Nuke waste will come through Utah no matter what

Monday, April 21, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Whether tons of spent fuel rods from the country's nuclear power plants find a temporary home on the tiny Tooele County reservation of the 124-member Skull Valley Band of Goshutes or deep inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain, trains and trucks carrying waste-laden armored casks will traverse the state.

The fuel rods will continue to give off lethal amounts of radiation for as long as 10,000 years. The plan is to store the waste at the sites until a permanent repository can be found.

Despite assurances that the casks are virtually indestructible, the prospect sends shivers down the spines of government officials and anti-nuclear activists alike.

"Train and truck accidents do happen, containers do break and human lives could well be at risk," Gov. Mike Leavitt stated in an executive order last week creating a task force to block the Goshutes' plans for a interim storage site on their land just north of Dugway.

He also fears that once there, the nuclear waste would never be removed.

Leavitt has not taken a position on the Yucca Mountain interim site, although transportation would be a concern, said spokeswoman Vicki Varela.

"The transportation will be very similar in the long run," said Steve Erickson, spokesman for Downwinders Inc. The nonprofit government watchdog and environmental group opposes both interim sites and the eventual use of Yucca Mountain as a permanent storage facility.

"Everything in this game is speculative. What's clear is that the state of Utah is under assault by the nuclear industry," Erickson said.

Project supporters dismiss such statements as hyperbole. More than 2,400 casks have already been moved with only a few minor accidents. No nuclear material has ever leaked.

"People have been transporting this material for 35 years," said John Ward, spokesman for a 10-utility consortium known as Private Fuels Storage, which has helped fund the Goshute's efforts. Safety tests have included running a train into a cask-carrying truck.

"They're the most rugged containers on the planet," Ward said. "They don't break."

The Goshute project would involve shipping the casks to Tooele County by rail. They would be transferred to trucks for a final 15-mile haul to the reservation.

The group plans to apply to federal regulators for its license in June and expects a three- to five-year process. But Private Fuels Storage will be just as happy to ship its waste directly to Yucca Mountain if that site is approved first, Ward said.

"This material is coming here anyway," he said.

Storing the waste would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and the impoverished Goshutes see the repository as a way to ensure the tribe's future. To that end, its leaders have spent years studying the proposal and have visited repositories in Europe and Asia, said tribal attorney Danny Quintana. Goshute Chairman Leon Bear is convinced the project is safe, Quintana said.

"Leon's a bright, courageous individual who calls his own shots," he said. "He knows what he's doing. He's talked to scientists all over the world."

The state is firmly opposed to having the waste stored in Tooele County. If that means having it travel the state's highways and railways, so be it - as long as it keeps on going to Yucca Mountain, said Utah Division of Radiation Chairman Bill Sinclair.

"It's a lot less of a concern because it will be in the state less time," he said. "There's a really good safety record over the years on transportation of nuclear waste."

Nevertheless, there are concerns if only because so much many more of the casks will be moving through the state, he said.

Despite the threat of a presidential veto, the Senate approved the Yucca Mountain interim site in a vote early last week. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch has declined to take a position on the Goshute project, but voted for Yucca Mountain.

An amendment giving the states more control over transportation issues satisfied Hatch, aide J.J. Brown said.

Aides for Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, said he opposes the Goshute site and would rather see the waste stay where it is now until a permanent facility can be built. Hansen, however, said he will vote for the Yucca Mountain facility when it comes before the House.

But neither solution is a good one as far as anti-nuclear activist Erickson is concerned.

"This is a dump-on-your-neighbors policy," he said, calling Hansen and Hatch's support of a temporary Yucca Mountain site "twisted and hypocritical."