Yucca might not accept waste from Goshute site

A U.S. Department of Energy official said the federal waste repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nev., would not accept waste from the temporary storage facility proposed in western Utah — not as long as the waste was in welded containers.

David Zabransky of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, speaking in Salt Lake City to representatives of the Western Interstate Energy Board, said federal contract requirements forbid acceptance of spent nuclear fuel welded into any type of canister.

That would include the 44,000 tons of waste that Private Fuel Storage proposes to transport to Utah and store on the Goshutes' Skull Valley reservation until it can be moved to Yucca.

Zabransky said it might be possible to set up a facility at Yucca where the PFS canisters — or canisters from any nuclear utility that stores spent fuel rods in casks — could be cut open and repackaged.

But that would be a "burden to the system," he said.

It also would be possible to renegotiate the contract, he said.

Dianne Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said after Zabransky's presentation that the Energy Department and the NRC, by not dealing with the contract issue, have abdicated responsibility for PFS and whether it would indeed be a temporary facility.

"This is not just a PFS issue," said company spokeswoman Sue Martin. She said there is "an awful lot of fuel" stored in containers nationwide because the DOE defaulted on the contract by not building the depository.

"The utilities had no choice" but to store the waste, she said. "The DOE has a legal obligation to take spent fuel."