Panel OKs bill to bar funds for nuclear waste storage in Tooele

WASHINGTON — The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a plan Thursday that would bar the federal government from paying for a temporary nuclear-waste storage site in Utah.

The bill does not outright cancel the Private Fuel Storage project planned for the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County, but it creates federal competition that could lead to a more attractive alternative than the PFS site for nuclear utilities struggling to handle their nuclear waste.

"I'm extremely pleased that we've found a solution that will ultimately eliminate the need to send nuclear waste to Skull Valley," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, who sits on the Appropriations Committee. "Utahns have sufficient reasons to celebrate today's Senate actions."

The government would use money out of the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for federal interim-storage sites, while utilities that opted to move waste to PFS would have to pay for it themselves.

The $30.7 billion energy and water spending bill contains $10 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund for a "Consolidation and Preparation" program, known as CAP, for nuclear waste.

Nuclear power users have put $28 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund since 1983. Federal law currently stipulates the fund can only be used to finance the government's planned geological repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

If the plan approved by the Senate committee is made law, it could allow $10 million from the fund to go toward the interim storage sites. About $18 billion remains in the fund.

The energy secretary also would appoint a consolidation and preparation director who would recommend places in states with nuclear-power plants to temporarily store nuclear waste until the federal storage site planned for Nevada's Yucca Mountain would open.

But according to the bill, "any state in which a commercial, away-from-reactor, dry-cask storage facility is authorized" is "ineligible" for a one of these new sites. Because Private Fuel Storage meets those criteria, Utah would be ineligible for such a site. PFS received its license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier this year.

PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin took issue with the term "state" because the proposed PFS site would be on Goshute land, which is sovereign from state control. But she added that she had not seen the exact proposal yet Thursday and could not comment further on how it would affect PFS.