N-waste and common sense

Utah already is a dumping ground for a considerable amount of the nation's toxic waste. It needs to do whatever it can to prevent nuclear waste from being shipped to the western desert.

That's the admonition of nuclear activists Chip Ward and Mary Dickson, and it is right on target. They addressed the proposed nuclear waste storage facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, 40 miles west of Salt Lake City, during a discussion on "Utah's Nuclear Legacy" at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics this week.

Tooele County already is home to a chemical weapons incinerator, a military bombing range, low-level radioactive waste dumps and MagCorp., one of the nation's largest industrial polluters.

To the above, Private Fuel Storage, a consortium that represents various nuclear power plants in the East and Midwest, wants to add 10.4 million spent nuclear fuel rods that would remain radioactive for about 10,000 years.

Supposedly, the site would be only temporary. The nuclear waste eventually would be moved to a permanent site. However, the federal government shows no sign of gathering the will to establish a permanent site, which makes the fear that Utah's temporary facility could become permanent a legitimate one.

Why ship an immense amount of nuclear waste cross-country to Utah if it then is going to be shipped again to another site? Why increase the risk of an accident?

The fairest and safest thing to do is to leave the nuclear waste at the sites where it is generated until a permanent location is established. If the nuclear waste is as risk-free as PFS claims, then a few more years at its parent sites would be harmless.

Understandably, some of those representing the Goshute Tribe want the waste shipped to the western desert to take advantage of the financial windfall it would represent. But tribe members wouldn't be the only ones accepting the risks. With a shelf life of 10,000 years, the 40,000 tons of spent fuel rods represent a gamble Utahns shouldn't have to take.