Private Fuel Storage gets a draft license
But state vows to 'win this war' against nuclear waste storage site
"We're disappointed," said Mike Lee, general counsel to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., "not entirely surprised, but disappointed."
He vowed the nuclear-waste storage facility would not be built. "We will win this war with PFS," he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sidestepped what was earlier seen as a roadblock to licensure — the refusal of the Bureau of Land Management and the state historical preservation officer to sign a memorandum of understanding about historic properties. The NRC is issuing the license without those approvals.
This does not mean high-level nuclear waste will roll into Utah tomorrow, but it will allow the consortium that wants to store spent nuclear fuel rods on the land of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians in Tooele County to move ahead with the next phase of its plan.
"The NRC's making an awful decision, but we can't let it deter us from killing this project once and for all," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "This marks the first time the NRC intends to grant a license for a private, off-site storage site for spent nuclear fuel. That's a bad precedent, especially since the PFS is clearly not part of the government's nuclear waste program."
Private Fuel Storage will study the draft and will respond to the NRC with any comments or corrections, said Sue Martin, spokeswoman in Salt Lake City for the company.
"But we're extremely pleased that, after 8 1/2 years, we've gotten this far. I believe this is the first successful licensing of a nuclear facility in this country" in something like two decades.
After years of debate, the commission recommended last September that PFS be granted a license to store nuclear waste on the reservation, but the consortium could not officially receive the license until the commission, along with several other federal agencies, finished a review of how PFS would protect recognized historic places.
The state's historic preservation officer would not sign an agreement approved by several federal agencies on how PFS would protect eight historic properties on government land where a potential railroad would go to move waste to the site. Also, a federal moratorium on land management planning prohibited the BLM from signing it.
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