WASHINGTON — Xcel Energy has put a hold on its investments into Private Fuel Storage, the company announced Thursday, edging Utah closer to victory in its fight against storing high-level nuclear waste in the state.

Xcel was responsible for about 34 percent of Private Fuel Storage's budget.

Also Thursday, one of six other utilities in the PFS consortium that had placed a hold on its investments in 2002 —Southern Co. — completely pulled its contributions to PFS.

That leaves the other five still with a hold on their investments in the proposed storage facility for Tooele County's Skull Valley, but Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said without Xcel's chunk of the funding, there is little left to support the proposed site.

"The viability of the PFS proposal is seriously threatened," Hatch said. "Skull Valley is never going to happen."

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s office was pleased with Hatch's announcement but less certain that the battle has been won. "It certainly doesn't sound the immediate death knell for PFS," said Mike Lee, the governor's general counsel. "This is an early Christmas gift, but it doesn't mean that it's over."

Jason Groenewold, director of the anti-nuclear group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, said he's encouraged by the Xcel development but isn't sure it means the dissolution of PFS.

"This is an important development, the significance of which will play out in time," he said. "We're not ready to break out the party hats yet."

He said the pullout of Southern Co. is encouraging, but he's not sure what Excel's moratorium on funding really means.

"Does it mean they will not fund legal fights? . . . It feels a little bit like semantics. We'd be wise to pay very close attention to the semantics of the next move the utility companies of PFS make."

Huntsman has pushed hard to stop the waste facility for up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods proposed for land owned by the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indian Tribe.

The proposal has long divided the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, which has about 121 members. Chairman Leon Bear could not be reached for comment Thursday but in the past has said the project had the support of the majority of the tribe.

In a letter sent to Hatch from its President J. Barnie Beasley Jr., he wrote: "Southern Company has determined that Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) cannot be successfully developed as a spent fuel repository in a time frame to meet Southern's needs."

Now only the Dairyland Power Cooperative will continue to fund the program. That utility only had less than a 12 percent share in PFS, according to Hatch's office.