Interior Department decisions stop nuclear-waste storage plans, Hatch says

WASHINGTON — Private Fuel Storage no longer has a lease to use tribal lands to store nuclear waste in Tooele County, after decisions made by two Interior Department agencies Thursday.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs opted to "disapprove" the lease after the Bureau of Land Management denied the consortium access to the federal land it would need to build a transportation facility.

"Utah spoke and the BLM listened," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "PFS is dead. It's that simple."

PFS has a license through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store 40,000 tons of used nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute site. But when President Bush signed a bill late last year that protects the Utah Test and Training Range, the measure also cut off PFS's preferred route for a railroad that would take waste to the site. Heavy-haul trucks could still move the waste, but the consortium would need to build a special facility on public land.

Hatch convinced the BLM to reopen a public-comment period on the right of way, and the BLM asked again if it was in the public's best interest to allow PFS access to federal land in order to ship nuclear waste to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation.

"It proves that every citizen can make a difference," Hatch said.

Private Fuel Storage spokeswoman Sue Martin said neither she or consortium chairman John Parkyn had received or reviewed the documents from the Interior Department late Thursday, so she could not yet comment on their contents.

"We have to take a look at exactly what their reasoning is and what this all consists of," Martin said. She did say that Hatch's proclamation that the project is dead "is a bit premature."

Hatch, however, said that any notion that PFS could still put waste in Utah after Thursday's news is "pure hogwash."

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