Goshute fight is back at NRC

WASHINGTON — In golf, a do-over is called a mulligan. But when it comes to the state's efforts to block the storage of spent nuclear fuel rods on Goshute tribal lands in Tooele County, it's called a "Motion for Reconsideration."

On Wednesday, the state argued its mulligan before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which had earlier ruled 2-1 that a consortium of nuclear power utilities, called Private Fuel Storage, had met the regulatory requirements for a license to store the waste over the objections of the state.

It was a hearing filled with technical jargon and talk of "R" factors and Einstein "principle," and more acronyms were being thrown around than in a box of alphabet cereal. Attorneys for Utah argued they should be given a second chance to prove their case that a potential breach of the waste canisters posed public safety risks had not been fully considered by the board.

The state's argument is a last-ditch effort to prevail upon the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny PFS a license to store up to 40,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in above-ground canisters in Skull Valley southwest of Salt Lake City.

State officials have conceded the appeal is a long shot, and there is not much hope the NRC, which ultimately must sign off on the license, will concede to the state's concerns. Hence, the Utah congressional delegation has been working the Bush administration to block the project through other means.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, has proposed legislation that would designate federal lands around the site as wilderness, thereby blocking the construction of a rail spur needed to transport the waste. And there are efforts to pressure the Department of the Interior to reject the project.

The latest appeal centers on what would happen if an aircraft, say one of the thousands of F-16 military jets that fly over the site ever year, were to crash into the canisters. Could the canisters — which consist of waste wrapped in steel and then an overcoat of concrete — be ruptured in such an accident and what would the extent of radiation contamination be?

"The state fought tooth and nail" during years of hearings to deal with the issue of radiation exposure in the events the casks were breached, said Denise Chancellor, an assistant Utah attorney general.

But the record on that is murky, at best, and the board was clearly skeptical, if not intrigued, by the argument, even pointing out opportunities missed by the state to raise this argument during the hearing process. And there was clearly disagreement as to what certain words meant.

And that led to plenty of testy words between board members and C chancellor.