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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Utah asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to overturn a Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision approving a nuclear waste storage site in the state's western desert.
The six-page petition, filed by lawyers in Washington, D.C., challenges a license authorized but not yet issued by the commission to let a group of nuclear-power utilities stockpile 44,000 tons of spent fuel rods at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Gov. Jon Huntsman directed lawyers to file the petition as part of an effort to block the dump in the courts, in Congress with a plan to designate a Skull Valley wilderness area and with the help of other federal agencies. The papers were filed at the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"We're just going to keep fighting as hard as we can until it's dead," Huntsman's general counsel, Mike Lee, said Wednesday.
The NRC authorized the license in September for Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utilities, rejecting the state of Utah's arguments that the site was too dangerous. Lee said the petition asserts the commission underestimated the risk of a fighter jet crashing into the site and releasing radiation.
Hill Air Force Base uses Skull Valley as a flight path to a training range in Utah's western desert.
Utah's appeal was expected -- "the state has been contesting the Private Fuel Storage project since we filed our application nearly nine years ago," said Bruce Whitehead, a spokesman for and public affairs consultant to the utility consortium.
"All along we have encouraged the state of Utah to do what they need to do in protesting this project because we have always said, 'If it's not deemed to be safe, then it won't be built."'
"But we have passed every criteria, every test, put up by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We have proven all of our points along the way. Our opposition really has yet to prove their points."
Utah's petition also argues that Private Fuel Storage plans to keep spent nuclear fuel rods in a welded steel casks that won't be accepted for storage at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, where the Energy Department is working to open a federal repository for nuclear waste. Private Fuel Storage plans to use Skull Valley as a temporary way station for nuclear waste pending work at Yucca Mountain.
Huntsman has vowed to "stop at nothing" to keep the nuclear waste out of Utah.
"With each passing month, we are expanding our efforts to oppose the PFS plan," Huntsman said in a statement. "We are urging Congress, the Bush administration, and the courts not to let PFS force us to accept nuclear waste that we didn't produce, we don't want and shouldn't have to take."
Whitehead called much of the opposition political maneuvering. He said Private Fuel Storage would fight the appeal if necessary.
Lee said Utah wasn't asking for a court injunction because even if the NRC issues the license, Private Fuel Storage won't be immediately able to deliver any waste to Skull Valley.
The Bureau of Land Management is refusing to grant a right of way for a rail spur that would carry the waste across government land to the reservation.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
