Utah loses a round in battle on N-waste

The state lost yet another round in its legal battle to keep high-level nuclear waste out of Utah when a Washington, D.C., federal appeals court ruled Tuesday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has jurisdiction to license private nuclear waste facilities.

Furthermore, the court ruled that even though the Department of Energy would not take over private nuclear storage facilities, nothing in the law or the congressional debates "suggests that Congress intended to prohibit private use of private away-from-reactor facilities."

The ruling is one of a litany of setbacks for the state, which has lost on almost every issue it has raised. In this case, the state argued the NRC did not have jurisdiction to license private waste facilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act — an argument rejected by the D.C. court.

"The state has brought this up over and over and over again," said Sue Martin, spokeswoman for Private Fuel Storage, the consortium of nuclear power facilities seeking to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on lands owned by the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes in Tooele County.

"I think it was one of the first contentions the state filed and had dismissed. And they have continued to raise it in various forms. Hopefully, this decision puts that issue to rest once and for all."

Paul Murphy, spokesman for Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, whose office argued the case, said the assistant AGs involved could not be reached for comment.

The state has lost its claims that the proposed facility, which would store nuclear fuel rods in above-ground storage casks, would not withstand earthquakes; that it would compromise wilderness qualities; and that PFS did not have the financial wherewithal to build and manage the facility.

The state Legislature also passed a series of laws intended to block PFS, or at the very least tax it heavily. But the federal courts rejected those as unconstitutional.

The state's only victory was a temporary one. The NRC ruled that the possibility of military aircraft crashing into the site was a potential danger, prompting PFS to scale back the size of its proposal and then re-submit the issue for NRC consideration. That issue has not yet been decided.

PFS is proceeding with its plan to store the waste despite the indictment of tribal leader Leon Bear on corruption charges. Also charged by the Justice Department was Sammy Blackbear, a leader of the opposition to the waste plan, who is accused of fraud in connection with tribal funds.