N-waste appeal a hopeful sign

Anything state or federal leaders can do to stave off placing a nuclear waste dump on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation in Tooele County is a wise move in our book.

Utah doesn't want to be the nation's dumping ground for out-of-state nuclear power plants, so it is imperative that the state and Utah's congressional delegation exhaust every avenue to keep that from happening. It is unclear whether state attorneys will prevail in their newly granted appeal to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, but the door has been opened for further consideration. That's a hopeful sign.

Earlier, the board recommended that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission grant a license to Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight utilities. At that time, the board, in a split decision, determined that the risk of a plane from nearby Hill Air Force Base crashing into the depleted nuclear fuel was not great enough to render the project unsafe.

Although Utahns have steadfastly opposed establishing a nuclear waste facility in the state, the urgency to keep the waste out of Utah is far greater because of new concerns that the opening of the planned Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada will be delayed after claims that federal scientific studies were falsified.

Will this mean greater urgency to open the Skull Valley site and operate it as the permanent disposal site? Or will the federal government keep the nuclear waste at the power plants where it was generated, as proposed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.?

As we've opined many times before, our preference would be to keep the waste where it was generated. If it is as safe as power plant operators contend, there would appear to be little disadvantage to keeping it on-site. Moreover, it relieves security concerns of shipping spent fuel across the country to a remote site in the West.

In the post-Sept. 11 world, homeland security interests have to trump the desires of nuclear power plant operators. The federal government, though, must continue to work for a long-term solution for the spent fuel produced at these power plants, as it vowed to do long ago.

Reviews of Yucca Mountain's scientific studies will determine in due time whether the Nevada site is suitable for permanent storage. Until that determination is made, Utah should in no way be considered Plan B. The smartest course is to leave the waste where it is and to continue to seek a permanent solution. Federal regulators must do all they can to ensure that the proposed "temporary" storage site in Utah's west desert does not become a permanent solution by default.

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