By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON — The Energy Department is not interested in becoming a client of Private Fuel Storage, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told Sen. Orrin Hatch.

The statement, which mirrors what the department has expressed before, comes at the same time anti-nuclear activists flooded congressional offices this week to lobby against the department's new nuclear power program and its plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, while nuclear utility officials called for Congress to move forward on the project.

 The department has previously said it is not interested in the nuclear waste storage site planned for Goshute Indian land in Tooele County, but Hatch said Bodman "made very clear that the administration does not support putting nuclear waste in Skull Valley."

Private Fuel Storage, a private company originally made up by investments from eight nuclear power companies, sent a letter to Congress proposing that the department move nuclear waste to its recently licensed facility or that it reimburse utilities that would decide to move their waste there until Yucca opened.

At a meeting at Energy Department headquarters Wednesday, Hatch said he and Bodman discussed strategy "for putting this plan to bed," although he would not go into details. Hatch said Bodman said there is "no interest whatsoever" from the department on moving waste to Utah.

"This was a 'Hail Mary' pass in the last seconds of the game but the problem is they have no receivers,"Hatch said of PFS's request for the department to become its client.

Two of the original eight investors in PFS — Southern Co. and Florida Power and Light — have opted out of the program completely while Xcel Energy, which holds the largest percentage of the consortium, and Entergy Corp., will freeze future investments.

Representatives from seven companies met with Hatch Wednesday. Genoa FuelTech, which owns the Dairyland Power Reactor in LaCrosse, Wis., and is the home base for PFS Chairman John Parkyn, did not participate.

Other waste-related meetings took place here this week as the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's "DC Days" brought activists from all over the country including two from Utah: Vanessa Pierce, the program director for Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah and Mike Fife, a member of HEAL.

Pierce met with Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell on Tuesday, who expressed the same disinterest in PFS that Bodman did with Hatch.

The two Utahns also met with Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and staff members of the rest of the delegation to talk about the PFS project and other nuclear matters.

Pierce's main goal was to encourage Utah's senators to support an existing bill that would expand a federal program designed to compensate those ill from radiation exposure to government testing to northern Utah.

The compensation program has been around for almost two decades but only includes the 10 most southern counties in Utah, she said.

Pierce and Fife also wanted the delegation, particularly Bennett who has a seat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that writes the energy spending bill, to reject funding for the Energy Department's new nuclear power proposals.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, known as GNEP, would encourage more nuclear power plants be built as well as allow the United States to begin a nuclear waste processing program. The department requested $250 million for the program in February.

She said the biggest misconception of reprocessing is that power plants would be able to reuse all the fuel, but that is not the case. It can actually create more waste and not much of the reprocessed fuel can be used again safely.

"It delays the day of reckoning and just create a bigger price tag," she said.

Pierce fears that if PFS moves forward and reprocessing becomes a reality Utah will become "a nuclear waste version of California's Silicon Valley" with companies popping up that would want to reprocess waste stored at PFS or more types of waste going to EnergySolutions.

She did not hear everything she wants out of all the offices but she said "its good to keep the dialogue going."

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition and the Yucca Mountain Task Force called on Congress Tuesday to move forward with its plan to permanently store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Both groups are strong Yucca supporters and said they want Congress to reconsider storing nuclear waste at Yucca before the underground repository would open.

LeRoy Koppendrayer, a member of the Minnesota Public Service Commission that heads the coalition, said PFS was a good idea for interim storage at one time, but utilities would need to get additional money if they decided to move it there. Money put aside for federal nuclear waste storage can only be spent on Yucca Mountain.

"That doesn't take PFS off the table, this doesn't say that possibly that PFS could be economically more feasible than some sites where it's sitting out in the meantime," Koppendrayer said, but Yucca is what the ratepayers have put billions toward and still have nothing to show for it.