Out of 18 previous requests for amendments to the mill's license, allowing it to receive, store and process waste from various sites, there have been requests for 23 hearings to voice opposition to the amendments. Four hearings were granted, yet all 18 amendments were approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

The recent petition asks the Utah Radiation Control Board to invalidate the DRC's decision permitting the mill to receive the waste from Oklahoma. In 2004 the NRC gave up oversight of uranium mills to the state.

The Radiation Control Board is scheduled to meet Aug. 4 in Salt Lake City. Board members will decide then whether to grant the request for another hearing in Blanding that will include attorneys.

A lawyer for the Glen Canyon Group said the White Mesa mill is only supposed to process and dispose of natural uranium ore. Accepting waste from Oklahoma would turn the mill into a "dump for the metal manufacturing industry's radioactive trash," attorney Travis Stills said in a press release.

FMRI Inc. is a subsidiary of Fansteel, which until 1989 operated a "rare metal extraction" facility at its Muskogee site. Fansteel eventually filed for bankruptcy, and in 2003, FMRI was set up to decommission Fansteel's Muskogee facility and coordinate a $30-million project to clean up the site, where there is still leftover ore, or waste, that is valued for its uranium content.

The White Mesa mill would extract the uranium from material transported from Oklahoma and store the remaining waste in cells, which are lined retention ponds that are usually dry.

The mill and its storage cells are on private land, surrounded by Indian reservation and land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

More than 4,000 people live within 10 miles of the mill, and more than 21,000 live within 50 miles. More than half the population of San Juan County is Native American, which includes Navajo Indians and members of the White Mesa band of the Ute Mountain Indians, one of three tribes that make up the Ute Indian Tribe.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com