Accept N-waste for a price - or keep on fighting?

Webb: Plan B. Those are swear words for a lot of Utah politicians. I may be ridden out of town on a rail simply for raising this issue, but it's time for Utah politicians to start thinking seriously about having a Plan B in case we continue to lose every battle in our war against storage of high-level nuclear waste on the Goshute Reservation.

Here's a question that's no joke: What would be worse than getting high-level nuclear waste in Utah?

Answer: Getting high-level nuclear waste and getting absolutely nothing in return.

Believe me when I say I'm dead set against storage of nuclear waste in Utah. I helped Gov. Mike Leavitt fight it back in the mid-'90s as his policy deputy. I come from a "downwinder" family and have seen four immediate family members suffer early (and awful) deaths from cancer as a result of eating radiation-laced vegetables and raw milk on a ranch outside of St. George in the '50s. I'm a walking cancer time bomb myself.

I agree with all the arguments against storage of this nasty stuff. I agree that if storage is so safe, then the fuel rods should remain on site at nuclear power plans or be reprocessedas is done by the European nuclear power industry.

But despite all of our great logic and reasoning against storage in Utah, we may still lose. We've lost every fight on every front so far. The nation wants some place to dump this stuff, and Utah is an easy victim. At some point, we have to face the fact that those spent fuel rods might be headed here. And to get them and receive absolutely nothing in return would be adding horrible insult to horrendous injury.

The nuclear power industry has been squirreling away multibillions of dollars to pay for waste storage. If the time comes when it appears the industry and the federal government are going to shove it down our throats, we need to be able to say, OK, we've fought to the bitter end. We've lost. But we get to determine where this junk is stored and you give us, say, $15 billion to go into our school trust and transportation funds.

Then we find a remote location near I-70 or a rail corridor that isn't upwind a few dozen miles of the highly populated Wasatch Front, that isn't adjacent to an Air Force bombing range (what insanity to put it there!), and that doesn't have to be transported through Utah's population centers. We get the junk, but it's far from urban areas and transportation is much safer. And we bring in $15 billion, enough so just spending the interest moves us into the middle of the pack in per-pupil spending. And we solve our transportation needs.

Fair trade? No. I'd still rather keep the stuff out, but at least we'd get something in return.