Bear believes the wastes can and will be stored safely, and that the deal with Private Fuel Storage will spell economic prosperity on his impoverished reservation. The $3 billion to be spent building and operating the facility over the next 40 years will mean jobs for Goshutes, a handful of new homes, money for health services and a cultural center to help them preserve their disappearing heritage.

But the proposal has bitterly divided the tiny tribe.

Margene Bullcreek is leading a small group of "traditionalists" who do not want their ancestral homeland turned into a toxic waste dump.

"(Leon) is trying to convince himself that what he is doing is right," said the 54-year-old Bullcreek. "(But) this waste will destroy who we are."

The dispute is far more than a small Indian tribe going to war with a state bent on keeping the waste out. Rather, the lease agreement thrusts the Goshutes into the middle of a national debate over the nation's nuclear policy, which has failed for more than 50 years to come up with a plan to dispose of nuclear waste.

It seems the only ones who want the waste are the Skull Valley Goshutes, who say their reservation, already tucked between toxic waste dumps and incinerators, is not only a suitable site, but the only real option the tribe has for drumming up jobs.

The tribe has tried but failed to attract other businesses. A rocket test range that the Hercules Corporation used to test satellite launch rockets since 1975 now sits idle on the reservation, the company recently declining to renew its contract. In 1993, the tribe invested in a glass and aluminum recycling plant that went bankrupt.

Other prospects didn't pan out either.

Three years ago, Bear signed a lease with PFS, but he won't disclose the financial details. "Some things," he said, "are nobody's business."

National dilemma

What to do with nuclear waste has become a huge national problem, not just for the nation's nuclear power plants, which provide 20 percent of the country's power, but for the federal government that needs a place to dispose of waste from nuclear submarines, decommissioned nuclear missiles, nuclear testing laboratories (including two in Utah) and thousands of fuel assemblies from nuclear power plants in foreign countries.

In 1983, Congress passed legislation committing the government to have a permanent repository for the nuclear waste in place by Jan. 31, 1998. Now the government is saying a permanent facility will not be ready before 2010 at the earliest.

And no one inside the industry believes the government will meet that deadline, either.

Most agree a permanent nuclear waste facility will someday be built deep inside Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada. Scientific tests on the suitability of the site continue, but actual construction is years away.