Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

License for nuke storage site OK’d

WASHINGTON -- Utah lost an important battle today in its effort to keep a temporary nuclear waste dump out of its borders, and that could be a blow to Nevada's fight against Yucca Mountain.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 3-1 to authorize a license to Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of nuclear power plant utilities, for a temporary high-level waste storage site planned on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation, 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The proposed above-ground site would store up to 4,000 steel storage containers, each of which could hold up to 10 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods.

The commission's decision concluded an eight-year review of PFS's license application.

"The adjudicatory effort, plus our staff's separate safety and environmental reviews, gives us reasonable assurance that PFS's proposed storage facility can be constructed and operated safely," the commission said in its decision.

The state of Utah plans to appeal the decision within 60 days to the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, said Jim Soper, state assistant attorney general.

The nuclear industry views the Goshute site as complementary to the planned Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste storage, not a substitution for it.

Private Fuel Storage officials said today's announcement was the big victory they had been hoping for during an arduous licensing process.

"We have been waiting for this for eight years," Private Fuel Storage's spokeswoman Sue Martin said. "It has been a long drawn-out process, but very thorough, with all the safety concerns addressed appropriately."

The Utah site will be an important temporary storage point for nuclear utilities before and after Yucca Mountain opens because it will be a cheaper option than storing waste on-site at plants, Martin said.

"It absolutely is not an alternative to Yucca Mountain," Martin said. "But it could prove to be a very helpful kind of staging area because, of course, everything can't go to Yucca Mountain all at once."

Opinions vary on how today's action on the temporary site will affect the Energy Department's plan to construct a permanent government repository for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But Yucca critics said the NRC decision bodes ill to those fighting Yucca because the temporary Utah site is considered a stepping stone for waste ultimately bound for permanent storage in Nevada.

The NRC action is bad for Nevada because it puts more pressure on officials to complete Yucca Mountain, several anti-Yucca activists said.

Nationwide, waste sits stored on-site at the nuclear power plants that produce it. Nevada lawmakers have argued that it is safe to leave it there at least another 100 years or so until a better waste solution is found.

It's cheaper and safer to leave waste at nuclear plants, Nevada Nuclear Waste Projects Agency director Bob Loux said.

Shipping waste out West and collecting it at a temporary site in neighboring Utah will put more pressure on Energy Department officials and politicians to open Yucca, activists said.

"The state of Utah is not happy anyway (about the Goshute site)," Public Citizen analyst Michele Boyd said. "They are going to exert more pressure to get the stuff to Yucca Mountain."

A victory for the Goshute project can be viewed as a victory for Yucca, anti-Yucca activist Kevin Kamps said.

"The two dumps are joined at the hip," said Kamps, nuclear waste specialist for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

Nuclear industry officials say it is safe to ship high-level waste. But activists and Nevada officials disagree. They say a significant argument against both sites is that it would be dangerous to ship so much high-level waste across the country. That argument will be muted once shipments start rolling to Utah, Kamps said.

"They will point to any successful shipment," Kamps said. "It won't erase the danger, but they'll say, 'We have a track record.' "

There are still lots of unanswered questions about the Goshute site, Kamps said. He said that site officials have inadequate plans to deal with nuclear fuel rods that have been damaged in transport other than to send it back to the nuclear plant.

"They plan to ship damaged waste containers back across the country," Kamps said.

Activists noted that there are still roadblocks to the Goshute site, including Bureau of Indian Affairs approval. Also, the Bureau of Land Management has not yet approved a revised land management plan that would allow PFS to construct a rail line that connects the site to Union Pacific's line.

"This is not the end of the road at all," Boyd said.

Utah officials and lawmakers have fought a long battle against the temporary waste site and are vowing to keep the battle going. The state has lost nearly 50 technical challenges in appeals to the NRC.

Today the NRC had its final say in what was a potentially significant obstacle: jet crashes at the site. The commission rejected the state of Utah's assertion that there is too high a probability that radiation would be released after a crash. There are 7,000 F-16 training flights over Skull Valley each year by jets from Hill Air Force Base.

The lone dissenter in the NRC vote was Greg Jaczko, a former top adviser to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Jaczko wrote that he believes an additional analysis of the consequences of the F-16 aircraft hazards should be done before a license could be issued for the PFS site.

In a five-page dissent, Jaczko wrote, "The standard for establishing whether or not an accident is credible must be respected and if it is reached, the Commission should require the additional analysis necessary to determine any potentially harmful consequences."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake City Tribune, "Once the proposal leaves the NRC, it becomes vulnerable to lengthy examination by the courts, as well as administrative actions, which we will pursue relentlessly."

Nevada officials have opposed the Goshute site, arguing the same points they have against Yucca -- neither the project nor the transportation plan are safe.

"Transporting high-level radioactive waste to Utah is as dangerous as it would be transporting it to Nevada," Reid said.

A transportation plan was not part of the PFS license application. The Transportation Department regulates the shipment of nuclear waste. The NRC will regulate the casks that the waste is stored in.

Attorney Joe Egan, who represents Nevada on Yucca, said the eight-year time frame it took to get NRC approval speaks volumes about how long the Yucca process could take, if it reaches that point.

Yucca and the Goshute site are much different projects. Egan said the Goshute site is a concrete pad full of storage casks, a much "less ambitious" project than what the Energy Department has planned for the underground Yucca repository.

But the NRC will have less time to consider Yucca Mountain. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act limits the commission to a three-year window to review the Yucca license application, with an optional additional year if approved by Congress.

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