"At least someone will be there to turn out the lights," Hatch said at a press conference in his Senate office.

Rep. Bob Bishop, R-Utah, called the announcements a "major step that it (PFS) will not be a reality."

But PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin said these announcements will hopefully not be as dire as the lawmakers said. She said financial support for the project is not limited, and any utility that would need a storage option can come forward and invest.

She said the utilities have always been signed up to invest in one phase at a time. Now that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recommended a license for the site, it will be up to the involved utilities to make a "business decision" on whether to stay on for the construction phase. Other utilities can come in, too.

"The next phase is a whole new ball game," she said.

Margene Bullcreek, who organized Goshute opposition in Utah through her group Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness, said she's still ready to fight the NRC's decision based on environmental justice.

She calls the proposal "environmental racism" because, she said, her tribe was targeted by a large corporation "because we're supposed to be in poverty . . .

"It's good to know that this is happening," she said of the Xcel and Southern Co. actions. "They don't have as many utilities behind them now. . . . Now we've got five more to go."

Charles Bomberger, Xcel's general manager of nuclear assets, said that at the time the company got involved with PFS, it was facing a waste storage shortage for its Minnesota nuclear plants. State law limited how much extra storage space could be built, so the company had to find an interim storage solution because the national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., would not open by the time it ran out of space.

But in 2003, the state overturned the law, relieving pressure on Xcel to find another storage option.

That change, on top of Utah's continued opposition against the Skull Valley facility and a potential resolution on Yucca Mountain were all part of Xcel's reasoning in deciding to put a hold on its PFS funding, according to Bomberger.

"I think there will be a new solution coming forward, but I have no idea what it is," Bomberger said.