision, they can't wait to raise Utah's concerns in a different forum - U.S. District Court - because the NRC gives the nuclear industry a home-court advantage. He noted the state will continue its three-pronged approach, fighting the site in the courts, federal agencies and before Congress.
Former Rep. Jim Hansen still sees the U.S. Capitol as Utah's best hope. He says his bill to block the waste site's rail route with wilderness would have succeeded a few years ago if an environmentalist had not stymied the move.
"If he had just given up," Hansen said, "[the waste] would have been going to Yucca Mountain by now."
The bill is being carried this year by Hansen's successor, Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop. It has passed in the House but stalled once again in the Senate.
"I don't know that it can be done, but we are going to keep trying," said U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, also a Republican.
Others wonder if the state has burned an important bridge in Congress.
Jason Groenewold, director of the Health Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL), notes that a deep rift divides Utah's mostly Republican delegation and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the influential U.S. Senate minority leader. It sprouted from a historic vote three summers ago that made it possible for the federal government to pursue the Yucca Mountain repository over that state's bitter objections.
Groenewold said Hatch and fellow Utah Republican Bob Bennett fumbled by voting to speed the waste to Yucca Mountain - past Skull Valley - rather than hanging with the Nevadans.
"It may be time to change strategies," said Groenewold. "And we hope that Senators Bennett and Hatch will work with our allies in the West rather than alienating them."
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a liberal who is frequently a target of Utah's Republican majority, says leaders need to be prodded to action.
"My greatest hope is that we don't all stand around like a bunch of sheep waiting for the slaughter," he said after the license decision, "but that we rise up and let our elected federal officials know that we are very displeased with this."
In Nevada, the strategy that has worked for more than 20 years is having a unified opposition, says Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Reno.
He notes that there is a split in Utah that does not exist in Nevada, with the Goshutes welcoming the waste and others opposing it.
"Within the state [of Nevada]," he said, "there is really only one side."
Along with the LDS Church's statement Friday, there are other signs that Utah leaders may be able to pull together behind the cause after all.
On Friday, the state's congressional delegation, including its lone Democrat, renewed its lobbying effort at the U.S. Interior Department. The Interior secretary supervises two federal agencies that have something PFS needs in order to go forward with its plans: a rail spur through land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management and a final lease that requires the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Bennett, in a statement, noted there remain a number of legal issues "that stand between granting a license and operating" the site. "These legal issues will be raised and aggressively pursued by all members of the congressional delegation and our governor."
Bishop, in Utah's U.S. House delegation, offered a philosophical take Friday, saying the state "never had a great hand to play in the first place."
"I just keep reminding myself," he said, "in every Rocky movie, he loses every round until he wins by a knockout in the end."
Tribune reporter Heather May contributed to this story.
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News & Observer
September 11, 2005
Editorials
Nuclear, revisited
Power companies understandably are considering new nuclear plants, but suitable waste disposal remains a big hang-up
Raleigh-based Progress Energy has bolted from the industry blocks with its announcement that it will seek federal permission to build a new nuclear power plant. Federal energy legislation, crafted by the Bush administration and recently approved by Congress, provides $2 billion in subsidies to the first six firms to build next-generation nuclear plants.
The earlier to build, the greater the subsidy, which is strong inducement for utility companies to act expeditiously. Even before Congress acted, Progress President Robert B. McGehee had made it clear that the company looked favorably at adding another reactor to its generation mix.
Nuclear power remains a challenging technology, requiring expertise and careful oversight for safe operation. There have been close calls with calamity in this country. Yet after several decades, many Americans have arrived at a more favorable perspective concerning the risks. Couple that with the fact that nuclear is less polluting than coal- and gas-generated electricity, and that fuel supplies are less vulnerable to disruption, and there is ample reason for renewed interest in this mode of power supply.
The major drawback, of course, continues to be the lack of a permanent, reliably safe means to dispose of highly radioactive waste, notably the used-up, or spent, fuel rods that produce the heat that turns water to steam for power generation. CEO McGehee also acknowledges that Progress would look closely at building a second reactor at its Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwestern Wake County, which already has a large stockpile of spent fuel rods stored in pools of water.
Finding a way to safely dispose of those rods, preferably away from the heavily populated Triangle region, needs to be a priority if Progress is to expand its nuclear operations here. The federal government was to open a national repository for highly radioactive waste, in a complex beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but questions remain about that facility's safety. Above-ground, long-term storage in highly fortified casks is another possibility deserving further study.
Nuclear power went through a difficult growth stage from a safety standpoint -- a stage notoriously marked by the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, after which nuclear plant construction eventually ground to a halt. But in the two decades since the last U.S. plants were built, engineers have designed safer features. The new designs take advantage of advances made in Europe, where nuclear power generation has flourished. For waste disposal, European producers have turned to reprocessing of fuel rods, which results in smaller amounts of less-deadly wastes.
The United States abandoned reprocessing in the 1970s out of fear that nuclear material might fall into the wrong hands. That's still a concern, but it may be overblown. The Triangle's congressional delegation ought to re-energize debate on reprocessing, with an eye to whether it could be a safe option. Building more nuclear plants without a sure and safe method of disposing of the resulting waste -- lethal for thousands of years -- should be no option at all.
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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