Interior Secretary Gail Norton must sign off on any decision by BLM or BIA. Norton answers to President Bush, and Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both R-Utah, have been bringing pressure on the White House to intervene in the matter.

And there is no question, they say, that the White House could do many things on Utah's behalf.

"Secretary Norton may be our best opportunity to stop this from going forward," Matheson said.

Hollow promises

The White House could be inclined to repay a political favor.

Hatch and Bennett were both good soldiers when the White House went looking for Senate support for Yucca Mountain, the proposed Nevada storage site, even though the senators now find themselves increasingly isolated from the rest of the Utah delegation in that regard.

To a greater or lesser degree, House members along with Huntsman believe the state should have backed Nevada in its opposition to all nuclear waste coming to the West.

Hatch and Bennett say they support permanent waste storage deep underground at Yucca Mountain as a solution to the nation's stockpile of spent nuclear fuel, which is only going to grow larger as the nation turns more and more to nuclear power to satisfy exploding energy demands.

Their support for Yucca Mountain came, in part, as a result of two letters, one by then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham saying no federal money would be spent on the PFS project, and the other by some, but not all, members of the energy consortium saying they would not pursue Skull Valley so long as Yucca Mountain was moving forward.

Both letters are hollow promises. The Abraham promise holds little water because the PFS project is privately funded. The PFS letter is open to many interpretations as to what it means if Yucca Mountain moves forward.

The Nevada project has already been delayed two years beyond its original planned opening in 2010.

The Energy Department can't say exactly when Yucca will open because it depends on a funding commitment from Congress. But Ted Garrish, deputy director of the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, says Congress would have to commit $1 billion next year in order to realize a 2012 opening.

The president has requested only $651 million in his budget, far less than what is needed to keep Yucca Mountain, already delayed by lawsuits and regulatory problems, on schedule.

There is a certain sense of irony that the federal government, trying to cut budget corners, could end up paying billions of dollars in legal settlements if the delays continue.