Protests Fuel Dump Fight
Wednesday, June 21, 2000
EDITORIAL - Salt Lake TribuneIt is ironic that soon after Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt started to question the state's ability to stop a plan to store spent nuclear fuel rods on tribal lands in Utah's west desert, anti- nuclear activists from other states are joining Utah in opposing the scheme.
At issue is the plan of Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight eastern power plants, to store the highly radioactive rods formerly used in nuclear power plants on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation.
Leavitt has been an ardent foe of the plan, but he recently raised questions about the state's ability to effectively halt it. He did so after the Tooele County Commission announced an agreement with PFS in which the county could receive up to $200 million over the 40 years that the spent fuel rods would be stored on the Goshute reservation.
Since then, anti-nuclear groups in Nevada and Michigan have begun protesting the plan as the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board conducts hearings in Salt Lake City. The federal agency, an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is responsible for reviewing financial, legal and scientific issues of PFS's request to build the storage site.
It is too bad that the governor has been obliged to oppose this screwy scheme mostly alone. While not as damaging in space and scope as the MX missile proposal of the 1970s was, the PFS plan is nearly as pernicious. It would pose a danger and would give Utah a pejorative image as the home of the nation's most vile nuclear dross -- an image only its Nevada neighbor may likely share if Congress ends up approving that state's Yucca Mountain site as the nation's permanent nuclear waste depository.
In fact, the greatest risk of the PFS plan is that the Utah dump site, which is supposed to be temporary, could become permanent if Nevada succeeds in stopping efforts to make Yucca Mountain the permanent repository. However, since neither Utah nor Nevada contains a single nuclear power plant, it is grossly unfair that residents of either state should have to play host to highly radioactive nuclear wastes from power plants that benefit other Americans in the East and Midwest. Let these regions store their own nuclear garbage.
Instead of becoming weary of the struggle, Leavitt should take courage in the latest opposition to the PFS proposal and continue to fight it tooth and nail. Meanwhile, other Utahns and organizations should join the gubernatorial opposition.