Nevadans say Goshute dump could be alternative to Yucca

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 9:21 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- As part of their broader fight against the Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository, Nevada lawmakers have also battled plans for a temporary storage site on Indian land in Utah.

Now that the Utah site appears closer to federal approval, Nevada officials have no plans to drop their opposition to it, they said.

But they acknowledge the Utah plan has advantages for Nevada.

The temporary, privately managed waste site in Utah could one day become an attractive alternative to the government's controversial and expensive Yucca project, Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency director Bob Loux told a Nevada legislative panel Monday.

And Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said the Utah site would ease the rush by the government and nuclear utilities to open a permanent repository in Nevada.

"Such a site would relieve the pressure to push nuclear waste into Yucca Mountain," Gibbons said.

Waste could be stored at the Utah site for decades as the need for a permanent site at Yucca were re-evaluated, Nevada officials said. If the Utah project is approved, that's a "very good thing for Nevada," said Joe Egan, a lawyer for Nevada who is leading a legal effort to kill Yucca.

Storing waste at the Utah site "makes it that much harder for Yucca Mountain to open because at Yucca you have to go and spend an extraordinary amount of money to find a solution to a problem that is no longer a crisis," Egan said. "And people are just naturally reluctant to do that."

Still, Nevada officials say they will not formally support the Utah dump.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he believes that if the Utah site opens for business it will eventually replace Yucca Mountain.

"But that doesn't make it any safer," Reid said.

It would be hypocritical for Nevada to drop its opposition to the Utah plan now, Greg Bortolin, spokesman for Gov. Kenny Guinn, said.

"We don't wish this (waste) on any state that doesn't want it," Bortolin said.

At issue is the 124-member Skull Valley Band of the Goshute tribe in Utah, which wants to establish a temporary above-ground waste storage site on its reservation as an economic growth project. A consortium of eight nuclear utility companies called Private Fuel Storage LLC would lease and manage the site.

The site would be licensed for 40,000 tons of the high-level nuclear waste produced by the nation's 103 commercial nuclear reactors. Yucca would be licensed for 77,000 tons.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials on Monday said they expect to decide this month whether to license the Utah site, and it is widely expected that the commission will grant the license.