Utah isn't a nuke dump

Contrary to a recent New York Times editorial, which chides Utah leaders for using every tool at their disposal to block a private storage facility for spent nuclear rods in the western desert, we say, take any and all necessary means to keep the stuff out.

It's difficult to comprehend — in the post-Sept. 11 world—why anyone would conclude that shipping spent nuclear fuel cross-country is a good idea. Worse yet is the proposed Private Fuel Storage facility in Tooele County, where casks of the nuclear material would be stored above ground. The airspace above the proposed facility is frequented by jet fighters from Hill Air Force Base that train over the nearby Utah Test and Training Range.

But what is most unsettling is the "temporary" nature of the disposal site. "Temporary" means at least 40 years. If and when the nation's only designated permanent disposal repository goes on line at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 40 years worth of additional waste will have been generated and require disposal. Will there be space available at Yucca to relocate waste from the PFS site? Yucca Mountain, an underground facility, will have finite storage capacity. If the U.S. energy policy increases the demand for nuclear power, the supply of spent fuel rods will grow exponentially.

Although much is made of nearly a decade of review that has gone into the PFS proposal, Utah can ill-afford to become Yucca Mountain by default.

Instead, the Bush administration needs to permit the reprocessing of spent fuel rods where they were produced rather than risk shipment of this material to a single site.

Presently, the Department of Homeland Security is reviewing the safety aspects of the PFS site, which would be located on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, about 50 miles from Salt Lake City. Other avenues of redress include asking the Bureau of Land Management to block the placement of a rail spur on public lands to transport the materials to the PFS site. A proposal to designate the area as wilderness also is before the Senate.

To Easterners who naively — or arrogantly — consider the entire West a vast wasteland, there seems little harm in placing high-level nuclear waste in Utah's western desert. People who have lived in the West for generations, however, see things differently. They have legitimate concerns about becoming the nation's nuke waste dump. Despite any assurances government agencies might provide, Utah's history with above-ground nuclear tests and weapons testing at Dugway provide ample reason for skepticism. This history should add energy to the fight.