Wait on N-waste plan, panel is asked
Ruling appeal: Utah officials say the Skull Valley
repository plan needs to be reviewed, due to years of changes
By Patty
Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
shouldn't immediately license a facility to store highly radioactive waste
on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation because years of piecemeal decisions
have changed the proposal and left too many significant issues unresolved.
So says the state of Utah in its appeal of a February ruling by the Atomic
Safety Licencing Board, a panel of NRC judges who gave preliminary approval
for a utility consortium's license to build a spent nuclear fuel storage facility
45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
But
the consortium,
Private Fuel Storage, says the commission shouldn't delay licensing the PFS
facility because it routinely approves similar dry-cask storage proposals
for nuclear reactors.
The state's arguments, filed Monday with the NRC, were the latest salvos
in its nearly eight-year battle with PFS. The state contends that because
the PFS license application hasn't been updated since November 2001, it doesn't
include consideration of such issues as seismic safety, transportation difficulties
or security.
"The state of the record is so outdated
it's like we've got a different facility from what
was [originally] proposed," said Utah Assistant Attorney General Denise Chancellor.
PFS, however, said delaying the license "would cause unwarranted harm to
PFS, owners of nuclear power plants who need to store spent fuel, the Skull
Valley Band of Goshutes and Tooele County."
PFS also argued that receiving its license immediately would not pose risk
to public health and safety of the environment, nor would it affect any future
appeals of the license.
NRC Chairman Nils A. Diaz seemingly bolstered
that argument Monday when he told the National Press Club that the casks in
which the spent fuel would be stored were well-protected and even if they
were breached in some type of an attack, radiation leakage would be confined
to a two-mile radius.
For the PFS proposal, that radius would include the tiny Goshute village,
the home of about 25 tribal members, some of them children.
The $3.1 billion interim facility in Skull Valley was designed to complement
the permanent spent
nuclear fuel repository proposed for Yucca Mountain,
Nev. The Utah facility could begin accepting shipments as early as 2007.
Goshute representatives, through their attorney, expressed support for the
PFS license. On the other side, the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Information
and Resource Service on Monday presented to the NRC anti-PFS petitions signed
by about 6,600 individuals representing nearly 250 local, state, national
and international organizations, including 19 American Indian groups.
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The Associated Press contributed to this story |
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