WASHINGTON — The watchdog group Public Citizen is taking the Bush administration to task over inadequate security at the nation's nuclear power plants, including the potential catastrophe from a terrorist attack on spent nuclear fuel — the same waste that some utilities want to store in above-ground casks on Goshute tribal lands in Tooele County.

The report notes that "lightly protected spent-fuel pools are situated outside containment areas" and are subject to terrorist attack. The same holds true for the above-ground casks at the nation's nuclear power plants and potentially those that would be stored in Tooele County far outside any containment area.

Those same concerns have been raised by Utah officials for years.

"Instead of getting straight answers, we get platitudes and feel-good letters," said Dianne Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. "We are being told there's no problem, that it's safe. But we don't believe that is the case."

Utah officials have argued before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Atomic Safety Licensing Board that spent fuel rods in above-ground casks are an inviting target for terrorist attacks, as is the shipment of the waste from nuclear power plants scattered around the nation.

The nuclear industry insists it has beefed up security at nuclear power plants to the tune of $1 billion since 2001. The number of security officers at 64 plants has risen by 60 percent to 8,000, and "physical improvements at sites include additional protection against vehicle bombs as well as additional protective measures against various types of terrorist threats," according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

"Those claims have been discredited time and again," added institute spokesman Mitch Singer of the Public Citizen study.

But the Public Citizen report observed that security improvements are a closely guarded secret, and the public has no way of knowing if the improvements are sufficient.

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has thrown a shroud of secrecy over security deliberations," the report states.

The NRC has assured state officials that security measures in place to protect nuclear power plants would be sufficient to protect nuclear-waste casks in Utah.

The Public Citizen report highlights the potential terrorist threats at nuclear power plants, not the risk of storing the waste in the Utah desert.

But it also highlights the risks of transporting wastes, criticizing the administration's support for a plan to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, Nev. If enacted, it "would result in tens of thousands of rail and truck shipments of highly radioactive spent fuel — all potential terrorist targets — from reactors to a massive nuclear waste site."