Friday, June 24, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Utah senator wants new look at nuclear waste policy

Republican upset over storage site nearing OK for home state

WASHINGTON -- Saying he was growing "madder and madder" that a nuclear waste site is close to final approval in Utah, Sen. Orrin Hatch on Thursday proposed taking another look at the government's policies for disposing of radioactive spent fuel.

Hatch, R-Utah, said he has prepared legislation calling for the Energy Department to study keeping the material near utilities' nuclear reactors or to store it at government-owned sites.

Both ideas have been floated as possible alternatives to Yucca Mountain as the government faces continued delays in licensing a Nevada underground repository. DOE officials have said a repository opening, already seven years late, might slip to 2012 or 2015.

Hatch voted for a Nevada repository in a 2002 Senate vote. After a Senate speech Thursday, he said he still supported Yucca Mountain but was "rethinking" his position because of Utah's failure to avoid being targeted for nuclear waste.

"I am coming to believe that we will have to reprocess in place," at reactors, Hatch said. "That's the only feasible way of doing it."

The Utah Republican said his legislation would order DOE to direct more resources to nuclear waste reprocessing technology.

Scientists have said reprocessing could reduce nuclear waste volumes and toxicity, but the science would not be practical for decades.

The amendment also would tell DOE to study nuclear waste storage alternatives.

Hatch said he prepared the amendment to be debated as part of a major energy bill this week but withdrew it after Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., "agreed to work with me."

The amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, would prohibit nuclear waste shipments to the Private Fuel Storage waste site that is being developed on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, Utah.

Utah officials expect the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to grant final approval by the end of the year to the 100-acre Goshute site.

Private Fuel Storage is a group of eight utility companies that proposes to store 40,000 tons of nuclear waste in up to 4,000 temporary above-ground casks on reinforced concrete pads.

Hatch said allowing private storage in Utah would "hijack our nation's nuclear waste strategy," which has been focused on Yucca Mountain.

"There is no reason in God's good world why they should stick this stuff in open air above ground," Hatch said. "It is just idiotic. I am getting madder and madder about it."