Proposals could let nuclear wastes in Utah

WASHINGTON — Utah could see a few forms of nuclear waste come to the state if plans discussed at a Senate hearing Tuesday move ahead.

Approval of a federal interim storage facility for commercial nuclear fuel could move fuel rods to the Private Fuel Storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation — and a plan to recycle nuclear waste could make additional waste eligible to be stored at EnergySolutions' facilities.

Neither idea has been approved nor given money to proceed just yet, but Congress has options to make either proposal work.

At a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Tuesday, Paul Golan, the government's top Yucca Mountain official, said "the department continues to have an open mind on interim storage."

He said the department does not believe it has the authority under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 — the law that guides the government's plan to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — to move ahead with interim storage, but if Congress allowed it, the department would be open to the discussion.

"Interim storage is less important than moving Yucca Mountain forward, but we understand that the commercial utilities are running in to a storage situation." Golan said.

Storage problems are what led several utilities to develop plans to make their own interim facility known as Private Fuel Storage in Tooele County. Yucca was supposed to open in 1998, but legal, technical and financial problems have delayed it year after year.

PFS is looking for interested utilities to help construct the site now that it has its license approved. It also still needs approval from the Bureau of Land Management to build a transfer facility for waste brought in by truck. Utah's congressional delegation blocked a potential railroad on public land by including the starting point in a Wilderness Area designed to protect the Utah Test and Training Range.

The department is supposed to release a new schedule for Yucca in the summer, Golan said. That will give utilities an estimated opening date so they will know how much longer they will have to store waste at the nuclear power plants — or look at other options.

Golan would not name a specific location on where an interim site would go.

"That's a question that I think will involve a public dialogue," Golan said.