This is nail-biting time for Utahns. Any day now, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission will issue a decision on whether to approve a license for a private consortium to begin storing highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute reservation just west of Salt Lake City.

Frankly, the prognosis isn't good. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has recommended that the NRC grant the license. But Utah's leaders are doing all they can to fire stones at the nuclear monster that seems to be marching its way here whether people want it or not.

Late last month, Sen. Bob Bennett got some wording changed in a bill that would have funded a government battle against Utah's efforts to keep the waste away. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. called this "public policy at its worst." Indeed. If Congress had decided to pay the legal bills of a private company trying to contaminate Utah's deserts, it might have made voters here wonder what good it is to be the most Republican state at a time when Republicans are in power.

Now, Sen. Orrin Hatch and the governor have succeeded in getting the Department of Homeland Security to come here to study just how smart it would be for the government to allow a concentration of deadly radiation near a military training range and a major metropolitan area.

The answer to that one ought to be obvious. But, just to be safe, we will quote Hatch, who said, "It's difficult for me to understand how anybody in their right mind in this day of suicide bombers would place 4,000 casks of nuclear waste above ground" in such a location.

For Utahns, the maddening thing about this decade-long march has been their own lack of political clout. While the state's leaders have tried everything from buying up roadways around the site to declaring the area a protected wilderness, the consortium, Private Fuel Storage, has quietly gone about dotting its "i's" and crossing its "t's." The rest of the nation, apparently, sees little wrong with sending its nuclear waste to Utah's desert. Even a group of Hollywood celebrities who rallied against the dump last month in Washington seemed to have little effect.

Our hope is that reason ultimately will prevail. The power plants that create nuclear waste ought to continue storing the spent fuel rods on site, as they have for decades now. Then, the federal government needs to get serious about recycling those rods to minimize the waste.

Until that day, Utah's leaders need to keep up the good fight.