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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A federal agency has licensed Private Fuel Storage to stockpile nuclear waste on an American Indian reservation about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Yet other legal and bureaucratic obstacles still confront Private Fuel Storage, a group of utilities that own nuclear power plants.
Utah is asking a federal appeals court to overturn the license that was authorized in September and issued Monday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A state lawyer said Private Fuel Storage still needs a right of way from the Bureau of Land Management; approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and a permit from the federal Surface Transportation Board if it decides to build a rail line to the Skull Valley reservation.
"This is a Pyrrhic victory for PFS -- just a piece of paper," Denise Chancellor, an assistant state attorney general, said Tuesday.
PFS also needs to show the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it has enough money to build the repository for spent uranium fuel rods and, with the departure of several of eight original members, the financing could be threadbare, Chancellor said.
PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin, who wasn't immediately available for comment Tuesday, has said the consortium can recruit other members.
Utah leaders say a new wilderness area cuts off the only practical route for a rail spur delivering heavy steel casks of spent fuel rods down the length of Skull Valley to the Goshute Indian reservation. President Bush on Jan. 6 created the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area.
Also blocking the way are state-owned parcels abutting the wilderness area and a section of mud flats. Together those obstacles cut off alternate rail routes, Chancellor said.
PFS Chairman John Parkyn has said he might be able to off-load the canisters from a main Union Pacific line near Interstate 80. But for that to happen, BLM would have to yield 20 acres of land for a transfer station, Chancellor said.
The BLM has opened public comment on granting a right of way for the transfer station or a rail spur down Skull Valley. A decision isn't expected for months. Either method of delivery is permitted by the NRC license, although the alignment of a rail line would need the approval of the Surface Transportation Board.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, meanwhile, has to decide if the project is in the interests of the 121-member Skull Valley band of Goshute Indians.
PFS plans to store 44,000 tons of spent uranium fuel rods with a radioactive half-life of 10,000 years on the reservation until the federal government can open a national repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
PFS has until Friday to review the license for technical or typographical errors.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
