Wasting Utah
Stopping Private Fuel Storage
By Jeff Salt, Great Salt Lakekeeper

The National Academy of Sciences has established guidelines for sequestering nuclear waste that call for a minimum isolation period of 300,000 years. But finding a safe place to wait out the next 300,000 years is not easy. The industry’s solution: turn the problem over to the federal government, sparsely populated states and impoverished Native American tribes.

Since the 1950’s, nuclear power utilities have accumulated stockpiles of nuclear waste at reactor sites seemingly without regard to long-term storage and containment of the dangerous waste they generate. In 1982, facing shortages in storage capacity at reactor sites, the nuclear industry pressed for passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The law turned responsibility for long-term storage of commercially generated nuclear waste over to the federal government.

In 1987, after a protracted site selection process and much political wrangling, Congress ordered the U.S. Department of Energy to only study Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation’s permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. Since then, strong resistance to the plan has sent the federal government and industry looking for ‘temporary’ storage options.

Along with Yucca Mountain, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act ordered the federal government to develop a temporary storage option called a Monitored Retrievable Storage facility. In the 1990s in the face of mounting delays at the Yucca Mountain facility, the federal government proceeded to establish the temporary storage facility. The government sent out requests for ‘letters of interest’ to every county and Native American Tribe with hopes of identifying potential sites for the facility. They received very few responses and ultimately identified eight potential sites – three counties and five Tribes. In 1996, after reaching a tentative agreement with the Mescalero Apache Indians of New Mexico, the effort failed after the Tribe formally voted to reject the project.

With storage space and time running out, a consortium of nuclear utility companies decided it couldn’t wait for a government solution and formed a limited liability corporation called Private Fuel Storage to develop their own private-sector temporary waste storage site. On May 23, 1997, Private Fuel Storage signed a secret lease agreement with the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians (one of the eight candidates from the failed federal selection process) to store 40,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste on their reservation in western Utah.

Why had Private Fuel Storage targeted the Skull Valley Goshutes? With only 120 members their status as a small, impoverished, politically weak sovereign nation helped the consortium avoid the accountability of a public decision-making process. Not surprisingly, the lease agreement deeply divided the Tribe. Tribal members never voted on the agreement and only a few ever saw the lease. Newspapers reported widespread allegations of bribery of Tribal members by the consortium. Leon Bear, the Tribal chairman who signed the secret lease agreement was later charged with embezzlement and tax fraud by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

On February 21, 2006, despite opposition by the State of Utah, community groups and members of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Private Fuel Storage a license to construct and operate their temporary high-level nuclear waste storage facility on the Skull Valley Reservation. In granting the license, they not only ignored the public, they disregarded warnings by numerous experts of dangerous flaws in the plan.

A Flawed and Risky Plan
The plan calls for the transport of 40,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste to the Utah desert from reactor sites located almost entirely in states east of the Mississippi River. Over a 20-year period, spent fuel rods would be shipped by rail in 4,000 Holtec dry-cask containers. Freight trains would haul the radioactive cargo through hundreds of rural communities and urban centers and past the homes of 50 million Americans on its way to Utah. In Utah the dry casks would be stored above ground on concrete pads on a 99-acre parcel, guarded by a simple chain link fence and private security guards.

According to Oscar Shirani, a former lead quality assurance inspector at Excelon, there are serious flaws with the Holtec containers: major quality assurance violations, including widespread improper welding, use of shoddy materials and significant departures from the original design that were carried out without proper review or approval. Though a Nuclear Regulatory Commission expert substantiated the allegations, the agency continues to stand behind its safety certification of the Holtec casks.

The proposed storage site is situated directly beneath an active flight path for F-16 fighter jets that perform frequent practice bombing missions with live ordnance en route to the nation’s largest inland military Test and Training Range, which is adjacent to Skull Valley. The Air Force conducts more than 4,000 flights over this area each year and also tests cruise missiles at the test site. Private Fuel Storage claims that in the event of a jet crash, no major damage to the dry casks would occur.

Storage Plan Shows Cracks, Loses Momentum
Despite Private Fuel Storage’s efforts to circumvent public input, growing opposition efforts are starting to show some success.
The State of Utah continues to appeal recent decisions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in court, and has maintained an official policy of opposition to the plan through three successive governors, including current Governor John Huntsman, Jr.

Great Salt Lakekeeper is a member of HEAL Utah, a local coalition of concerned citizens and environmental groups that has provided crucial leadership for the grassroots campaign to oppose Private Fuel Storage in Utah. Great Salt Lakekeeper has submitted written comments and provided testimony at Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings, participated in rallies, joined the state-sponsored “No Coalition” opposition campaign and helped lobby for the recently created Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area.
In late 2005, led by the efforts of Utah Congressman Rob Bishop, Congress created the 100,000-acre Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area. This was a critical win, blocking construction of a rail spur that would have linked the Skull Valley site to major interstate rail lines.

In 2006, Private Fuel Storage lost support from Xcel Energy and Southern Company, two members who announced withdrawal of financial support for the consortium. But Private Fuel Storage has not thrown in the towel yet. The consortium is seeking approval from the Bureau of Land Management to construct a transfer station on federal land along Interstate 80 west of Salt Lake City where dry casks would be transferred from rail cars to heavy trucks and hauled down a narrow two-lane road to Skull Valley. The Bureau has not indicated when it will decide on the transfer station application.

Nuclear Endgame
With their Nuclear Regulatory Commission license for Skull Valley facility in hand, Private Fuel Storage has shifted into an aggressive and desperate marketing phase to secure contract clients for the site and bring nuclear waste to Utah.

Private Fuel Storage’s plan creates unnecessary risks to communities and watersheds across the nation by mobilizing and transporting dangerous radioactive waste that can be stored above ground in dry casks at existing reactor sites as safely as it could at the proposed Skull Valley Reservation in Utah.

Many nuclear utilities are now moving towards increasing onsite storage of nuclear waste. Since 2000, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has licensed 34 dry cask onsite storage facilities in 25 states and has a goal of licensing 50 or more by 2010.

So is dry cask storage of nuclear waste safe? If it is safe, why would the waste need to be transported at all? And if it isn’t safe, then we should address the problem, not simply ship it out west. Maybe the real question is: without any plan for long-term storage, why are we generating this waste at all?

STOP THE PRESSES—BREAKING NEWS:
Utahns Deliver Killing Blow to Skull Valley Nuke Waste Plan

On September 7, the Bureau of Land Management denied a crucial permit for Private Fuel Storage to build a transfer station for offloading nuclear waste from railcars to haul trucks and transporting it to the reservation. This was the final approach available to Private Fuel Storage for shipping nuclear waste to Utah for temporary storage, after their preferred rail line option was blocked by the creation of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness.

In addition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has officially vacated the lease agreement with Private Fuel Storage for storing the waste on the Skull Valley Reservation.

These actions officially kill the proposal. No nuclear waste will be traveling along rail lines through hundreds of communities and watersheds to Utah.
According to U.S. Senator Hatch’s office, the BLM rejected the application by Private Fuel Storage in response to overwhelming opposition from concerned Utahns and their state and federal political representatives.