Editorial: Setting a precedent

Monday, Sept. 11, 2006 | 7:29 a.m.

The U.S. Interior Department rejected a proposed plan to build a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in Utah, citing concerns that included transportation safety and the possible radiation exposure of workers transferring the waste.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, lauded the rejection and told the Salt Lake Tribune that Utahns "wanted to put a spike right through the heart of this project, and this does it."

The proposed lease - a joint venture between Private Fuel Storage and the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes - called for building a temporary storage facility for high-level nuclear waste on the Goshute reservation, about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City.

The proposal drew stiff opposition from Utah's congressional delegation, which has recently supported Nevada's opposition to a proposed permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas.

The Interior Department rejected the Utah lease because the Bureau of Indian Affairs raised concerns about the site's vulnerability to a terrorist attack and the Bureau of Land Management raised concerns about transportation.

BLM officials said they could not approve a rail line into the facility because it would cross a designated wilderness area. They also rejected a plan to truck the waste onto the reservation because workers transferring the casks from trains to trucks would risk radiation exposure.

The Interior Department's 47-page decision includes correspondence in which Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says that the Goshute site was never part of his department's overall plan to open the Yucca Mountain repository, and that the fate of the temporary dump had no bearing on his intentions to open Yucca Mountain.

Bodman's declarations are puff and bluster, as federal officials have yet to produce any credible scientific evidence that burying high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is safe. In fact, scientific study over the years has revealed multiple reasons as to why it is not safe.

And the Interior Department's rejection of the Utah facility bolsters arguments against opening Yucca Mountain. The department determined that it is not safe to transport such waste over sensitive lands by train, and that transport workers would risk radiation exposure.

The nation needs a safe plan for disposing of high-level nuclear waste. But gathering it all up and dumping it into one state's open lands is not it. It wasn't safe for Utah. And it is not safe for Nevada.